2020 RISING 11TH GRADE AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE SUMMER READING Students should read two books. Assessments will occur within the first two weeks of class and may include discussions, writing assignments, presentations, and/or tests.
• These books are available in affordable paperbacks, online, or in local libraries. • Be sure the title and author match the assigned book and you are reading an unabridged edition. • If published with additional texts or stories, only read the assigned title. • These titles are taken from recommended reading lists for AP English exams and college- bound students. It is your responsibility to view all of these reading materials within a Christian perspective. While holding firm to your own beliefs, consider how any controversial elements reflect the flawed, sinful circumstances of separation from God and faith.
#1 Required Book for all AP English Language Students:
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
"Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans--in fact, few Kansans--had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there." If all Truman Capote did was invent a new genre-— journalism written with the language and structure of literature-—this "nonfiction novel" about the brutal slaying of the Clutter family by two would-be robbers would be remembered as a trail-blazing experiment that has influenced countless writers. But Capote achieved more than that. He wrote a true masterpiece of creative nonfiction.
#2 Required Book for all AP English Language Students:
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
(Amazon.com description) On a May afternoon in 1943, an American military plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary sagas of the Second World War. *You may select the Young Adult version or the Original Be aware that the original is a bit more graphic and the YA is a bit shorter.
Optional Selection for #2 Required Book
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Intended at first as a simple story of a boy's adventures in the Mississippi Valley—a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—the book grew and matured under Twain's hand into a work of immeasurable richness and complexity. More than a century after its publication, the critical debate over the symbolic significance of Huck and Jim's voyage is still fresh, and it remains a major work that can be enjoyed at many levels: as an incomparable adventure story and as a classic of American humor.