2004
The goal of the Marist summer reading program is to encourage students to ready
by having them choose from diverse, well-written, and “readable” books. Students
must read four books: the two required books (located above the asterisks) and two
others from their grade-level list. Summer reading evaluation will begin when
students return to school in August.
Seventh Grade Required Reading
Crichton, Michael. Jurassic Park. Dr. Hammond has “spared no expense” to create a
unique theme park, but does disaster await the first tour by scientists and Dr.
Hammond’s grandchildren? Watch the movie Jurassic Park and compare.
Rawls, Wilson. Summer of the Monkeys. A fourteen-year-old boy tries to capture
escaped monkeys only to be outsmarted. By the author of Where the Red Fern Grows.
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Almond, David. Skellig. A creature not quite human is linked to Michael’s sister’s
recovery from a serious illness.
Bloor, Edward. Tangerine. Paul befriends migrant workers in Tangerine, Florida,
against his belligerent older brother’s wishes.
Cooper, Susan. The Dark is Rising. Will Stanton is on a quest to find the six magical
Signs and save the world from the evil forces of the Dark.
Greene, Bette. Summer of My German Soldier. A friendship between a lonely Jewish
girl and a German P.O.W. during WW2.
Grisham, John. The Client. Eleven-year-old Mark witnesses a suicide and is the only
one with a crucial piece of evidence.
Gunther, John. Death Be Not Proud. A moving story of a boy’s courageous battle to
overcome cancer.
Hunt, Irene. Across Five Aprils. Young Jethro Creighton comes of age during the Civil
War as one brother fights for the North, the others for the South.
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. A young boy discovers that his utopian society is not so
perfect after all and dares to change it.
Paulsen, Gary. Canyons. Communicating with an Apache boy’s spirit, Brennan Colt
learns he must return a skill to its proper burial place.
Taylor, Mildred D. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. The Logans, an African-American
family living in the South, endure one turbulent year due to their courage and pride.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins and a band of dwarves go through
dangerous adventures, facing evil orcs, giant spiders, and the dreaded Dragon Smaug.
2004
The goal of the Marist summer reading program is to encourage students to ready
by having them choose from diverse, well written, and “readable” books. Students
must read four books: the two required books (located above the asterisks) and two
others from their grade-level list. Summer reading evaluation will begin when
students return to school in August.
Eighth Grade Required Reading
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. Hound of the Baskervilles. In this English classic, Sherlock
Holmes solves a murder mystery on the English moors.
Fleischman, Paul. Whirligig. As penalty for a DUI charge, Brent Bishop must build
four whirligigs throughout the United States. In the process, he begins to forgive
himself.
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Adams, Richard. Watership Down. Courageous rabbits search for a safe place to live in
peace.
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The author describes her childhood
and adolescence in rural Arkansas, St. Louis, and San Francisco.
Christie, Agatha. Murder on the Orient Express. A famous detective investigates
murder on a train.
Cooper, Susan. King of Shadows. A contemporary boy is transported to 1599 where he
performs with the Bard himself on the stage of the Globe Theater of Shakespeare’s day.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Dickens’ classic rags-to-riches tale of a London
orphan’s adventures with a gang of pickpockets.
Dumas, Alexandre. The Count of Monte Cristo. A sailor plots revenge against men
responsible for his years in prison.
DuMaurier, Daphne. Rebecca. A young bride’s story of terror and mystery as she
discovers the truth about Rebecca, her husband’s former wife.
Le Guin, Ursula. A Wizard of Earthsea. A boy must subdue the evil he unleashed when
he was an apprentice to the Wizard.
O’Dell, Scott. Sing Down the Moon. The forced migration of Navahos from their
original homeland in Arizona to Fort Sumner, NM, is described from the Native
American point of view.
Parks, Gordon. The Learning Tree. In the 1920s, Newt learns that the actions of an
individual black person affect the community’s reaction to all black people.
Paterson, Katherine. Jacob Have I Loved. Jealous of her twin sister and feeling
deprived of schooling, friends, and love, Louise finally begins to find her identity.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The latest volume in the
Harry Potter series.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. Continues the story from The Hobbit about the
world of Middle Earth. Choose one: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, or
The Return of the King.
2004
The goal of the Marist summer reading program is to encourage students to ready
by having them choose from diverse, well written, and “readable” books. Students
must read four books: the two required books (located above the asterisks) and two
others from their grade-level list. Summer reading evaluation will begin when
students return to school in August.
Ninth-Grade Required Reading
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. A high school freshman struggles to find her voice,
identity, and peace of mind after a disturbing incident at a summer party.
Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. Two boys in boarding school learn that competition
is not always the fun and games they perceive it to be.
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Blais, Madeleine. In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle. This nonfiction account celebrates
the players, coaches, families, and season of the 1992-93 Amherst Hurricanes, a varsity
girl’s basketball team that captured the imagination of a small Massachusetts town.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Guy Montag is a fireman in a futuristic time whose
only job is to burn books. He carefully carries out this mission until a young girl and a
professor help him to see the importance of what he’s been trained to destroy.
Burns, Olive Ann. Cold Sassy Tree. Set in Cold Sassy, Georgia, in 1903, this funny
novel describes one momentous year in Will Tweedy’s adolescent life.
Forsyth, Frederick. The Day of the Jackal. The world’s most notorious assassin takes
on his greatest challenge: the assassination of the president of France.
Guest, Judith. Ordinary People. A once-strong family splits in pieces over the tragic
death of an older brother. Watching the movie is recommended.
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. AT 15, Christopher
Boone is brilliant when it comes to math and science, but cannot comprehend human
emotions. The mysterious murder of a neighbor’s dog inspires him to write a mystery
story leading to unexpected, complex revelations about his family.
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Tensions explode in this play about an
African-American family who comes into a large sum of money. Watching the movie
is recommended.
Hersey, John. Hiroshima. The true story of six people who survived the aftermath of
the dropping of the first atomic bomb.
Hoffman, Alice. At Risk. A family must deal with the complications accompanying the
discovery that their ten-year-old daughter has AIDS.
Kingsolver, Barbara. The Bean Trees. A young woman makes a daring decision to
start a new life and family wherever destiny dictates. She learns that a family need not
be “blood” related.
Preston, Richard. The Hot Zone. The terrifying account of an outbreak of the Ebola
virus from the African rainforest.
Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. This classic war novel
follows a group of young German soldiers through the horrors and ultimately senseless
tragedy of World War I.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Four mothers, four daughters, four families recount their
life stories.
2004
The goal of the Marist summer reading program is to encourage students to ready
by having them choose from diverse, well-written, and “readable” books. Students
must read four books: the two required books (located above the asterisks) and two
others from their grade-level list. Summer reading evaluation will begin when
students return to school in August.
Tenth Grade Required Reading
Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air. An account of the deadliest season of climbing Mt.
Everest: May, 1996.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The American classic tale of the
misadventures of friends Huck and Jim as they travel down the Mississippi.
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Bissinger, H.G. Friday Night Lights. The nonfiction account of Odessa, Texas, a small
town that lives and breathes high school football.
Bryson, Bill. A Walk in the Woods. An autobiographical account of Bryson’s attempt to
hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail.
Conroy, Pat. The Lords of Discipline. Narrator Will McLean discovers a secret society
at his South Carolina military school.
Dickey, James. Deliverance. Four businessmen find terror and murder on a weekend
camping trip down the river.
Flagg, Fannie. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. A modern southern
woman’s life is changed by stories from the past.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. This novel describes the lives of two people
in love in Italy during World War I.
Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit. A biography of the great horse whose career
culminated in a 1938 match race with the Triple Crown winner War Admiral.
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. Set in 1964 in South Carolina, the story of
Lily Owens’ search for her mother’s past as she learns from an eccentric trio of black
beekeeping sisters.
Kinsella, W.P. Shoeless Joe. A warmhearted and funny novel about baseball and the
belief in dreams.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. This largely autobiographical novel tells the story of a
gifted young woman’s mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a
junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s.
Ray, Janisse. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. A memoir of the author’s childhood and
how she came to cherish the environment in the most unlikely of places: a rural
Georgia junkyard.
Tan, Amy. The Kitchen God’s Wife. Secrets unfold and take mother and daughter back
to China during the 1920s and through World War II.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy. The autobiographical account of the author’s struggle to
achieve literary creativity in a corrosive environment.
2004
The goal of the Marist summer reading program is to encourage students to ready
by having them choose from diverse, well-written, and “readable” books. Students
must read four books: the two required books (located above the asterisks) and two
others from their grade-level list. Summer reading evaluation will begin when
students return to school in August.
Eleventh Grade Required Reading
Humes, Edward. School of Dreams. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist spends 2001 at a
top-ranked public high school in California. Why does this school work? High
achieving, high-stressed students live on coffee, little sleep, and their parents’ dreams.
Martel, Yann. The Life of Pi. An imaginative, delightful, and astounding story of a 16year-old Indian boy named Pi and his adventure on a lifeboat accompanied by a 450pound Royal Bengal Tiger.
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Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. This love story takes place on the haunting moors
of central England, where two families’ lives interlock through revenge and unrequited
love.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and
What Alice Found There. These clever, bizarre and delightful adventures of Alice have
captivated the imagination of generations. Alice and the characters she meets also
provide a satirical insight into Victorian England.
Crichton, Michael. Timeline. While working at an archeology site, scientists find they
must use particle physics to go back in time to medieval Europe.
Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. This novel of the French Revolution tells the
story of the courageous Sydney Carton, a man ready to sacrifice his life for a woman
who will never be his.
Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair. This unique literary mystery/fantasy comedy involves
a criminal who is stealing characters from classic books and holding them for ransom.
Detective Thursday Next must engage in time travel to foil the evil Acheron Hades in
an “alternate” 20th-century Britain.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Futuristic dystopian classic about a struggle to
survive in an unfeeling society.
King, Laurie. The Moor. Sherlock Holmes and his female assistant revisit the locale of
Hound of the Baskervilles.
Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters. A brilliant series of letters from Screwtape, a
professional devil, to his nephew, Wormwood, containing advice on how to corrupt and
tempt mankind.
McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes. Memoir of an Irish childhood—poignant, humorous
tale of a boy who prevails over a background of poverty and alcoholism.
Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. A comedy about mixed identities,
jealousy, and true love.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave. The story of Merlin, King Arthur’s magician, sheds
new light on the turbulence of fifth-century Britain.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. In four fantastic voyages, Lemuel Gulliver
encounters a variety of humans, animals, and ideas about society. From the minute
Lilliputians to the equine Houyhnhnms, his journey tests his ingenuity in a classic satire
that is both humorous and thought-provoking.
2004
The goal of the Marist summer reading program is to encourage students to ready
by having them choose from diverse, well-written, and “readable” books. Students
must read four books: the two required books (located above the asterisks) and two
others from their grade-level list. Summer reading evaluation will begin when
students return to school in August.
Twelfth Grade Required Reading
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Existential story of an ordinary man who commits a
senseless murder on an Algerian beach.
Humes, Edward. School of Dreams. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist spends 2001 at a
top-ranked public high school in California. Why does this school work? High
achieving, high-stressed students live on coffee, little sleep, and their parents’ dreams.
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Courtenay, Bryce. The Power of One. A young South African engages in a heroic
struggle as he pursues his one and only dream: a world boxing championship.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed. A realistic, discomforting, yet pointedly
amusing and personal odyssey which details the blue collar futility of achieving the
American Dream solely by beans of willing, diligent labor.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender is the Night. A deeply poignant novel of lost love and the
troubling transformative power of the passing of time.
Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying. A disillusioned teacher helps a prisoner gain
dignity before his execution.
Heller, Joseph. Catch 22. In this satire, a captain confronts the hypocrisy of war and
bureaucracy as he attempts to survive.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. The book explores what happened to an Emory graduate
whose decomposed body was found in the Alaskan wilderness.
Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It. Fly fishing and theology blend in this
story of a Montana family.
Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice. A challenging story concerning psychological
imbalance in an artist and the disintegrating culture in which he lives.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. These stories follow a platoon of American
soldiers through their experiences in the Vietnam War.
O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Sometimes
grotesque, often comic, this Southern writer is always concerned with the issue of
salvation.
Orwell, George. 1984. Orwell’s terrifying vision of a totalitarian future.
Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Politically charged fairy tales about
the Ayatollah’s Iran.
Salzman, Mark. Lying Awake. A Carmelite nun suffering from a brain tumor has
mystical visions.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade. The master of satire
and black humor describes the adventures of Billy Pilgrim, a veteran of World War II.
2004
The goal of the Marist summer reading program is to encourage students to ready
by having them choose from diverse, well-written, and “readable” books. Students
must read four books: the two required books (located above the asterisks) and two
others from their grade-level list. Summer reading evaluation will begin when
students return to school in August.
Advanced Placement Required Reading
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Describes the prejudice of a spirited young woman
and the pride of an aristocratic hero in early 19th century England.
Humes, Edward. School of Dreams. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist spends 2001 at a
top-ranked public high school in California. Why does this school work? High
achieving, high-stressed students live on coffee, little sleep, and their parents’ dreams.
************************************************************************
Desai, Anita. Clear Light of Day. Set in India’s Old Delhi, a warm and compassionate
novel about family competition and love. Two sisters and a brother heal old wounds
caused by their different life choices.
Frazier, Charles. Cold Mountain. National Book Award winner. A Civil War soldier’s
odyssey as he leaves the war to rejoin Ada, the woman he left behind.
Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying. A disillusioned teacher helps a prisoner gain
dignity before his execution.
Heller, Joseph. Catch 22. In this satire, a captain confronts the hypocrisy of war and
bureaucracy as he attempts to survive.
Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. This novel explores the lives of four
daughters of Baptists missionaries in the Congo in the 1950s.
McEwan, Ian. Atonement. Set in the English countryside of 1935, the novel follows
precocious Briony Tallis as she witnesses a crime, which will forever change the lives
of all around her.
Naylor, Gloria. Mama Day. Set on a Georgia sea island, the story of a woman who can
conjure lighting and interpret dreams and her more modern great-niece.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. These stories follow a platoon of American
soldiers through their experiences in the Vietnam War.
Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Politically charged fairy tales about
the Ayatollah’s Iran.
Salzman, Mark. The Soloist. A former cello prodigy confronts the loss of his musical
gift.
Saramago, Jose. Blindness. In an unnamed city, a man sitting in his car is struck blind.
His blindness soon infects the whole town.
Warren, Robert Penn. All the King’s Men. A young journalist becomes attached to a
local politician and experiences corruption leading to a moral dilemma.
Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. In turn-of-the-century New York, a woman cast
as a social ornament struggles to find meaning in a superficial world.
Wright, Richard. Native Son. This 1940s novel challenges the reader to understand the
anger and despair of a young African-American fugitive.