Entering 11-1/English III September 2019

Summer Reading

This class requires you to delve deeply into the readings, to question the writer’s intent, purpose and bias, and to grapple with the issues the writer presents. Keep this in mind as you read one selection from the list below.

• Be prepared to be assessed within the first week or so of school and to turn in your book with annotations. • Annotate 20 -- 30 quotes/passages/pages – go beyond just personal comments and think about how the work is written/the language used/how it is organized/any bias?/any purpose(s) or motive(s) that you see. • You MUST write on post-it notes. AND LABEL the TOPIC of the post-it note. • Make sure you have noted down some thinking/analysis and NOT just underlined/highlighted a quote.

**All summaries are from goodreads.com**

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn’t stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an “excitement addict.” Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever. Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town—and the family—Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents’ betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.

Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age Story by Amani Al-Khatahtbeh

Required reading from the founder of MuslimGirl.com—a harrowing and candid memoir about coming of age as a Muslim American in the wake of 9/11….. At nine years old, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh watched from her home in New Jersey as two planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. That same year, she heard her first racial slur. At age eleven, when the United States had begun to invade Iraq and the television was flooded with anti-Muslim commentary, Amani felt overwhelmed with feelings of intense alienation from American society. At thirteen, her family took a trip to her father’s native homeland of Jordan, and Amani experienced firsthand a culture built on pure religion, not Islamic stereotypes. Inspired by her trip and after years of feeling like her voice as a Muslim woman was marginalized and neglected during a time when all the media could talk about was, ironically, Muslim women, Amani created a website called MuslimGirl. As the editor-in-chief, she put together a team of Muslim women and started a life dedicated to activism. This is the extraordinary account of Amani’s journey through adolescence as a Muslim girl, from the Islamophobia she’s faced on a daily basis, to the website she launched that became a cultural phenomenon …. Amani’s honest, urgent message is fresh, timely, and a deeply necessary counterpoint to the current rhetoric about the Middle East.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink

In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing. In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of- life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, Five Days at Memorial radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis.

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez

Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup…. With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer

Soccer is much more than a game, or even a way of life. It is a perfect window into the cross- currents of today's world, with all its joys and its sorrows. In this remarkably insightful, wide- ranging work of reportage, Franklin Foer takes us on a surprising tour through the world of soccer, shining a spotlight on the clash of civilizations, the international economy, and just about everything in between. How Soccer Explains the World is an utterly original book that makes sense of our troubled times.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more-- including Krakauer's--in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for Into Thin Air, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster.

Is Paris Burning (How Paris Miraculously Escaped Adolf Hitler’s Sentence of Death in August 1944) by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre

Summer of 1944. Every bridge, historical landmark, and civic building in Nazi-occupied Paris was wired with explosives. Hitler’s plan was to reduce the city to rubble if Allied troops got too close. He didn’t know that the Allies were planning to bypass Paris, and of course the resistance fighters didn’t know Paris was rigged to blow up. Their hope was to bring things to a head once the Allied forces were near enough to help, unaware of the consequences. Throw into the mix the unlikely hero of the story: General Dietrich von Choltitz, the newly-appointed military governor of Paris. He loved Paris. Plus he had met Hitler and realized the Führer was mad. However, his duty was to his country, and he knew his family was under watch in Germany. Could he disobey a direct order, sacrifice his duty, and endanger his family? On the other hand, could he actually be responsible for destroying the most beautiful city in the world at the behest of a madman?? You'll have to read the book to see how he helped keep the different incendiary elements from blowing up long enough to keep Paris from blowing up.

Columbine by Dave Cullen

"The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . . " So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is a false script, seized upon by a generation of new killers. In the wake of Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech, the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this plague grows more urgent every year.

What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book- widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.

Rhythm Ride: A Road Trip Through the Motown Sound by Andrea Davis Pinkney

From award-winning author Andrea Davis Pinkney comes the story of the music that defined a generation and a movement that changed the world.

Berry Gordy began Motown in 1959 with an $800 loan from his family. He converted the garage of a residential house into a studio and recruited teenagers from the neighborhood-like Smokey Robinson, Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Diana Ross-to sing for his new label. Meanwhile, the country was on the brink of a cultural revolution, and one of the most powerful agents of change in the following decade would be this group of young black performers from urban Detroit. From Berry Gordy and his remarkable vision to the Civil Rights movement, from the behind-the-scenes musicians, choreographers, and song writers to the most famous recording artists of the century, Andrea Davis Pinkney takes readers on a Rhythm Ride through the story of Motown.

Your Annotations Should:

ü go beyond simply random comments/observations ü demonstrate careful and critical reading skills ü focus on specific aspects of the writing/point-of-view/subject presented – for example: o Language choices – words, phrases, descriptions that seem significant, interesting, odd – and why o Bias on the writer’s part – does she or he seem to demonstrate a particular opinion toward the subject o Motive/Purpose – can you tell why the writer chose this subject and presented it in the way that she or he does – and is she or he expecting anything of the reader o Tone – what is the particular tone/feeling to a passage – and how does the writer hope that the reader will be affected by the tone o Character Development – look at how the people are portrayed in the book – do they evolve? What are their values? Do you admire them? Dislike them? See yourself in them? (This is all part of the writer’s game with us as readers.)