English Department Summer Reading List 2015-16
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 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
Lois Lowry, The Giver
Other Recommended Titles for Grades 6 and 7:
Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Treasures of Weatherby
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
Cynthia Voigt, Dicey’s Song
Roald Dahl, Boy
T.H. White, The Sword and the Stone
Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals
Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me
Jerry Spinelli, Wringer
Students entering Grade 7
Required:
Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons and
S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
Other Recommended Titles for Grades 6 and 7:
Sharon Creech, Bloomability
C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Cynthia Voigt, Dicey’s Song
Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
T.H. White, The Sword and the Stone
Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals
Roald Dahl, Boy
Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game
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
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
2015-16 Mainstream English Summer Reading List
Students entering Grade 9: Introduction to Literature
Required:
William Golding, Lord of the Flies and
Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
Other Recommended Titles for Grade 9:
John Steinbeck, The Pearl
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Euripides, Medea
H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Students entering Grade l0: World Literature
Required:
H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau and
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Students entering Grade l0: Honors World Literature
Required:
Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics and
Italo Calvino, Invisible cities
Other Recommended Titles for Grade 10:
Anonymous, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Don DeLillo, White Noise
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
Jane Austin, Pride and Prejudice
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw & Other Stories
Federico García Lorca, The House of Bernarda Alba
Anonymous, Beowulf
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:
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried and
June, July, and August editions of Atlantic Monthly www.theatlantic.com/magazine
Students entering Grade 11: IB English A: Literature
Required:
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby and
Willa Cather, A Lost Lady
Students entering Grade 11: IB English A: Language and Literature 1
Required:
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun also Rises and
Rickerson and Hilton, The 5-Minute Linguist: Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages
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
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
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:
John Steinbeck, The Wayward Bus and
Arthur Miller, All My Sons
2015-16 Mainstream English Summer Reading List
Students entering Grade 12: IB English A: Literature
Required:
Philip Roth, American Pastoral and
John Hollander, Commited to Memory
Students entering Grade 12: IB English A: Language and Literature 2
Required:
Sedivy and Carlson, Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You… 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
Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Henry James, The American
V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine
Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier
Nicolai Gogol, The Inspector General
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
Voltaire, Candide
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
William Faulkner, Light in August
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Molière, Tartuffe
2015-16 Mainstream English Summer Reading List