DCHS - English Language Arts

Text List

Message from the Department: The DCHS English Language Arts department believes that it is the ​ ​ ​ responsibility of educators to provide students with diverse, inclusive, and thought-provoking reading and writing assignments that encourage them to engage in critical thinking as a part of a global community. Good writing requires grappling with our own ways of knowing the world, experiencing the thinking of others, and connecting ideas that expand on valuable conversation. We encourage students to engage in independent thinking as they journey through assigned texts. We embrace the NCTE’s “Student’s Right to Read” statement and encourage any student concerned with a reading assignment to discuss the purpose of that reading with their teacher. Be advised that College level courses such as ACC, AP and IB may not always allow for the substitution of texts. ​

The texts listed below are the common texts for either the grade level or the specific class. Be advised that this is a fluid list and text change year to year. Please see the individual teacher’s syllabus for exact texts for each class. All books are approved novels for classroom use by the Douglas County School District.

English I and English I Honors (9th grade)

Great Expectations House on Mango By Charles Dickens By Sandra Cisneros

Oliver Twist To Kill a Mockingbird By Charles Dickens By Harper Lee

Much Ado About Nothing The Odyssey Robert Fitzgerald By William Shakespeare By Homer

Romeo and Juliet Of Mice and Men By William Shakespeare By John Steinbeck

Prentice Hall Anthology Into Thin Air By John Krakauer Mythology By Edith Hamilton Devil’s Highway By Luis Alberto Urrea By The of Gilgamesh

English II and English II Honors (10th Grade) Adventures of Huck Finn The Crucible By Mark Twain By Arthur Miller

Black Boy Ethan Frome By Richard Wright By Edith Wharton

Black Elk I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings By Joe Jackson By Maya Angelou

Bless Me Ultima Macbeth By Rudolfo Anaya By William Shakespeare

Catcher in the Rye Oedipus Rex By JD Salinger The Secret Life of Bees Lord of the Flies By Sue Monk Kidd By William Golding Slaughterhouse-five Coyotes By Kurt Vonnegut By Ted Conover Animal Dreams A Separate Peace By Barbara Kingsolver By John Knowles In Cold Blood Red Sky at Morning By Truman Capote

Night Into the Wild By Elie Wiesel By Jon Krakauer

Their Eyes Were Watching God A Midsummer Night’s Dream By Zora Neale Hurston By William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar By William Shakespeare

Junior and Senior Level Courses

1984 by George Orwell College Prep: ​ No Exit Reading and Writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare ​ They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing by Gerlard Graff & Cathy ​ Birkenstein

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston American Literature ​ The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore ​ The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho World Literature ​ All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque ​ Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe ​ Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka ​ The Stranger by Albert Camus ​ In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez ​ The Tempest by William Shakespeare ​ Jekyll and Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson ​ Siddartha by Hermann Hesse ​

School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau Language and ​ Miracle Fair by Wisława Szymborska ​ Literature HL Year I Tribe by Sebastian Junger ​ Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (Junior IB) ​ Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rostand ​ Seeing and Writing 4th Ed, Donald McQuade ​ Assorted advertising campaigns and essays, and novels of choice Speeches of Nelson Mandela

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Language and ​ The Awakening by Kate Chopin ​ Literature HL Year 2 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood ​ Senior IB Othello The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien ​ Hamlet by William Shakespeare Junior Pre-AP ​ Paradise Lost by John Milton Beowulf translated by Burton Raffel Grendel by John Gardner The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer ​ The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ​ Brave New World by Aldous Huxley ​ Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs Creative Writing ​ The Road by Cormac McCarthy ​ The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky Young Adult ​ The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell and The Freedom Writers ​ Literature Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson ​ Freak The Mighty by Rodman Philbrick ​ Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech ​ The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier ​ I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier ​ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon ​ Ready Player One by Earnest Cline Sci-Fi/ ​ Feed, by M.T. Anderson ​ Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card ​ The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien ​ , by Frank Herbert ​ ​ ​ The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury ​ The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin ​ The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams Humanities ​ Dante’s Inferno ​ The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot AP Lang ​ I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai ​ Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard ​ The Glass Castle by Jeannette Wells ​ When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanathi ​ Educated by Tara Westover ​ Devil in the White City by Erik Larson ​ In Cold Blood by Truman Capote ​ The Awakening by Kate Chopin AP Lit ​ Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton ​ The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne ​ Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller ​

Othello by William Shakespeare ​ A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare ​ Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse ​ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad ​ Frankenstein by Mary Shelley ​ How to Read Literature Like a Professor By Thomas C. Foster ​ Summer and Christmas Choice Novels

Maus: Part 1 by Art Spiegleman Contemporary Lit: ​ Watchmen by Alan Moore ​ Graphic Novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi ​ ACC:CE The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare