Nonfiction Outside Reading Project
This assignment has several parts:
• Students will select a nonfiction book to read from a list provided by the
teacher.
– The book selection must be approved by his or her parent
– as well as the teacher.
• The students will read the book within a two week period.
• While reading the book, the student will complete a form designed to assist
them in their analysis of the book.
– This form is an expanded version of the form we have been using in class.
– It is important to work on the form the entire time they are reading the
book rather than waiting until the end.
• Once the student has read the book and completed the analysis, they will
respond to the book with a research paper. They will have approximately a
week and a half to complete the paper.
» It will be at least three pages long,
» using at least three outside sources for information,
» prepared in MLA format,
» and in which the student will take a position on an issue
raised in the book that he or she read.
Memoirs, Biographies, Autobiographies, and other narrative
non-fiction
•Thinking in Pictures by Temple
Grandin
•A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
•The Life and Times of the
Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill
Bryson
•I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on
Returning to America After 20 Years
Away by Bill Bryson
•In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
•Neither Here nor There: Travels in
Europe by Bill Bryson
•The Lost Continent: Travels in SmallTown America by Bill Bryson
•The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by
William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
•The Color of Water by James McBride
•The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
•Half-Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls
•Alive by Piers Paul Read
•Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green
by Johnny Rico
•We Band of Angels by Elizabeth M.
Norman
•Seal Team Six by Howard E. Wasdin
and Stephen Templin
•American Sniper: The Autobiography
of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S.
Military History by Chris Kyle
Memoirs, Biographies, Autobiographies, and other narrative
non-fiction
•The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
•Catch Me If You Can by Frank W.
Abagnale with Stan Redding
•Founding Mothers: The Women Who
Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts
•Tweak: Growing Up on
Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff
•Life Freaks Me Out: And Then I Deal
with It by K.L. Hong
•The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon
•tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
•127 Hours: Between a Rock and a
Hard Place Aron Ralston
•Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo
Beals
•Med Head: My Knock-down, Drag-out,
Drugged-up Battle with My Brain by
James Patterson
•Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting
by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
•Three Cups of Tea: One Man's
Mission to Promote Peace . . . One
School at a Time by Greg Mortenson
•Little Princes: One Man's Promise to
Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal
by Conor Grennan
•Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea
by Steven Callahan
•Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron
Hall & Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent