Twelfth Grade Summer Reading List for 2007-2008
Amazon.com Summaries
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin: In this honest and stunning novel, James
Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes
of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her
child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married,
but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his
name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of
emotions–affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and
sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly
realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.
True Confessions of a Heartless Girl by Martha Brooks: At 17, Noreen has led an unhappy
life, overloaded with conflict. One stormy night, she drives off in her most recent boyfriend's truck
and finds her way to a rundown cafe‚ in a small Canadian town. It is operated by a sad and
impoverished ex-schoolteacher who is raising her young son, Seth, alone. Noreen's talent for
trouble, fed by the fires of her careless bravado, soon surface as she endangers the child's dog
by feeding it a chicken bone, and moves on to set a real fire in the bungalow she's been offered
as a temporary living space. Flashbacks to Noreen's past reveal her rage at her awful parents,
whom she hasn't lived with for years, and her depression and carelessness while living with her
boyfriend Wesley. As Brooks knows how to show so well, troubled teens are not the only
characters with problems. The adults Noreen encounters in this small town have nightmares of
their own, reaching back to times long before she blew into town, and little Seth is truly at the
mercy of the emotional storm centered all around him. Although Noreen realizes she is pregnant,
and loses the baby within the very short time span of this novel, this is not a "pregnant girl
problem story." Instead, it is a clear-eyed and clarifying look at the power of community, and the
relative inadequacies of any one individual to weather the storms of life alone.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: Catch-22 took the war novel genre to a new level, shocking us with
its clever and disturbing style. Set in a World War II American bomber squadron off the coast of
Italy, Catch-22 is the story of John Yossarian, who is furious because thousands of people he has
never met are trying to kill him. Yossarian is also trying to decode the meaning of Catch-22, a
mysterious regulation that proves that insane people are really the sanest, while the supposedly
sensible people are the true madmen. And this novel is full of madmen.
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut: Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic SlaughterhouseFive introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by
aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim
simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering
experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He
writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations,
because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous
forces
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich: Is the multigenerational saga of two extended families who
live on and around a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota. Each chapter is narrated in a
memorable voice like the one of Lipsha Morrissey, a young man who is believed to have "the
touch," with which he attempts to bring his wandering grandfather back to his long-suffering
grandmother with a love medicine made from goose hearts. By placing us right inside the heads
of her remarkable characters, Erdrich allows us to feel the despair that insensitive government
policies, poverty, and alcoholism have brought them. For those who have yet to discover this
magical novel and for those who will have the pleasure of reexperiencing its heartbreak and its
hope, this new version is highly recommended.
A Time for Dancing by Davida Wills Hurwin: Few YA dramas deal with the issue of terminal
illness as intimately as this gripping first novel, which alternates between the points of view of
Juliana, at 16 a gifted dancer, and her "one-and-only" best friend, Samantha. The girls' initial
concerns about boyfriends and dance class seem trivial after Jules is diagnosed with histiocytic
lymphoma, a deadly form of cancer. Through graphic depictions of what follows: endless
sessions of chemotherapy, emergency runs to the hospital and Jules's periodic escapes into a
dream state, readers will feel the young victim's weariness as she fights against the body which
has betrayed her. They will also experience Sammie's complex responses as she watches her
friend embark on a "solo journey" toward death. The dissipation of Jules's hopes, her growing
acceptance of the inevitable, and the reactions of peers and family members are hauntingly true
to life.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: Gregor's orientation to his condition (he enjoys running up
the walls and hanging off the ceiling) and the reaction of his family and manager provoke some
priceless farcical set-pieces. It is a Gothic story - about a salesman who turns into a monstrous
bug, and the aghast reaction of his family; there are some unexpected frissons in the story we
would normally expect from the horror genre. It is a portrait of a complacent middle-class family in
decline.
One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey: A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in
a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming
hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into
the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling
operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open
rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for quickly
turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results.
Best Little Girl in the World by Steven Levenkron: Anorexia Nervosa: is it possible to
overcome such a disease? Teenage girls, the frequent victims, can undergo lifelong tribulations
as a result of this incomprehensible malady. Based on real-life patients, the mind-boggling book
reveals the unexpected crooks of the character’s traumas.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel G. Marquez: The story follows 100 years in the life
of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all
sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and
grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the
women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain
grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly
comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick.
Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is
literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's
magical realism.
One Bird by Kyoko Mori: Mori revisits the premise of her first novel, Shizuko's Daughter. Once
again an adolescent heroine must cope with a mother's desertion and the disgrace it causes in
1970s Japan-this time, however, the mother has not committed suicide but sought a separation
from her husband. Custom dictates that she forfeit her right to see her child, 15-year-old Megumi,
even though she is a devoted parent and even though Megumi's openly unfaithful father is
frequently absent. Megumi navigates through her frustration and, with the help of strong friends,
quietly supplants prevailing conventions with her own sense of what is right and just
Born Blue by Han Nolan: Despite her natural talent for singing, 6-year-old Janie knows deep in
her heart that if you really want to sing and feel the blues, you gotta be black. Aren't the tapes of
the "ladies"--Aretha, Etta, and Billie--that she listens to every night in the stinking basement of her
first foster home proof enough of that? So the scrawny, blond-haired, blue-eyed child of a heroin
addict changes her name to Leshaya, decides that her unknown father was African American,
and shuts down all feeling; only allowing the sorrow of her hard life to escape when she opens
her mouth to sing. Raised by addicts and drug dealers, Leshaya trusts no one and loves nothing
except her music. Finally, after surviving several foster homes, a harrowing heroin withdrawal,
and an unwanted pregnancy, 16-year-old Leshaya finds a band and ends up with a single on the
radio.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brian: The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet
O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really
happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in
"Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened
doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his
draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted
lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between
dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in
a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien
quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy : In her first novel, award-winning Indian
screenwriter Arundhati Roy conjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a
brilliant jazz improvisation. The God of Small Things is nominally the story of young twins Rahel
and Estha and the rest of their family, but the book feels like a million stories spinning out
indefinitely; it is the product of a genius child-mind that takes everything in and transforms it in an
alchemy of poetry. The God of Small Things is at once exotic and familiar to the Western reader,
written in an English that's completely new and invigorated by the Asian Indian influences of
culture and language.
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison: Set in the rural South, this tale centers
around the Boatwright family, a proud and closeknit clan known for their drinking, fighting, and
womanizing. Nicknamed Bone by her Uncle Earle, Ruth Anne is the bastard child of Anney
Boatwright, who has fought tirelessly to legitimize her child. When she marries Glen, a man from
a good family, it appears that her prayers have been answered. However, Anney suffers a
miscarriage and Glen begins drifting. He develops a contentious relationship with Bone and then
begins taking sexual liberties with her. Embarrassed and unwilling to report these unwanted
advances, Bone bottles them up and acts out her confusion and shame. Unaware of her
husband's abusive behavior, Anney stands by her man. Eventually, a violent encounter wrests
Bone away from her stepfather. In this first novel, Allison creates a rich sense of family and
portrays the psychology of a sexually abused child with sensitivity and insight. Recommended for
general fiction collections.
Naked by David Sedaris: Sedaris has fashioned a funny memoir of his wonderfully offbeat
life. To call his family "dysfunctional" would be enormous understatement and beside the point;
Sedaris's relatives and other companions become vital characters on the page. We see his
mother serving drinks to the string of teachers who want to discuss her son's compulsions to lick
light switches and make high-pitched noises. Sedaris's humor is wickedly irreverent but not
mean. Traveling with him is well worth it for the laughs and his generous human sensibility.
Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair: A coming-of-age story of a black girl in 1960's
Chicago. Jean ``Stevie'' Stevenson is a child of the working poor. Her father is a hospital janitor,
her mother is a bank teller, and Grandma owns a popular South Side chicken-stand. Sixth-grader
Stevie, meanwhile, is tired of her mother's rules, her refusal to countenance ``black English,'' her
attempts to make Stevie a dreaded ``L7'' (square). Stevie's dream is to be popular and cool, and
her wish is granted when ``all the way cool'' Carla invites her to a party. Soon Stevie has had her
first period, her first kiss (from sexy Yusef), and is learning that cool is not necessarily kind, for
that dog Yusef has his classmates spy while the two show themselves to each other. All this is
fresh and authentic. The trouble starts with Stevie's arrival at high school, which coincides with
the ``black is beautiful'' period (it's 1967).
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole: Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John
Kennedy Toole's tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at
home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps
hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had
on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. ("Speeding along in that bus was like
hurtling into the abyss.") But Ignatius's quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless
comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman
Mancuso--who mistakes him for a vagrant--and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy
mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out
pounding the pavement in search of a job.
The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan: Tan creates an absorbing story about the lives of a
Chinese mother and her adult American-born daughter. Pressured to reveal to the young woman
her secret past in war-torn China in the 1940s, Winnie weaves an unbelievable account of a
childhood of loneliness and abandonment and a young adulthood marred by a nightmarish
arranged marriage. Winnie survives her many ordeals because of the friendship and strength of
her female friends, the love of her second husband, and her own steadfast courage and
endurance. At the conclusion, her secrets are uncovered and she shares a trust/love relationship
with her daughter, Pearl, that was missing from both their lives. Some YAs may find the beginning
a bit slow, but this beautifully written, heartrending, sometimes violent story with strong
characterzation will captivate their interest to the very last page