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 “O Captain, My Captain,” Walt Whitman “Ode to a Tuna in a Market,” Pablo Neruda “Under the Harvest Moon,” Carl Sandburg “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson “Button,” Jane Hirshfield

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 ”Death, be not Proud,” Holy Sonnet 10, 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," Lord 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 and Honors 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 Lottery," Shirley Jackson "The Most Dangerous Game," Richard Connell "A Scandal in Bohemia,” Arthur Conan Doyle "The Monkey's Paw,” W.W. Jacobs "Outcasts of Poker Flat," Bret Harte

Optional Short Stories: "First Confession," Frank O’Connor "Flight," John Steinbeck "The Use of Force," William Carlos Williams "The Catbird Seat," James Thurber "The Liar," Tobias Wolff "Sun and Shadow," Ray Bradbury "Haircut," Ring Lardner "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," Ernest Hemingway "Barn Burning," William Faulkner

Core Poems: “The World is Too Much With Us,” William Wordsworth “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass,” Emily Dickinson “Ozymandias,” Percy Shelley “Loveliest of Trees,” A.E. Housman “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” William Butler Yeats “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” Robert Service “’Out, Out—‘,” Robert Frost “Lord Randall,” Anonymous “Crossing the Bar,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson “The Tiger,” William Blake "The Lamb," William Blake “Spring and Fall: To a Young Child,” Gerard Manley Hopkins

Optional Poems: “The Man He Killed,” Thomas Hardy “God’s Grandeur,” Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young,” Wilfred Owen “Composed upon Westminster Bridge,” William Wordsworth “Death. Be Not Proud,” John Donne “Tears, Idle Tears,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson “Lucifer in Starlight,” George Meredith

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 honors) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (summer reading regulars and honors) The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead (summer reading regulars) Cannery Row, John Steinbeck (honors) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams (honors)

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”; Emily Dickinson’s poems (a selection) Walt Whitman: “Song of Myself” Robert Frost: “Mending Wall”; “The Road Not Taken”; “Birches”; “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”; “After Apple Picking”; “Design” 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” 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” William Carlos Williams: “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” Wallace Stevens: “The Emperor of Ice Cream” Paul Laurence Dunbar: “The Haunted Oak” 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” Edwin Arlington Robinson: “Miniver Cheevy”; “Richard Cory” Edgar Lee Masters’ poems “Richard Bone”; “The Unknown”; “Lucinda Matlock” Wallace Stevens: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”; “The Emperor of Ice Cream” e.e. cummings’s poems (a selection)

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”; “The Birthmark” Ambrose Bierce: “Parker Adderson, Philosopher”; “One of the Missing” Jack London: “In a Far Country” Stephen Crane: “The Open Boat”

Optional Stories: Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Rappaccini’s Daughter”; “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” Edgar Allan Poe: “The Gold Bug”; “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” Jack London: “The Mexican” Stephen Crane: “The Blue Hotel” Ambrose Bierce: “A Coup de Grace” Herman Melville: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”; “Benito Cereno” Sherwood Anderson: “The Book of the Grotesque”; “Mother”; “Hands”; “An Awakening”; “Queer”; “Sophistication” Ralph Ellison: “The Battle Royal” John Updike: “A&P” Ernest Hemingway: “A Clean, Well Lighted Place” 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 "Childe 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; Nobel Prize-Winning Literature; Speculative Fiction

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,” Joyce Carol Oates

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