All Mainstream English students;
complete by the first day of school
English Department Summer Reading List 2013
The following lists of books contain titles chosen carefully to supplement classroom reading as well as
personal reading that you may not necessarily choose to read on your own. The titles encourage you to expand
your reading experience in order to be ready for challenges during the school year and later intellectual life.
Although the required number of titles for High School English classes is limited, we hope you read more
from the “Recommended Titles” section. If you have not read the required books from previous years, we
strongly recommend that you do so.
During the first week of class, your English teacher will give a series of writing assignments on the required
books on the list. During the following weeks you will be asked to present, discuss, and/or write about your
other choice. Your work on these books then becomes a significant part of your first quarter grade.
Most titles are available from Amazon.com or online as e-texts, and most are available in good English
language bookstores in major cities. We expect you to read the texts independently and without assistance
from SparkNotes or similar student aids.
Students entering Grade 6
Required:
Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows and
Jerry Spinelli, Wringer
Other Recommended Titles for Grades 6 and 7:
Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Treasures of Weatherby
T.H. White, The Sword and the Stone
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
Cynthia Voigt, Dicey’s Song
Roald Dahl, Boy
Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Students entering Grade 7
Required:
Mildred Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and
S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
Other Recommended Titles for Grades 6 and 7:
Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Treasures of Weatherby
T.H. White, The Sword and the Stone
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
Cynthia Voigt, Dicey’s Song
Roald Dahl, Boy
Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Students entering Grade 8
Required:
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men and
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Other Recommended Titles for Grade 8:
Mildred Taylor, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
Sharon Creech, Bloomability
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes
Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
à
Students entering Grade 9: Introduction to Literature
Required: William Golding, Lord of the Flies and
Paulo Coelho’s, The Alchemist
Other Recommended Titles for Grade 9:
John Steinbeck, The Pearl
Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Euripides, Medea
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Students entering Grade l0: World Literature
Required:
Moliere, The Misanthrope and
Mikhail Bulgakov, Master and Margarita
Other Recommended Titles for Grade 10:
Sophocles, Antigone
Isabel Allende, House of the Spirits
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw & Other Stories
Federico García Lorca, The House of Bernarda Alba
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Students entering Grade 11: American Literature
Required:
Anzia Yezierska, The Bread Givers and
John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle
Students entering Grade 11: AP Language and Composition
Required:
Eric Larson, The Devil in the White City and
The June, July, and August editions of Atlantic Monthly
www.theatlantic.com/magazine
Students entering Grade 11: IB English A: Literature
Required:
Willa Cather, A Lost Lady and
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby and
Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor
Students entering Grade 11: IB English A: Language
Required:
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun also Rises and
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and
Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor
Other recommended Titles for all Grade 11 classes:
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Eudora Welty, Delta Wedding
Edith Wharton, House of Mirth
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
John Steinbeck, The Wayward Bus
Students entering Grade 12: British Literature
Required:
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Students entering Grade 12: AP Literature and Composition
Required:
Nicolai Gogol, The Inspector General and
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
Students entering Grade 12: IB English A: Literature
Required:
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God and
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
à
Students entering Grade 12: IB English A: Language
Required:
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried and
Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City
Other Recommended Titles for all Grade 12 classes: (especially recommended for AP, IB, and PG students)
Dante, The Inferno
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
Voltaire, Candide
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
William Faulkner, Light in August
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
T. C. Boyle, World’s End
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
Nicolai Gogol, Dead Souls
Molière, Tartuffe