Summer Reading List

Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School

2008-2009

· Attached you will find the summer reading list for the 2008-2009 school year.

· Students in grades 9-12 are allowed to choose ANY book from the list.

· Please read the descriptions carefully, as some content lends itself to upper classmen only.

· Students taking Honors English next year are REQUIRED to read ONE FICTION and ONE NON-FICTION novel.

· These books are available at local bookstores and local libraries. (Please call ahead, as some libraries have limited summer hours).

ASSESSMENT:

· Students are REQUIRED to take notes as they read. Notes must be handwritten and include detailed chapter summaries on plot development, and character analysis.

· In English class during the first week(s) of academics, students will review literary terms and will be assigned an in class assessment connecting these terms with the novel(s) they read.

· The required handwritten notes will be used to complete the assessment and will be included in the final evaluation (typically worth 30 points of the final grade for summer reading).

Alvarez, Julia	How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent A coming of age story for 4 girls exiled from the Dominican Republic in New York. (F)
Anonymous	Go Ask Alice A painful diary of a young girl when she falls into the drug scene. (NF)
Avi	The Fighting Ground The compelling story of a young boy’s first encounter with war and how it changes him. (F)
Avi	Midnight Magic A ghost is haunting the princess and only the magician’s servant can solve the mystery. (F)
Avi	The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle A 13-year-old girl must extricate herself from a perilous position during an 1832 transatlantic voyage. (F)
Bachman, Richard	Long Walk Of 100 boys in a marathon walk, 99 will die, 1 will survive. (F)
Bauer, Joan	Rules of the Road A 17 year old heads to Texas to prevent a company takeover. (F)
Bechard, Margaret	Hanging on to Max Sam learns how to be a teen parent while going to high school. (F)
Bell, William	Forbidden City: A Novel of Modern China A Canadian boy gets mixed up in a Chinese massacre. (F)
Block, Francesca Lia	Weetzie Bat Punk teens search for love in a modern fairytale. (F)
Bloor, Edward	Tangerine Paul just wants to play soccer at his new high school in Florida, despite his parents’ indifference and his evil brother. (F)
Boas, Jacob	We are Witnesses: The Diaries of Five Teenagers Who Die in the Holocaust The diaries of five teenagers in the Holocaust and their tragic, courageous stories. (NF)
Brashares, Ann	The Second Summer of the Sisterhood A sequel to the original Pants. (F)
Brooks, Polly Schoyer	Beyond the Myth: The Story of Joan of Arc A young girl in France is condemned as a witch & leads her countrymen against the English. (NF)
Brown, Dan	Angels and Demons A centuries-old organization launches a vendetta against the Catholic Church. (F)
Brown, Dan	Deception Point Uncovering evidence of scientific trickery, a dangerous deception. (F)
Brown, Dan	Digital Fortress Mathematician must break a code for the National Security Agency. (F)
Caldwell, Ian	Rule of Four Two people work to unlock a Renaissance text against a ticking clock. (F)
Card, Orson, Scott	Ender’s Game Ender may be the military genius Earth needs in its war against an alien enemy. (F)
Cormier, Robert	Fade One boy in each generation inherits the power, and curse, of invisibility. (F)
Cormier, Robert	I am the Cheese Adam searches through haunting memories that must not be revealed if he is to survive. (F)
Cox, Lynne	Swimming to Antarctica The world’s most extraordinary distance swimmer writes about her emotional and spiritual need to swim and the almost mystical act of swimming itself. (NF)
Crutcher, Chris	Chinese Handcuffs A winning triathlete’s need to understand his older brother’s suicide is complicated by his memories. (F)
Crutcher, Chris	Running Loose A boy’s senior year of high school is interrupted by dirty football, love, and death. (F)
Crutcher, Chris	Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes Only Sarah’s best friend can help her come to terms with life when her past is revealed. (F)
Damon, Johnny	Idiot: Beating “The Curse” and Enjoying the Game of Life Johnny Damon on what it takes to make it in the majors, and what it’s like once you get there. (NF)
Deuker, Carl	On the Devil’s Court Is one perfect basketball season worth selling your soul the devil? (F)
Dickinson, Peter	Eva After a violent auto accident, 13 year old Eva wakes up in a hospital to find she must learn how to live as a chimpanzee. (F)
Donnelly, Jennifer	A Northern Light Mattie’s writing ability holds the key to unraveling a story of a girl’s death and her beau’s mysterious disappearance. (F)
Duncan, Lois	Don’t Look Behind You How can April give up everything she’s ever known? (F)
Edelman, Bernard	Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam Soldiers reveal their daily lives in ‘Nam. (NF)
Ellison, Ralph	Invisible Man The story of a black man’s experience in a white world. (F)
Farmer, Nancy	The Ear, the Eye, the Arm In 2194 the only detective team that can so the job are mutant partners, the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. (F)
Fleischman, Paul	Whirligig A boy must build Whirligigs in memory of a girl he killed in a car crash. (F)
Funke, Cornelia	Inkheart Meggie’s father discovered he could read characters out of books, but he accidentally reads her mother in , and now has to break her out. (F)
Garden, Nancy	Annie on my Mind Two girls fall in love despite society’s opinions. (F)
Greenlaw, Linda	The Hungry Ocean An account of a swordfishing trip which proves that every successful voyage is a study in narrowly averted disaster. (NF)
Griffin, John Howard	Black Like Me A sociological experiment of a white man who transforms his skin to experience 1950’s Southern America. (NF)
Grogan, John	Marley & Me An account of a much loved naughty canine. (NF)
Hobbs, Will	Downriver A gang of teens find themselves stranded in the whitewaters of the West. (F)
Hopkins, Ellen	Crank A girl’s life is turned upside down when she gets turned on to the drug “crank” and becomes addicted. (F)
Hosseini, Khaled	A Thousand Splendid Suns A story of the unconquerable spirit of a people and individuals seen through the eyes of two indomitable women. (NF)
Janeczko, Paul B.	Place my Words are Looking For: What Poets Say About and Through their Work Writers share insight into their crafts & lives of poetry. (NF)
Jenkins, A.M.	Out of Order A baseball star learns what’s important in school & life. (F)
Johnson, Angela	The First Part Last Bobby must learn to raise a child on his own. (F)
Kerouac, Jack	On the Road Cross-country quest for self-knowledge. (F)
Kindl, Patrice	Owl in Love A girl deals w/ issues of changing into an owl every night. (F)
King, Stephen	The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon A child gets separated from her family in the woods can can’t fight off the moon’s affects. (F)
Klass, David	You Don’t Know Me A teenage boy fights off abuse from his mother’s boyfriend. (F)
Klause, Annette Curtis	The Silver Kiss Zoe is put under a vampire’s spell until he avenges a death. (F)
Koertge, Ron	The Arizona Kid A sophomore matures one summer at the racetrack. (F)
Kurson, Robert	Shadow Divers The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II. (NF)
Larson, Erik	Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed the World A serial killer masquerades as a doctor in the Chicago’s World’s Fair.(NF)
Lowry, Lois	Number the Stars A Jewish family fights to hide from the Nazis and find freedom. (F)
Magorian, Michelle	Good Night, Mr. Tom A battered & frightened young boy is evacuated from London during WWII. (F)
Maguire, Gregory	Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister Everyone knows about Cinderella; this is the story from the sister’s point of view. (F)
Maguire, Gregory	Wicked The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West. (F)
Marsden, John	Tomorrow, When the War Began Australia has been invaded and Ellie must accept her new way of life. (F)
Martel, Yann	Life of Pi Redemptive story of a boy and a 450lb. tiger. (F)
McCaffrey, Anne	Dragonsinger Fire lizards help a young woman with prejudice on the planet Pern. (F)
McCall, Nathan	Makes Me Wanna Holler: A young Black Man in America An American dream journey from working class, to prison, to the Washington Post. (NF)
McCourt, Frank	Tis: A Memoir The riveting sequel to Angela’s Ashes. (NF)
McDonald, Joyce	Swallowing Stones Desperation, guilt, and fear plague Michael’ s dreams after a stray bullet from his rifle kills a man. (F)
Myers, Walter Dean	Fallen Angels A young man learns about friendship as his comrades die in Vietnam. (f)
Myers, Walter Dean	Hoops the Harlem ghetto basketball team learn the fine art of playing. (F)
Nafisi, Azar	Reading Lolita in Tehran The story of Iran's revolution from the unusual vantage point of an Iranian-born, American-schooled instructor of English literature, in the revolutionary year of 1979. (NF)
Naylor, Clare & Mimi Hare	The Second Assistant A boisterous tale of a girl working up from the bottom of the Hollywood ladder. (F)
Nix, Garth	Sabriel A girl makes a desperate quest through the Gates of Death to free her father from the spirits of the dead. (F)
Nolan, Han	If I Should Die Before I Wake A New-Nazi in a coma is brought back to WWII into the life of a Jewish teenager. (F)
Nowlin, Bill & Dan Desrochers, ed.	The 1967 Impossible dream Red Sox How the 1967 Boston Red Sox overcame 100 to 1 odds to go from 9^th place to winning the Pennant. (NF)
O’Brien, Robert C.	Z for Zachariah Two survivors are brought together in an atomic holocaust. (F)
O’ Brien, tim