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William Penn Charter School English Department Upper School Summer Reading List 2009 All students in the upper school are required to read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. In addition, students entering grades 9 through 12 will need to select two books from the list below to read over the summer. One of the choices must be from the FICTION section. STUDENTS MUST PICK THE REMAINING TWO BOOKS FROM THIS LIST UNLESS ALTERNATIVE SELECTIONS HAVE BEEN APPROVED BY THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT CHAIR BY THE LAST DAY OF CLASSES. STUDENTS SHOULD ALSO BE AWARE THAT THEIR TEACHERS WILL EXPECT THEM TO BRING THEIR SUMMER READING BOOKS TO CLASS IN SEPTEMBER AND WILL BE HOLDING STUDENTS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE READING. [Fiction] Agee, James. A Death in the Family 1957. The enchanted childhood summer of 1915 suddenly becomes a baffling experience for Rufus Follet when his father dies. Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women 1868. The story concerns the lives and loves of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War. It is based on Alcott’s own experiences as a child in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts. *Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. 2009. Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Allen, Irene. Quaker Indictment 1998. Elizabeth Elliot, mild-mannered Quaker confronts murder, sexual harassment and plagiarism at Harvard. Also recommended: Wuaker Witness and Quaker Testimony. Anderson, Laurie Halse. Twisted. 2008. After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts. Anderson, M.T., The Pox party: taken from accounts by [Octavius Nothing's] own hand and other Sundry, 2006 As the boy's regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians' fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments - and his own chilling role in them. Alvarez, Julia. In the Time of Butterflies 1994. Dede, the only survivor of the four Mirabel sisters, code named Mariposas or butterflies, reveals their role in the liberation of the Dominican Republic from the dictator Trujillo. **Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility 1990 (republished) Elinor and Marianne are two sisters who are polar opposites in terms of their characters, but who both struggle with disappointment, regret, and hope in the search to find real love within the confines of strict English society. **Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice 1813 Elizabeth Bennet, a spirited and attractive young woman, encounters and captivates the proud Mr. Darcy in spite of her own preconceived notions. *Especially suitable for young readers 1 **Especially suitable for readers who like a challenge Baldwin, James. Go Tell it on the Mountain. 1953. In this novel, teenage John struggles with inner religious conflict and with his rigid father in 1930’s Harlem. Benioff, David. City of Thieves: a Novel. 2009. Seventeen year old Lev is jailed by the Russian Army during the era of the Siege of Leningrad, and faces dangerous missions with his friend Kolya, to avoid execution. Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Sower. 1993. Lauren Olamina, who suffers from a hereditary trait called "hyperempathy" that causes her to feel others' pain physically, journeys north along the dangerous highways of twentieth-first century California. Cao, Lan. Monkeybridge. 1997. Both Mai Ngyuen and her widowed mother escape the terrible aftermath of the Vietnam War. But while Mai seems to adjust readily to American life, her mother – haunted by their losses – cannot embrace this new country as home. *Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Shadow. 1999. A parallel novel to Card’s award-winning Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow presents Bean, Ender Wiggins’ friend and right hand, who plays an invaluable role in the final battle against an alien enemy. Clavell, James. Shogun. 1986. A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life, two ways of love. All brought together in a mighty saga of a time and place aflame with conflict, passion, ambition, lust and the struggle for power. Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. 1895. This Civil War story, told through the eyes of Henry Fleming, an ordinary farm boy turned soldier, captures the sights and sounds of war while creating the intricate inner world of Henry. De Bernieres, Louis. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. 1994. In the early days of the Second World War, the betrothed daughter of a Greek doctor falls in love with a cultured officer of the Italian army which is invading her country. **Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss. 2005. Parallel stories of a father and son, one in India the other in New York City, marks a real difference in what people want out of life and how generations see the world. **Diamant, Anita. The Red Tent. 1997. This historical novel interweaves biblical tales with fictional characters in telling the story of Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, from her childhood to her relationships and adulthood in Egypt. Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. 1859. This is Dickens’ second historical novel. It centers on the years leading up to the French Revolution and culminates with the Reign of Terror. Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. 1850. David Copperfield, born in 1820, tells his own story from childhood to adulthood. This is the first of Dickens’ first person narrators. Doctorow, E.L. Billy Bathgate. 1989. In the Bronx of the 1930s, 15-year-old Billy Bathgate hooks up with a legendary mobster, Dutch Schultz. Schultz becomes an unlikely surrogate parent to the boy, introducing him to the ways of the world and training Billy to follow in his footsteps. Dorris, Michael, A Yellow raft in Blue Water. 1987. Starting in the present and moving backward, this is the story of a young girl trying to understand her self a part black, part Native American girl growing up in the west. **Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. 1866. A sensitive intellectual is driven by poverty to believe himself exempt from moral law. Dreiser, Theodore. An American Tragedy. 1925. This is the story of the corruption and destruction of one man, Clyde Griffiths, who forfeits his life in the desperate pursuit of success. **Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. In this 19th-century novel, Maggie Tulliver breaks off her romance with the man she loves, after she discovers that it was he who ruined her family’s small mill business. *Especially suitable for young readers 2 **Especially suitable for readers who like a challenge Emecheta, Buchi. Bride Price. 1976. Aku-nna, a very young Ibo girl, and Chike, her teacher, fall in love despite tribal custom forbidding their romance. Enger, Leif. Peace Like a River. 2002. 11-year old Rube Land recalls the events of his childhood, beginning in small-town Minnesota circa 1962, and the family’s road trip across Minnesota and North Dakota to find Rube’s outlaw brother Davy and the struggle “to do the right thing.” Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. 2002. This story follows three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family as they travel from a tiny village in Greece to Prohibition-era Detroit through the city’s race riots of 1967 to the suburban peace of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. At the heart of this story lies the family secret that leads to the transformation of Callie Stephanides into Cal. Eggers Dave. What is the What. 2006. Based on the life of Valentino Achak Deng who was one of Sudan’s lost boys, the story is about his adjustment to life in the United States as well as reflections of his childhood in Africa. This book was chosen for the One Book One Philadelphia initiative in spring of 2008. Fager, Chuck. Murder among Friends. 1998. The conference was designed to bring fractious Quakers together, but now a televangelist is dead and a Quaker is the major suspect. Fast, Howard. April Morning. 1970. The story of one day in the life of a young American boy in colonial Lexington, the day on which he joined the militia and saw his father shot down by the British. Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished. 1938. Set in Mississippi during the Civil War and Reconstruction, The Unvanquished focuses on the Sartoris family, who with their code of personal responsibility and courage, stand for the best of the Old South’s traditions. **Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender is the Night. 1934. Psychiatrist Dick Diver and his former schizophrenic patient turned wife, Nicole, live, work, and play in the French Riviera in the 1920's. Nicole is still dangerously capricious and fragile, and their marriage has been built on a shaky foundation. **Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. 1857. One of the great creations of modern literature, Emma Bovary is the bored wife of a provincial doctor whose desires and illusions are inevitably shattered when reality catches up with her. Frazier, Charles. Cold Mountain. 1997. Inman, a wounded Civil War soldier, endures the elements, The Guard, and his own weakness and infirmity to return to his sweetheart, Ada, who is fighting her own battle to survive while farming the mountainous North Carolina terrain. Garcia Y Robertson, R. American Woman. 1998. Sarah Kilroy, a young Quaker married to a Sioux, witnesses the battle at Little Big Horn and the death of General Custer.

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