English 3 Honors Summer Reading 2008
Sprague/Evans
Your summer work is intended to bridge your work from English 2 Honors and prepare
you for the first month of English 3 Honors—the first four weeks of the English 3 Honors
curriculum is based on the novels that you will read in the summer. Therefore, the
summer reading is not just one assignment among many in the class; it is essential to your
success in the course’s first quarter. You will be responsible for reading four novels.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried:
For this novel, you will write a one- to two-page essay, comparing O’Brien’s novel about
the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried, with Remarque’s novel about World War I,
All Quiet on the Western Front. Of course, there will be many comparisons that can be
made: we want you to focus on one idea, one theme (the flexibility of truth in war or the
psychological effects of war are examples), showing how each novel treats such a theme.
Use this reading strategy to prepare you for this essay: as you read The Things They
Carried, you will notice similarities to All Quiet on the Western Front; when you do, put
a post-it note on that page (or write in the margin if you own the book). When you finish
the book, look back at the marked pages until you find a pattern; from that pattern, create
a thesis statement that illuminates your theme. The quotes that will support this thesis
statement will come from your marked pages. If you did not read All Quiet on the
Western Front in English 2 or English 2 Honors, you will need to read this text as well.
Toni Morrison’s Beloved:
Morrison’s Beloved is a contemporary novel that chronicles ex-slaves’ attempts to rebuild
their lives while beating back their memories of slavery. The novel is structured like
memory itself: it is fragmented, without transitions, recursive, cryptic. In other words,
unlike Huck Finn, the story does not move in a linear fashion, but attempts to replicate
the traumatized memories of slaves. Therefore, you may struggle with this text. While
reading, we’d like you to take notes: write down questions that you have, and then
attempt to answer them; write down troubling passages and attempt to interpret them;
write down a summary of each section; look for patterns—repeated images, phrases and
incidents and record them. We will collect these notes on the second day of school; in
February, we will reread the novel as a class. These notes will serve as a foundation for
our study of the novel. Therefore, we do not expect you to have a total grasp of the novel
on a first reading. Creating notes will help you to work through this difficult text.
For the next two texts, you will not be turning in written work. However, you will be
responsible for having read (and retained) the essence of these books in order to perform
various tasks with these novels during the first four weeks of school: activities can
include timed writings, presentations, Socratic Seminars (open, student-led discussions),
one-page interpretations and group tasks (group tasks will require each individual to
bring something to the table; one cannot rely on one group member who has read).
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
Huck Finn and escaped slave Jim travel on the Mississippi River—trace the classic
elements of the hero’s journey in this piece. It is both a physical journey on a river, but
also an emotional journey for Huck: he learns what is wrong with the world and what is
right for him.
Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior:
Kingston’s collection of four stories explores her identity as a Chinese American woman:
what in her is Chinese? What is American? Her identity draws on both cultures, like in
“White Tigers”, for example, when she takes the Chinese folktale of Mulan and attempts
to translate the story to an American environment.
English 3 Honors intends to help you to become an independent reader, writer and
thinker: though we offer you several tools that can assist you in your work, you must
decide what helps you to access meaning within any given text. Employ one or more of
the tools below in accessing the texts of Huck Finn and The Woman Warrior:
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Underline/highlight important passages and write interpretations, inferences or
questions in the margins. If you don’t own the book, use post-it notes.
Create a dialectical journal: write down significant quotes and then respond to
them in writing.
Write a reaction, interpretation or summary of each chapter/story.
Take notes on important events in each chapter; record questions that you have in
each chapter; trace a character’s development throughout the story.
Gather with a group from the class and have a discussion.
Compare the text to something else you’ve read, seen or experienced—it’s a way
of remembering what you’ve read.
Create a graphic organizer, a diagram of the text: for Huck Finn, perhaps you
could draw a river down the center of a page, labeling each stop on the shore that
Huck and Jim make along the way.
Research some allusion in the text, like the Chinese version of Mulan that is
alluded to in The Woman Warrior, and then write about how doing this research
has impacted your reading of the text.
At the end of your reading, write down the text’s main idea as you see it: consider
the author’s purpose in writing the text in this process.
Suggestion: contain your notes/journals on the novels in a spiral notebook or three-ring
binder that will become your notebook for English 3 Honors—decide which
organizational tool you prefer. (Don’t include Beloved notes or your Things essay: you
will be turning those in). Again, written work for Huck Finn and The Woman Warrior
will not be collected; however, you may use whatever written work you do as an aide in
completing class activities. Remember: You need a point-of-view in this class! Don’t
come to class looking for the right answer; use the tools above to find your own answer
and come to class prepared to share that point-of-view. Happy reading!