2014 Summer Reading List

2014 Summer Reading List The books listed below are required reading for students entering and returning to Ojai Valley School. It is the student’s responsibility to purchase the books. It should be possible to obtain inexpensive copies of these books at Borders, Barnes & Noble, online at Amazon.com or other websites. Please read them over the summer and bring them to school in September prepared to discuss and write about them. The intent is for students to read thought-provoking literature that will stimulate questions and ideas for discussion at the start of the year. Students will also have writing assignments based on the summer reading. We hope students will enjoy the books chosen by the faculty. As a community, Ojai Valley School faculty and students in grades 9-12 will read John Green's The Fault in Our Stars this summer. Taken from a Shakespearean play, The Fault In Our Stars is a coming- of-age story about Hazel Grace, a teenager living with cancer. While attending a support group for other teenagers with cancer, she meets Augustus Waters, an optimistic cancer survivor who takes an interest in Hazel. Their story is a sometimes heart-wrenching, often times humorous, and always honest look at two teens and their journey to define themselves not by their sickness but by their time and adventures together. Author John Green writes in a style that is both refined but easily relatable to teenagers. Students wishing to read beyond The Fault In Our Stars are encouraged to check out Green’s other books: Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. Students may also wish to check out Green’s YouTube channel, “vlogbrothers,” where he and his brother, Hank, air weekly video blogs that are entertaining and hilarious. The community will discuss this book during the first week of school and use issues raised by it for discussion and reflection. All School The Fault in Our Stars, John Green English 9 Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck English 10 and English 10 Honors Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman An American Childhood, Annie Dillard English 11 See list below AP English 11 Language See list below English 12 Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand AP English Literature A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole Don Quijote, Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Burton Raffel. Norton Critical Edition – W.W. Norton Company (ISBN 978-0393972818) Functions & Statistics Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell AP Statistics Moneyball, Michael Lewis AP US History See combined list below with AP English Language AP Psychology Brain Rules, John Medina 2014 Summer Reading List English 11 and United States History and AP United States History Summer Reading In addition to the all-school required book, students taking English 11 and United States History must read two novels from the summer reading list. The list is compiled of American novels, many of which have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature, and all of which have an historical significance. There is a short summary of each novel with the date of publication. After completing each novel, students should write an essay on one of the questions and be prepared to turn in that essay on the first day of class. AP United States History: The starred books (***) are those recommended by Mrs. Colborn. Students planning to take AP U.S. History should read at least one of the starred books and complete the written assignment below the book description. Note: only students who did not read it in English 10 last year may read The Grapes of Wrath. I. Early American Period ***The Last of the Mohicans, one of the novels in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, features elements of the early American frontier. These elements, the brave hero facing dangers and the encounters between red men and white men, seem stereotypical today since they have been so often imitated. However, Cooper was America’s first internationally famous novelist and the stories are great adventures. 1826 1. Explain how Cooper treats the theme of the “vanishing American” - the threatened extinction of the American Indian and his way of life. (American Literature, Vol. I) 2. Cooper’s images are the “very spirit of the wilderness; they breathe the somber poetry of solitude and danger.” (Novel 100)) Analyze Cooper’s writing style in the way he creates his wilderness settings. Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s whaling story of Captain Ahab’s vindictive quest for the white whale, has been lauded as America’s greatest novel. Although it begins as a narrative about a whaling expedition, it turns into “a metaphorical study of the nature of good, evil, and reality.” The complex novel has many layers: the story of a whaling ship’s fateful voyage, the story of a bitter man’s quest for revenge, and the story of humanity’s relationship to the natural world. (Literature and the Language Arts) 1851 1. Melville chose Nantucket, where the first whale was sighted in 1672, as the starting point for the “Pequod’s” cruise. Discuss what Melville explores about the American whalers, their individualism and heroic self-reliance. 2. The white whale with its enormous power and violence is seen as Ahab’s evil foe. But it is also seen as mild and beautiful by other members of the whaling crew. Discuss the symbolism of the white whale. 3. Discuss Melville’s use of Biblical allusions in the novel. ***The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s allegorical novel, is set in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts. The powerful characters, Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth are faced with the darker aspects of human nature, specifically with sin, temptation and guilt. 1850 1. Pearl has been called a symbol in this novel, an “emblem of sin,” and the “human embodiment of the scarlet letter.” Discuss Pearl’s role as both a symbol and a real child in the novel. 2. Hester’s feelings about her relationship with Dimmesdale are that their “sinful” act had a “consecration of its own.” The narrator informs us that Dimmesdale “sin” was one of “passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.” Discuss how these divergent views - Hester’s that their actions had a spiritual significance and Dimmesdale’s that they had broken a “great law” influence they way they react to their situation? II. Slavery and Civil War Period Beloved by Toni Morrison is based on historical events. Like a slave narrative, the novel confronts the painful aspects of slavery and their psychological impacts on the characters. “Beloved”, who may be supernatural, challenges the reader to explore the concept of motherhood, manhood and human relationships. 1988 1. Analyze the character Beloved. Consider her role in the novel, how her behavior affects Sethe, Paul D, and Denver. Is she the spirit of Sethe’s murdered daugher, a representation of the memories Sethe is trying to forget, or a former slave who has escaped captivity? Or does she represent all of these possibilities? 2. “Morrison has supplied a unique lesson in the ramifications of the legacy of slavery as an institution with devastating consequences on the family, sexuality, and psychological and emotional wholeness.” (Burt, The Novel 100) Discuss how Beloved illustrates the mental and physical effects of slavery on its victims. ***Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier is the story of a man’s quest to return from the Civil War battlefield to his home in the Carolina Mountains. (1997) 1. How is either Inman’s or Ada’s loneliness and solitude, their alienation from society, both literal and symbolic. 2. Discuss the crow as a symbol of Inman. ***Killer Angels by Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. The novel is set during the four days of the Battle of Gettysburg, and the characters are the actual historical figures, including General Robert E. Lee. Shaara’s context is based on the letters, journal entries, and memoirs of the men who fought at Gettysburg. (1974) 1. The Battle of Gettysburg may have been a turning point between old and new methods of warfare. Explain the conflict and consequences of Lee’s traditional strategies compared to Longstreet’s insistence on more realistic defense tactics. 2. Good friends, Lew Armistead and Winfield Hancock represent two different sides. Explain how they portray the dilemma of the Civil War. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane recounts the story of a young soldier, Henry Fleming, during what is suppose to be the Battle of Chancellorsville. Although he dreams of glory, when the battle begins, he flees and rationalizes his actions. After several encounters with other soldiers, he 2014 Summer Reading List returns to camp and fights in the final charge. His shameful behavior deeply hidden, he finds a quiet peace as a man. 1896 1. Discuss Henry Fleming’s change of character. Is he redeemed from his cowardice to become heroic? Or is his self-knowledge a delusion? 2. In Chapter 7 Henry comes upon a dead soldier in the forest. Explain the symbolism of this encounter. Consider the following points in your analyses: the setting (the “religious half light” of the “chapel” made by the trees; the corpse’s change of colors reflecting the changing seasons; and the look the youth exchanges with the corpse. ***Twelve Years a Slave is the narrative of Solomon Northup. Born a free man, he was drugged while performing with a traveling musical show and sold into slavery. The book describes his life in bondage under different cruel masters and how he eventually is freed. (1968) 1. What picture of slavery does Northup portray in his narrative.

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