WHS-English 12 AP Literature Summer Reading Assignment 2018 Congratulations! You are officially an AP Literature student and one ready for a challenging and rewarding year. Our first project together will be, of course, the summer reading assignment. First, you must read the novels required (2 total) by all seniors enrolled in AP Literature & Composition course. After completing a thorough and analytical reading of these texts, you will be required to complete the formal assignments described below. While students may share ideas as they discuss the novels, all work must be an original production by each student. Please keep in mind that these assignments are required in order to remain in good standing in the AP program and are due September 10, 2018. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to email me at any time over the summer with questions or comments. I am available via email at [email protected] Required Readings: 1. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi - can be checked out from a Baltimore County Public library or Woodlawn High School’s English Department (available in the guidance office over the summer or online through the Woodlawn High School’s library system destiny.bcps.org NOTE: do NOT check it out, as everyone can read it and listen to it if nobody checks it out!). Assessments on this book will be given the week we return to school 2. Mortimer J. Adler’s article “How to Mark a Book” – Attached 3. 3 Poems: “The Secret Sits” by Robert Frost (yes, it’s only two lines long), “The Tiger” byWilliam Blake “Some things that fly there be” (#89) by Emily Dickinson (poems can be found online) Suggested Reading (Optional but extremely helpful: Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature like a Professor ALL Assignments Due: September 10, 2018. Assignment 1: Annotate Life of Pi by Yann Martel as you read on post-it notes to be stuck inside the book. Before beginning the book, read Mortimer J. Adler’s article “How to Mark a Book.” See the attached annotation guidelines and rubric for requirements. This will be the first text studied in class; please have the reading and annotations completed prior to the first day of school, as the annotations will be one of your first grades for the course. Annotation Guidelines- Annotating is the act of taking notes within the text (marginal or Post It notes) as you read. It involves marking the text with substantive commentary regarding the author’s content and/or style. Annotations should not be limited to identifying a literary element; annotation must explain the significance of the technique or element and its contribution to the unit’s focus. Suggested areas of focus Characterization Thematic development Literary devices such as symbolism, motifs, foreshadowing Genre conventions such as those for comedy, epic, novel, short story Critical perspectives such as historical, psychoanalytical, feminist, post-colonial At the AP level: diction, detail, syntax, point of view, organization of selected passages How the ending appropriately concludes the work Methods: Students may use any of the following methods: Brackets Highlighting Underlining Overhead Sheets Post Its (As this is not written on the actual passage, it must be detailed and indicate passage to which it is referring). Journals Students may not use: Random pieces of paper Assignment 2: From your reading The Life of Pi (TOTAL LENGTH for all 6 questions: 3-4 pages typed, 12 font, double spaced). 1. What was unique about the setting of the book and how did it enhance or take away from the story? 2. What specific themes did the author emphasize throughout the novel? What do you think he is trying to get across to the reader? 3. Do the characters seem real and believable? Can you relate to their predicaments? To what extent do they remind you of yourself or someone you know? 4. How does Pi change or evolve throughout the course of the story? What events trigger such changes? 5. In what ways do the events in the books reveal evidence of the author's world view? 6. Did certain parts of the book make you uncomfortable? If so, why did you feel that way? Did this lead to a new understanding or awareness of some aspect of your life you might not have thought about before? Assignment#3: Poetry Read and annotate all 3 poems and explore connections you see between the poems and the novel The Life of Pi. For each of the three poems: • Mark up the poem, what is the subject? What is the tone? (author's attitude toward the subject). What mood does it create for the reader? How does the author create the tone (diction, syntax, form, figurative language, etc. ) • How is this poem connected to The Life of Pi? Where and why do you see these connections? Approximately: 200-400 words each NOTE: Plagiarism or watching the movie is not acceptable and will result in a zero for the grade. There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is HOW TO MARK A BOOK the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to by Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001) possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by It is ironic that Mortimer Adler, the father of the Great Books writing in it. An illustration may make the point clear. You buy a Program and promoter of Aristotle and the classics, was a high school beefsteak and transfer it from the butcher's icebox to your own. But dropout. He did attend Columbia University, but he did not receive you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you his BA because he refused to take a required swimming test. Adler consume it and get it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, did, however, eventually receive a PhD, become an editor for the too, must be absorbed in your bloodstream to do you any good. Encyclopedia Britannica, and write dozens of books on philosophy and education, including How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Confusion about what it means to own a book leads people Liberal Education (1940), and The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great to a false reverence for paper, binding, and type—a respect for the Books of the Western World (1952). physical thing—the craft of the printer rather than the genius of the author. They forget that it is possible for a man to acquire the idea, For Mortimer Adler, reading the great books does not mean to possess the beauty, which a great book contains, without staking buying expensive, leather-bound volumes to display behind glass his claim by pasting his bookplate inside the cover. Having a fine doors. Reading means consuming, as you consume a steak, to "get it library doesn't prove that its owner has a mind enriched by books; it into your bloodstream." In "How to Mark a Book," Adler proposes a proves nothing more than that he, his father, or his wife, was rich radical method for reading the classics. "Marking up a book," he enough to buy them. claims, "is not an act of mutilation but of love. Read his essay and see if you agree with his method of paying "your respects to the There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the author." standard sets and best-sellers—unread, untouched. (This deluded individual owns wood-pulp and ink, not books.) The second has a You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the great many books—a few of them read through, most of them dipped most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. equally important in the course of your reading. I want to persuade (This person would probably like to make books his own, but is you to "write between the lines." Unless you do, you are not likely to restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.) The third do the most efficient kind of reading. has a few books or many—every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.) of mutilation but of love. Is it false respect, you may ask, to preserve intact and You shouldn't mark up a book which isn't yours. Librarians unblemished a beautifully printed book, an elegantly bound edition? (or your friends) who lend you books expect you to keep them clean, Of course not. I'd no more scribble all over a first edition of "Paradise and you should. If you decide that I am right about the usefulness of Lost" than I'd give my baby a set of crayons and an original marking books, you will have to buy them. Most of the world's great Rembrandt! I wouldn't mark up a painting or a statue. Its soul, so to books are available today, in reprint editions, at less than a dollar. speak, is inseparable from its body. And the beauty of a rare edition or of a richly manufactured volume is like that of a painting or a activities of any man I know.