Independent Reading

1. Independent Reading 1st Six Weeks English I PreAP

2. Independent Reading • Unit 1 in SpringBoard is a study of voice and coming of age. • For independent reading, you will choose from a list of books with first-person narration that has a strong, identifiable voice that deals with coming-of-age incidents. • As a group, you must choose a book that you will all read together in order to complete a major project that will be due at the beginning of the second six weeks. • You must pick something different from what you read for summer reading 

3. 1. Monster by Walter Dean Myers • A sixteen year old boy named Steve Harmon finds himself on trial for murder after he is accused as acting as a lookout for the young men who actually commit a robbery at a Harlem drugstore and kill the store owner. The story is presented predominantly from his own viewpoint in the form of a screenplay and journal entries he writes, as he faces the trial and possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.

4. 2. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd • In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their South Carolina peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest.

5. 3. A Separate Peace by John Knowles • Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.

6. 4. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson • From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda is a friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her.

7. 5. Stargirlby Jerry Spinelli • Stargirl. From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, the hallways hum with the murmur of “Stargirl, Stargirl.” She captures Leo Borlock’s heart with just one smile. She sparks a school-spirit revolution with just one cheer. The students of Mica High are enchanted. At first. Then they turn on her. Stargirl is suddenly shunned for everything that makes her different, and Leo, panicked and desperate with love, urges her to become the very thing that can destroy her: normal.

8. 6. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons • The title character is an 11-year-old orphan who refers to herself as "old Ellen," an appellation that is disturbingly apt. Ellen is an old woman in a child's body; her frail, unhappy mother dies, her abusive father alternately neglects her and makes advances on her, and she is shuttled from one uncaring relative's home to another before she finally takes matters into her own hands and finds herself a place to belong.

9. 7. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros • The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero. Told in a series of vignettes – sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous – it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.

10. 8. Slam by Walter Dean Myers • Seventeen-year-old Greg "Slam" Harris can do it all on the basketball court. He's seen ballplayers come and go, and he knows he could be one of the lucky ones. Maybe he'll make it to the top. Or maybe he'll stumble along the way. Slam's grades aren't that hot. And when his teachers jam his troubles in his face, he blows up. Slam never doubted himself on the court until he found himself going one-on-one with his own future, and he didn't have the ball.

11. Rank the Books • On a sticky note, write down the numbers that correspond to your top three novel choices • As a group, compare your rankings and come to a consensus on a title • Once you’ve come to a consensus, write your table number and the title of the book your group chose to read and post it underneath your period # on the board

12. GET YOUR BOOK and START READING ASAP 