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Summer Reading Going into 10 thGrade
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross' platoon of soldiers are a group of very young men, most of whom are unprepared for the Vietnam War. They carry heavy rations and supplies, and pictures of their girlfriends, and fear and sadness and confusion. They often pretend that they do not feel as much as they do, because they don't want to look silly to the other soldiers. Jimmy Cross loves a girl named Martha who he knows will never love him back, and he continues to love her long after the war ends. The men do sometimes reveal their emotions, in heartfelt or comical ways.
On the hot Texas army base she calls home, Katie spends the lazy days of her summer waiting: waiting to grow up; waiting for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her; waiting for the beatings to stop. Since their mother died, Katie and her older sister, Diane, have struggled to understand their increasingly distant, often violent father. While Diane escapes into the arms of her boyfriend, Katie hides in her room or escapes to her best friend's house--until Katie's admiration for her strong-willed sister leads her on an adventure that transforms her life.
After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving.
Lily Owens, 14, is an emotionally abused white girl living with her cold, uncaring father on a peach farm in rural South Carolina. The memory of her mother, who was accidentally killed in Lily's presence when she was four, haunts her constantly. Lily's companion during her childhood has been Rosaleen, the black woman hired to care for her. After the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Rosaleen goes to town to register to vote and insults one of the town's most racist residents. After she is beaten up and hospitalized. While racial tensions simmer around them, the women help Lily accept her loss and learn the power of forgiveness.
This entertaining novel is filled with scientists, G-men, and ordinary folks chasing each other around in search of the world’s most important and dangerous new substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature.
