GLENBARD WEST HIGH SCHOOL
“Pride – Tradition – Excellence”
Mr. Peter Monaghan, Principal
670 Crescent Blvd., Glen Ellyn, IL 60137, (630) 469-8600, www.glenbardwesths.org
May 2014
Dear Glenbard West Student,
Congratulations. After nearly six months of winter, you’ve almost made it to summer break. As you start
to daydream about your summer plans, please leave room on your summer to-do list for this year’s
Glenbard West summer reading selection: Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
We selected this book for all grade levels because Mr. Beah will be speaking at Glenbard West at 7:00 p.m.
on Thursday, August 28th as part of the Glenbard Parent Series. All students and parents are invited to
attend this free event. To support the continued habit of reading over the summer months, many
members of the Glenbard West community—administrators, teachers, and parents—will also be reading
this best-selling memoir about family, community, survival, and redemption.
Instead of a traditional, paper-and-pen summer reading assignment, we invite you to submit an online
response to the book by following the link on the Glenbard West homepage. Students who complete the
assignment fully will be entered into our first-ever summer reading raffle. A copy of the summer reading
assignment, a short description of the book, and a brief biography of the author can be found on the
backside of this letter. To be eligible for the raffle, students must submit their response by Tuesday,
August 26th.
All Glenbard West students are invited to read the book, submit an online reading response, and enter our
summer reading raffle. Students in Honors, AP English classes, and American Studies have
additional required reading assignments. Details for these assignments can also be found on the
Glenbard West website. If you have any questions about summer reading, please contact Ben Peterselli,
English Department Chair, at 630.942.7520 or benjamin_peterselli@glenbard.org.
Enjoy your summer and happy reading,
The Glenbard West English Department
WHERE EXCELLENCE IS TRADITION
Ms. Linda Oberg, Assistant Principal for Operation ◦ Dr. Rebecca Sulaver, Assistant Principal for Instruction
Mr. Christopher Mitchell, Assistant Principal for Student Services ◦ Mr. Joe Kain, Assistant Principal for Athletics
Glenbard West’s Summer Reading Assignment (2014)
The Book
In A LONG WAY GONE: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah tells a
powerfully gripping story: At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and
wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d
been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy,
found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed
from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his
rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his
humanity, and, finally, to heal.
The Author
Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. He moved to the United States in 1998 and finished his
last two years of high school at the United Nations International School in New York. In 2004 he
graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in political science. He is a member of the Human Rights
Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee and has spoken before the United Nations, the
Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) at the Marine
Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and many other NGO panels on children affected by the war. His work
has appeared in VespertinePress and LIT magazine. He lives in New York City.
The Assignment
The link to our online summer reading response form can be found on the Glenbard West homepage.
Choose FOUR of the following sentence starters and write brief responses for each (no less than three and
no more than five sentences per response). When appropriate, please include support for your thinking in
the form of evidence from the book.
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I was surprised that . . .
I’d still like to know . . .
Although it seems . . .
One question I have for the author is . . .
While reading this book, I was reminded of . . .
After reading this book, I still don’t understand . . .
Two big ideas from this book are . . .
By the end of the book, the main character had changed from . . .
We recommend that students type and save their responses in Word or Google Docs before copying and
pasting their responses into the online form. Students will not be able to save the form without submitting.
If you have any questions about summer reading, please contact Ben Peterselli, English Department Chair,
at 630.942.7520 or benjamin_peterselli@glenbard.org.
Book information and author biography found at www.alongwaygone.com.