List of novels, stories, poems, and essays studied at MBA

7th Grade English

Novels: The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien (summer reading) A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

Core Short Stories: “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “So Much Unfairness of Things,” C. D. B. Bryan “To Build a Fire,” Jack London “There Will Come Soft Rains,” Ray Bradbury “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe

Optional Stories: “Two Bottles of Relish,” Lord Dunsany

Core Poems: "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass," Emily Dickinson "Ballad of Birmingham," Dudley Randall "Dream Deferred," Langston Hughes "Life Sculpture," George Washington Doane "Meeting at Night," Robert Browning "My Mistress's Eyes," William Shakespeare "The Cremation of Sam McGee," Robert W. Service "The Eagle," Alfred Lord Tennyson "The Pasture," Robert Frost "The Raven," Edgar Allan Poe "The Road Not Taken," Robert Frost "Those Winter Sundays," Robert Hayden

Optional Poems: "A White Rose," John Boyle O'Reilly "Oranges," Gary Soto "The Red Wheelbarrow," William Carlos Williams “On Turning Ten,” Billy Collins

8th Grade English

Novels and Plays: And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (summer reading) The Contender, Robert Lipsyte (summer reading) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Samuel Clemens Lord of the Flies, William Golding The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare

Core Short Stories: "Wine on the Desert," Max Brand "The Lady or the Tiger?" Frank Stockton "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Ambrose Bierce "The Cask of Amontillado," Edgar Allan Poe "The Necklace," Guy de Maupassant "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," James Thurber "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," Mark Twain “War,” Luigi Pirandello "The Story of an Hour," Kate Chopin "Why I Live at the PO," Eudora Welty "Lamb to the Slaughter," Roald Dahl

Core Poems: “The Lamb,” William Blake “The Tyger,” William Blake “We Real Cool,” Gwendolyn Brooks “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House,” Billy Collins “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins “Much Madness is divinest Sense,” Emily Dickinson “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,” Emily Dickinson “Holy Sonnet 10,”(Death, be not proud), John Donne “We Wear the Mask,” Paul Laurence Dunbar “Fire and Ice,” Robert Frost “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Robert Frost “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Robert Frost “The Whipping,” Robert Hayden “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden “This Time of Year,” A.E. Houseman “To an Athlete Dying Young,” A.E. Houseman “I, Too, Sing America,” Langston Hughes “Mother to Son,” Langston Hughes “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes “Mountain Graveyard,” Robert Morgan “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen “Richard Cory,” Edwin Arlington Robinson “Sonnet 18,”(Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day), William Shakespeare “Sonnet 73,”(That time of year thou mayst in me behold), William Shakespeare “Titanic,” David R. Slavitt “I Hear America Singing,” Walt Whitman “My Heart Leaps Up,” William Wordsworth

Optional Poems: “Apparently with no surprise,” Emily Dickinson “The Pitcher,” Robert Francis “Learning the Bicycle,” Wyatt Prunty “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke “The Double-Play,” Robert Wallace “She Walks in Beauty," Byron "Sonnet 130," William Shakespeare "Ozymandias," Percy Shelley "Funeral Blues," W.H. Auden "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," Dylan Thomas “Incident,” Countee Cullen “I Never Saw a Moor,” Emily Dickinson

9th Grade Regular English

Novels and Plays: A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines (summer reading) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie (summer reading) All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque Freshman Literature Anthology, MBA, edited by Mrs. Jo Palmore The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck Macbeth, William Shakespeare The Odyssey, Homer; translated by Robert Fagles (epic)

Core Short Stories: “The Monkey’s Paw,” W.W. Jacobs “The Open Window,” Saki “The Black Cat,” Edgar Allan Poe “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson “The Most Dangerous Game,” Richard Connell “The Bet,” Anton Chekhov “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” Bret Harte

Optional Short Stories: "A Scandal in Bohemia," Conan Doyle “The Cop and the Anthem,” O.Henry “First Confession,” Frank O’Connor “A Municipal Report,” O. Henry “The Sea Devil,” Arthur Gordon “Haircut,” Ring Lardner

Core Poems: “Sea Fever,” John Masefield “Mending Wall,” Robert Frost “The World Is Too Much with Us,” William Wordsworth “Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelley “When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes,” William Shakespeare “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass,” Emily Dickinson “Loveliest of Trees,” A.E. Housman “The Man He Killed,” Thomas Hardy “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” William Butler Yeats “in Just—,” e.e.cummings “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” Robert Service “Composed upon Westminster Bridge,” William Wordsworth “’Out, Out—‘,” Robert Frost “Success is Counted Sweetest,” Emily Dickinson “Lord Randall,” Anonymous “Crossing the Bar,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson “Miniver Cheevy,” E.A. Robinson

Optional Poems: “Leda and the Swan,” William Butler Yeats “God’s Grandeur,” Gerard Manley Hopkins “Ulysses,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson “Parable of the Old Man and the Young,” Wilfred Owen “Death, Be Not Proud,” John Donne “The Secret Heart,” Robert P.T. Coffin “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child,” Gerard Manley Hopkins “My Last Duchess,” Robert Browning “I Remember, I Remember,” Thomas Hood “Hurt Hawks,” Robinson Jeffers “Lucifer in Starlight,” George Meredith “I Taste a Liquor never Brewed” Emily Dickinson “The Tyger” William Blake "The Lamb," William Blake "Cheerios," Billy Collins "Paradelle for Susan," Billy Collins

9th Grade Honors English

Short Stories: "First Confession,” Frank O’Connor “The Bet,” Anton Chekhov “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” Bret Harte “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Arthur Conan Doyle “The Most Dangerous Game,” Richard Connell "The Only Rose," Sarah Orne Jewett "A Bundle of Letters," Henry James “The Artist of the Beautiful,” Nathaniel Hawthorne “The Prophetic Pictures,” Nathaniel Hawthorne “The Demon Lover,” Elizabeth Bowen

Novels and plays: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie (summer reading) A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines (summer reading) All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin Macbeth, William Shakespeare The Odyssey, Homer (epic)

Honors Poems: “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed,” Emily Dickinson “The Tyger,” William Blake "Comin' Thro' the Rye,” Robert Burns “Lord Randal,” (traditional) “Sonnet XXIX,” William Shakespeare “The World Is Too Much with Us,” William Wordsworth “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” William Butler Yeats “in Just—,” e.e. cummings “Sea Fever,” John Masefield “The Secret Heart,” Robert P.T. Coffin “I Remember, I Remember,” Thomas Hood

10th Grade Regular and Honors English

Textbook: American Literature Volumes I and II, MBA, edited by Dr. Tarkington and Mr. Moxley

Novels and plays: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Samuel Clemens (summer reading) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (summer reading) Cannery Row, John Steinbeck (Honors) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

Essays: Jonathan Edwards: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Henry David Thoreau: Excerpts from Walden: A Life in the Woods and “Civil Disobedience” Ralph Waldo Emerson: Excerpts from “Self-Reliance,” “The Poet,” “The Divinity School Address”

Core Poems: Anne Bradstreet: “Lines Composed Upon the Burning of Our House” Edward Taylor: “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly”; William Cullen Bryant: “Thanatopsis”; “Ode to a Waterfowl” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls”; “The Cross of Snow” Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Old Ironsides”; “The Chambered Nautilus” Emily Dickinson’s poems (a selection) Walt Whitman: “Song of Myself” Edwin Arlington Robinson: “Miniver Cheevy”; “Richard Cory” Edgar Lee Masters’ poems “Richard Bone”; “The Unknown”; “Lucinda Matlock” Robert Frost: “Mending Wall”; “The Road Not Taken”; “Birches”; “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Ezra Pound: “In a Station of the Metro”; “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” T.S. Eliot: “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” William Carlos Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow”; “This is Just to Say”; “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”; “Spring and All” Wallace Stevens: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” “The Emperor of Ice Cream” e.e. cummings’s poems (a selection) Claude McKay: “If We Must Die”; “America”; “The Harlem Dancer” Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”; “A Dream Deferred”; “The Weary Blues”; “I, Too”; “Mother to Son” Paul Laurence Dunbar: “Sympathy”; “We Wear the Mask”

Optional Poems: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “My Lost Youth”; “The Rainy Day” Robert Frost: “Design”; “Death of A Hired Man”; “After Apple Picking” William Carlos Williams: “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” Wallace Stevens: “The Emperor of Ice Cream” Paul Laurence Dunbar: “The Haunted Oak”

Core Short Stories: Edgar Allan Poe: “The Fall of the House of Usher”; “The Cask of Amontillado” Nathaniel Hawthorne: “The Minister’s Black Veil”; “Young Goodman Brown,” “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” “Rappacini’s Daughter,” “The Birthmark” Ambrose Bierce: “Parker Adderson, Philosopher”; “One of the Missing”; “A Coup de Grace” Jack London: “The Mexican”; “In a Far Country” Stephen Crane: “The Blue Hotel,” “The Open Boat”

Optional Stories: Edgar Allan Poe: “The Gold Bug”; “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” Herman Melville: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”; “Benito Cereno” Sherwood Anderson: “The Book of the Grotesque”; “Mother”; “Hands”; “An Awakening”; “Queer”; “Sophistication” Raymond Carver: “Cathedral” Ralph Ellison: “The Battle Royal” John Updike: “A&P” Ernest Hemingway: “A Clean, Well Lighted Place” Tobias Wolff: “The Liar” Read Bernard Malamud: “The Magic Barrel” James Baldwin: “Sonny’s Blues” Read Philip Roth: “The Conversion of the Jews” Flannery O’Connor: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” William Faulkner: “A Rose for Emily”

11th Grade Regular and Honors English

Novels: 1984, George Orwell (summer reading) Black Swan Green, David Mitchell (summer reading) Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen Great Expectations, Charles Dickens A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (Honors) The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (Regular)

Plays: Othello, William Shakespeare The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde An Inspector Calls, J.B. Priestley (summer reading)

Short Stories: “Araby,” James Joyce “The Dead” James Joyce “Odour of Chrysantheums” D.H. Lawrence

Poems: Selections from Beowulf Geoffrey Chaucer: Prologue to the Canterbury Tales; Regulars: Selections from the General Prologue & one tale; Honors: Selections from the General Prologue & two of the tales Thomas Wyatt: “Whoso list to Hunt”; “They Flee from Me” Christopher Marlowe: “The Passionate Shepherd” William Shakespeare: Any three sonnets John Milton: Selections from Paradise Lost Edmund Spenser: sonnets 30, 54, and 67 Walter Raleigh: "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" John Donne: “Batter My Heart”; “The Flea”; “A Hymn to God the Father” Andrew Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress” Thomas Gray: “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” William Blake: “The Lamb”; “The Little Black Boy”; “The Chimney Sweeper” George Herbert: "The Collar" and "The Altar" Lord Byron: selections from "Chlide Harold's Pilgrimage" Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” William Wordsworth: “The Solitary Reaper”; “Tintern Abbey” Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind”; “Mutability” John Keats: “Ode to a Nightingale”; “Ode on a Grecian Urn” Alfred Lord Tennyson: “Ulysses”; “Crossing the Bar”; “Tears, Idle Tears” Robert Browning: “Andrea del Sarto” Matthew Arnold: “Dover Beach” Gerard Manley Hopkins: “The Windhover”; “God's Grandeur” William Butler Yeats: “ “The Stolen Child”; No Second Troy”; “The Second Coming”; “Sailing to Byzantium” T. S. Eliot: Selections from “The Wasteland” Siegfried Sassoon: “Lamentations”; “Base Details” Rupert Brooke: “The Soldier” Wilfred Owen: “Dulce et Decorum Est” John McCrae: “In Flanders Fields” Robert Laurence Binyon: “For the Fallen” W.H. Auden: “Musee de Beaux Arts” Dylan Thomas: “Do Not Go Gentle” Seamus Heaney: “Mid Term Break” Philip Larkin: “Church Going”

12th Grade Regular English (first semester)

Novels and Plays: A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (summer reading) The Crucible, Arthur Miller (summer reading) Oedipus Rex, Sophocles Antigone, Sophocles Hamlet¸William Shakespeare The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller

Note: Students take one of three colloquia during the second semester: An Introduction to Southern Literature; Fiction into Film; or the Shakespeare Seminar.

12th Grade AP English

Novels and Plays: All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren (summer reading) Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (summer reading) Backpack Literature, 5th ed., X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia Hamlet¸William Shakespeare Oedipus Rex, Sophocles Antigone, Sophocles The Secret Sharer and Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller Fences, August Wilson

Short Stories: “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Ernest Hemingway “A Worn Path,” Eudora Welty “The Things They Carried,”Tim O’Brien “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor “Revelation,” Flannery O’Connor “Parker’s Back,” Flannery O’Connor “Gospel According to Mark,” Borges “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”

Poems: “A Red, Red Rose,” Robert Burns “Metaphors,” Sylvia Plath “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” John Keats “Turtle,” Kay Ryan “A Work of Artifice,” Marge Piercy “Since There’s No Help,” Michael Drayton “Digging,” Seamus Heaney “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff,” A.E. Housman “Funeral Blues,” W.H. Auden “The Dance,” William Carlos Williams “Naming of Parts,” Henry Reed “Auto Wreck,” Karl Shapiro “Let America Be America,” Langston Hughes “The Groundhog,” Richard Eberhart “God’s Grandeur,” Gerard Manley Hopkins “next to of course god America I,” e.e. cummings “Evolution,” Sherman Alexie “Storm Warnings,” Adrienne Rich “Apparently with No Surprise,” Emily Dickinson “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,” Emily Dickinson “Ex-Basketball Player,” John Updike “Great Scarf of Birds,” John Updike “When in Disgrace with Fortune…,” William Shakespeare “When I Consider How My Light…,” John Milton “Nothing in Heaven Functions as…,” X.J. Kennedy “Winter Landscape,” John Berryman “Hunters in the Snow,” Joseph Langland “The Hunter in the Snow,” William Carlos Williams “Brueghel’s Winter,” Walter de la Mare