SUMMER READING: STORIES OF PEOPLE &

“How do we become who we are in the world? We ask the world to teach us.” -Pam Houston, Deep Creek

In class this fall, we will study environmental literature and history. Before then, your task is to begin exploring how contemporary writers address this topic in fiction and narrative nonfiction set in specific places around the US. As you read, think about how the storyteller you have chosen describes and connects to his/her local environment. Use the prompts below to keep track of your ideas. Be prepared to submit your work during the first week of school and to share your insights during our humanities seminar on summer reading in September (date to be announced after you return to school).

Step 1. Choose your book! Books are organized visually on the map, and described in more detail below.

Step 2. Begin by printing or hand-drawing the graphic organizer and making a digital copy of this doc. Rename it with your last name (e.g. Snape_Summer Reading 11/12). Share your document with me before school begins.

Step 3. Dive into your book. Use this graphic organizer to take handwritten notes on important elements of your book, including characters, setting, conflicts and resolutions, and major events.

Step 4. This year’s reading list includes a selection of books exploring the big thematic concept of “people and nature.” Your job is to identify one thematic statement revealed in the book. Remember, a thematic concept is broad (for example, “love”) whereas a thematic statement is what the work has to say about that concept (“love is blind,” “love conquers all,” or “love inevitably ends in heartbreak”). In a typed response of 250-300 words, identify one such statement on people and nature, and explain how and in what ways the author creates this message. Record your thoughts, insights, and impressions; experimentation is welcome in this informal response.

Step 5. Find a nonfiction article germane to the book you chose to read this summer, one that helps you better understand the theme of people and nature as it relates to your book. For example, you might choose a book review, a scientific article about a species described in the book, an essay about the landscape in which the book is set, or another piece of writing by the same author. After reviewing the article, complete this short w orksheet.

T itle:

A uthor(s):

S ource:

P ublication Date:

This article connects with the book I read for summer reading and deepens my understanding of its people and nature theme because:

Book Synopses

1. S hopping for Porcupine: A in Arctic Alaska by Seth Kantner

An autobiographical account of his own life in a rapidly changing land. Beginning with his parents’ migration to the Alaskan wilderness in the 1950s and extending to his own attempts to balance hunting with writing, Kantner recalls cold nights wrapped in caribou hides, fur-clad visitors arriving on dog sleds, swimming amidst ice floes for wounded waterfowl, and his longstanding respect for the old Iñupiaq ways. These details combine to reveal a landscape few will see at a pivotal moment in its history. (Nonfiction, memoir)

2. T he is a Compass: A 4000-mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds by Caroline van Hemert

During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again. In March of 2012 she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. A unique blend of , adventure, and personal narrative, this book is a journey through some of the wildest places left in North America. (Nonfiction)

3. H oot by Carl Hiaasen (2004)

Unfortunately, Roy's first acquaintance in Florida is Dana Matherson, a well-known bully. Then again, if Dana hadn't been sinking his thumbs into Roy's temples and mashing his face against the school-bus window, Roy might never have spotted the running boy. And the running boy is intriguing: he was running away from the school bus, carried no books, and -- here's the odd part -- wore no shoes. Sensing a mystery, Roy sets himself on the boy's trail. The chase introduces him to potty-trained , a fake-fart champion, some burrowing owls, a renegade eco-avenger, and several extremely poisonous snakes with unnaturally sparkling tails. (Young Adult fiction)

4. P ower by Linda Hogan (1999)

Sixteen-year-old Omishto, a member of the Taiga Tribe, witnesses her Aunt Ama kill a panther--an considered to be a sacred ancestor of the Taiga people. Omishto is suddenly torn between her loyalties to her westernized mother who wants her to reject the

ways of the tribe, and to Ama and her traditional people, for whom the killing of the panther takes on grave importance. (Fiction)

5. T he Home Place by J. Drew Latham

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina--a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else"--has been home to generations of Lanhams. In Th e Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including ornithologist J. Drew Lanham himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare , the oddity." The Home Place explores nature, belonging, and the contradictions of black identity in the rural South--and in America today. (Nonfiction)

6. E cology of a Cracker Childhood b y Janisse Ray (2015)

Janisse Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound travelers by hulks of old cars. Ray tells the story of her home and her people, while also cataloging the source of her childhood hope: the Edenic longleaf pine forests, where orchids grow amid wiregrass at the feet of widely spaced, lofty trees. Today, the forests exist in fragments, cherished and threatened, and the South of her youth is gradually being overtaken by golf courses and suburban development. (Nonfiction, memoir)

7. The Sea Around Us by (1951)

More famous for S ilent Spring, h er book exposing the hazards of pesticides, Rachel Carson also authored this quiet, poetic homage to marine ecosystems. " There is," as she writes, "no drop of water in the , not even in the deepest part of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide." This early work of ecology helps readers understand how the many varied parts of the sea function together as an interrelated system. (Nonfiction, science writing)

8. W andering Home by Bill McKibben (2014)

In W andering Home, Bill McKibben invites readers to join him on a hike from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks. Here he reveals that the motivation for his environmental activism is not high-minded or abstract, but as tangible as the lakes and forests he explored in his twenties, the same woods where he with his family today. Over the course of his journey McKibben meets with old friends and kindred spirits, including activists, writers, organic farmers, a vintner, a beekeeper, and environmental studies students, all in touch with nature and committed to its preservation. (Nonfiction)

9. D eep Creek by Pam Houston (2019)

On her 120-acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, beloved writer Pam Houston learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire, threatening her century-old barn and all its inhabitants. Alongside her devoted Irish wolfhounds and a spirited troupe of horses, donkeys, and Icelandic sheep, the ranch becomes Houston’s sanctuary, a place where she discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her. (Nonfiction)

10. T he Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich (1986)

Ehrlich originally moved west to make a film, but later returned to work with neighbors at cattle- and sheep-ranching, learning how to take pleasure in open spaces. This book describes her experience, the people she met, the changing of the seasons, and the beautiful landscapes of Wyoming. ( Nonfiction)

11. I ndian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Wilderness by Pete Fromm (2003)

Pete Fromm’s account of seven winter months spent alone in a tent in Idaho’s Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness guarding salmon eggs and coming face to face with the blunt of life as a contemporary mountain man. Fromm blunders into this job as a college student, Fromm must learn how to balance the brutal cold, isolation, and risks against the satisfaction of living a unique existence in the wild. (Nonfiction)

12. T he Book of Yaak by Rick Bass (1997)

The Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana is one of the last great wild places in the , a land of black bears and grizzlies, wolves and coyotes, bald and golden eagles, and even a handful of humans. But its magic may not be enough to save it from the forces threatening it. In Th e Book of Yaak Rick Bass captures the soul of the valley itself, and he shows how, if places like the Yaak are lost, so too will be the human riches of mystery and imagination. (Nonfiction)

13. B raiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2014)

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and are our oldest teachers. In B raiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings

these two lenses of knowledge together to show us how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. (Nonfiction, science writing)

14. C rossing Open Ground by Barry Lopez (1989)

A classic collection of essays in which Oregon-based writer Barry Lopez explores the natural world. He traverses the Arctic tundra and the deserts of the American Southwest, recalls the devastating beaching of forty-one sperm whales along the Oregon coast, and revels in the remarkable migrations of wild geese. Lopez shows readers the world's special places, its remarkable people, and stunning natural events, thoughtfully exploring humankind's place in this vast natural scheme. (Nonfiction)

15. Th e Control of Nature b y John McPhee (1989)

A look at three stories of humans trying to strongarm nature: in southern Louisiana the Army Corps of Engineers tries to keep the Mississippi River from changing course; in Iceland residents attempt to stop a lava flow; and outside of Los Angeles locals aim to stop debris flows from the San Gabriel Mountains. (Nonfiction)

16. T he Overstory by Richard Powers (2019)

The Overstory unfolds as interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world of trees — vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive — almost invisible to us humans. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe. For avid readers, this N ew York Times b estseller and Pulitzer Prize winner is very long. (Fiction)