2008 Summer Reading list

All students are expected to read at least one fiction or non-fiction work that is at their grade level. In the first week of classes, the students will be expected to report orally and/or in writing on their choices. We recommend books that are on the 2008-2009 Humanities Reading List below. However, you may contact a humanities teacher to get approval for an alternate book.

Grades 9 and 10 each have additional suggested readings:

For Grade 9, the teachers suggest that these selections be read:
A Walk in my World, Mazer (ed.) (“The Jay” and “Hands” to be read first)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie

For Grade 10, the teachers suggest that these selections be read:
Ramayana: A Journey, Ranchor Prime
Gilgamesh, Mason (trans.)


Grades 11 and 12 each have additional required reading:

For Grade 11, the teachers expect that the students will have read:
Parts I and II of Fool’s Crow by Welch

For Grade 12, the teachers expect that the students will have read:
All of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevski

Humanities Reading List for 2008-2009 Academic Year

Grade 9 skills:
English Grammar and Cultural Studies:

A Walk in my World, Mazer (ed.) ("The Jay” and “Hands” to be read first)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie
Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya
Things Fall Apart, Achebe
Stolen Voices, Filipovic and Challenger (eds.) (selections)

Grade 9 main lessons:
Cultural Revolutions:
A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens (selections)
Red Sorghum, Mo Yan
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

Comedy And Tragedy:
Oedipus, Fagle (trans)
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
A Servant of Two Masters, Goldoni
A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry

Idealism and Humanity
Animal Farm, Orwell


Grade 10 skills:
Ancient Civilizations to Chaucer:
Ramayana: A Journey, Ranchor Prime
Gilgamesh, Mason (trans.)
Odyssey, Homer (Fitzgerald, trans.)
Tanakh
New Testament (Gospels)
Beowulf, Heaney (trans.)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Raffel (trans.)
The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer

Grade 10 main lesson:
U.S. Government:
Constitution of the United States

Classical World:
Iliad, Homer (Fitzgerald, trans.)

Comparative Religions:
Illustrated Religions of the World, Huston Smith


Grade 11 skills:
Shakespeare:
Hamlet, Shakespeare
Twelfth Night, Shakespeare
Sonnets, Shakespeare

American Studies:
Fool’s Crow, Welch
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, Alexie (selections)
The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
The Awakening, Chopin
Slaugherhouse-Five, Vonnegut

Grade 11 main lessons:
Parzival
Parzival, Eschenbach

Dante and the Medieval World:
The Inferno, Pinsky


Grade 12 skills:
Russian Literature and Transcendentalism:
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevski
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn
Queen of Spades, Puskin

Grade 12 main lessons:
Symptomatology:
Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl
1984, Orwell
Brave New World, Huxley
The Machine Stops, E.M. Forster

Economics:
The Worldly Philosophers, Heilbroner (selections)

Faust:
Faust, Goethe