Fountain Hills High School
Advanced Placement English Literature
Summer Reading Requirements
Congratulations! You have chosen a challenging course load for next year, but
one that will leave you well prepared for the challenges of college. Advanced Placement English
Literature will require a strong time commitment as well as an ability to handle a rigorous course
load (with a smile). Be sure that you work many hours at your job this summer and save enough
money to last all year long, for AP time commitments will allow you few hours to work during the
school year. Let your employer know that during the school year you can work no more than 12
hours per week, if that. Additionally, please keep your activity commitments to a minimum next fall.
Over the summer, read each of the following novels. If you hate to read and choose to use
only Spark Notes, change your schedule immediately. AP Literature is all about reading—there is no
room for slackers in this class. All novels are available at libraries, book stores, or online bookstores
(used books are best!). I advise you to purchase your own copy so that you may mark up important
passages, outline characters in the fly pages, etc. As you read these books, please highlight, take
notes, and read Internet background material (You might check out Spark Notes AFTER you read the
novels). Study these notes prior to class in August. During the first few days of school, you will be
given the opportunity to demonstrate your reading and writing proficiencies through in-class
assignments and tests based on these works of literature. Your performance during the first two
weeks of class will indicate whether you can survive Advanced Placement English. If you do poorly
on the summer reading unit, you will be asked to change to an easier English course. Again, do not
rely on Sparknotes.com in place of reading the summer novels. Use the online source IN ADDITION
to reading, since you will need help to focus on/understand important aspects of each novel. Should
these novels prove too difficult or too time-consuming for you, please see your counselor the week
prior to school to change your schedule.
Your parents will need to be involved with your summer reading. Have them read and sign
the form at the end of this packet. You will bring the form with you the second day of class.
Start saving your money—the $86 fee for the AP test to be taken at year’s end will be due
second semester. All AP students are required to take the test as part of the course. If you do well on
the AP test, you will save college tuition for 3 credits of college English or college elective credit,
depending upon the policy of the college you select.
Enjoy your summer reading. I look forward to working with you.
Mrs. Witz
P.S. A book (NOT REQUIRED) which would prepare you for the next six years of your education,
is Thomas Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor: a Lively and Entertaining Guide to
Reading Between the Lines. (New York: HarperCollins, 2003.)
12th Grade AP English Literature Summer Reading List
Note: These works were selected from the AP Literature list, and will form a foundation for the
year's study. Read them carefully, and consider how you will write on the themes and characters,
diction and syntax, and symbols and motifs present in the novels.
1. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 272 pgs.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a
wife.” Thus begins Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, one of the most famous opening lines of any novel ever
written. It is a story that has touched hearts for exactly 200 years: girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy.
Behind that simple premise, Pride and Prejudice is surprisingly iconoclastic as much as comforting, an
unputdownable read that challenges perceptions, and subtly marks a line in feminist history and thought. –
Victoria Lambert, The Telegraph, 24 Jan 2013
2.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 215 pgs.
Amazon.com Review
Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes
unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of
virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and
Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are
almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so
sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that
people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building
where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since
1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply
funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination,
humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rockhard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor.
3. Carson McCullers, Member of the Wedding, 135 pgs.
One Thanksgiving dinner, the spark for her third novel, The Member Of The Wedding, was lit. On hearing a
fire engine's siren, McCullers and Rose Lee gave chase through the streets, and McCullers had a sudden
epiphany about the central concept of her book, which tells of a 12 year-old girl, Frankie, who is so in love with
her brother, Jarvis, and his wife, Janice, that she thinks she can join them on their honeymoon.
It's an innocent, twinkling kind of backstory to accompany what could, from a distance, seem like an innocent,
twinkling kind of book. Close inspection reveals it most definitely isn't. With its portrait of pre-teen
awkwardness and self-delusion, The Member Of The Wedding has attracted legions of youthful fans. – Tom
Cox, The Guardian UK, 21 June 2012
Student name:________________________________________
Parent Form
(Bring to class, signed, on day two)
Having listened to my son/daughter summarize the novel in 50 page segments, I attest that
he/she has completed reading Pride and Prejudice and highlighted/taken notes on the novel’s contents.
______________________________________
Parent Signature
_________________________
Date
I did it! Student Signature: ____________________________________
*************************************************************************************************************
Having listened to my son/daughter summarize the novel in 50 page segments, I attest that
he/she has completed reading Member of the Wedding and highlighted/taken notes on the novel’s
contents.
______________________________________
Parent Signature
I did it!
_________________________
Date
Student Signature: _______________________________________________________
*************************************************************************************************************
Having listened to my son/daughter summarize the novel in 50 page segments, I attest that
he/she has completed reading Slaughterhouse-Five and highlighted/taken notes on the novel’s
contents.
______________________________________
Parent Signature
I did it!
_________________________
Date
Student Signature: ________________________________________________________