RISING 12th GRADE SUMMER READING LISTS
Expectations of Summer Reading
- Make brief annotations throughout your book: highlight and label important character descriptions and events, comment on interesting descriptions and your reactions, keep track of possible themes and other patterns you notice.
- Your marginalia should include some writing, labeling, defining, response, and reaction – annotation is more than simply highlighting. Jot down keys events and write a brief summary of each chapter at the start/end of the chapter – a few bullet point notes is sufficient.
- While annotation is not expected on every page, and it should not be a tedious process, you need to actively engage with the book and write down notes to help you remember your reading when school begins. Aim for a couple of annotations every 3-4 pages and at the end of each chapter.
- Note that some extra credit options may be listed, and you will have to complete extra tasks in addition to reading the listed book.
Heritage
***Required for All ***
1984
George Orwell
“Big Brother is Watching You!” Posters with this slogan are perennial reminders that in Orwell’s imagined future there are no freedoms. However, like all dystopian worlds there is one person who searches for truth: here that person is Winston Smith, a cog in the governmental wheel that controls and crushes all opposition. In a work that has been described as prophetic, Orwell creates a dark vision for the future in which all personal privacy and personal choice have been removed. Love, freedom, happiness, friendship, family. All of these givens have become anachronistic reminders of what once was and what never will be again. Orwell’s novel stands testament as a stark warning against apathetic living and allowing the unbridled spread of totalitarian ideas throughout the world.
Then choose ONE from the following list of fiction (F) and non-fiction (NF) titles:
A Long Petal of the Sea
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The Testaments
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Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
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Parable of the Sower
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Flight Behavior
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The Spy and the Traitor
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Know My Name
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The Dutch House
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AP English Literature
***Required for All***
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent devourer of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment, and when real life continues to fail to live up to her romantic expectations, the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi.
***Choose ONE from the following list of women authors:***
Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche:
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The Awakening
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*** Extra Credit Books***
DOWNLOAD US SUMMER READING LIST HERE:
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