Dear Parents and Students,
Blue Grass Baptist School is pleased to announce that it continue its summer reading program
for students enrolled in English grades 9-12 for the 2015-2016 school year. Information
regarding the selected novels and the corresponding assignments are indicated below. Please
note deadlines as this assignment will have a significant impact on students’ first quarter grades.
I look forward to discussing these selections with the students during the first week of school.
Have a wonderful and blessed summer!
-
Mrs. Kimberly Nelson
Instructor, English 8-12
Note: I will also include an additional suggested reading list for students who wish to forge ahead on classic
reading. Parents and students may wish to check sites such as www.commonsensemedia.org or
www.compassbookratings.com for any objectionable elements contained in the secular literature.
SUMMER READING LIST/ASSIGNMENTS FOR ENGLISH (9-12)
9th Grade - Night by Elie Wiesel
Night is a work by Elie Wiesel about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at
Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, at the height of the Holocaust and toward the end of the Second
World War. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, Wiesel writes about the death of God
and his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the father–child relationship as his
father declines to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful teenage caregiver. – goodreads.com
Assignments:
1. Students will complete five (5) entries on the dialectical journal form which is due on the first day of school
(Wednesday August 12th). The journal entries may be typed or written legibly.
2. Students will be tested over their knowledge of the book on Friday of the first week of school (Friday, August,
14th). This assessment will count as a regular test grade and will cover questions relating to characters,
settings, plots, and themes.
10th Grade- The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
A masterpiece of satire, this classic has entertained and enlightened readers the world over with its sly and
ironic portrayal of human life from the vantage point of Screwtape, a senior tempter in the service of "Our
Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C. S. Lewis gives us the
correspondence of the worldly-wise old devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing
the damnation of an ordinary young man. The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging and humorous account
of temptation—and triumph over it—ever written. – Goodreads.com
Assignments:
1. Students will complete ten (10) entries on the dialectical journal form which is due on the first day of school
(Wednesday August 12th). The journal entries may be typed or written legibly.
2. Students will be tested over their knowledge of the book on Friday of the first week of school (Friday, August
14th). This assessment will count as a regular test grade and will cover questions relating to characters,
settings, plots, and themes.
11th Grade- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Set in a small southern town during the Depression, this funny, heartbreaking coming-of-age novel
follows three years in the life of Scout Finch, her brother Jem, and her attorney father, Atticus, who risks
everything to defend a black man wrongly accused of a criminal act against a white woman. While the
book deals with serious themes like racism, social injustice, and tolerance of other points of view, it is
infused with humor, warmth, and timeless hometown wisdom. – scholastic.com
Assignments:
1. Students will complete ten (10) entries on the dialectical journal form which is due on the first
day of school (Wednesday August 12th). The journal entries may be typed or written legibly.
2. Students will be tested over their knowledge of the book on Friday of the first week of school
(Friday, August 14th). This assessment will count as a regular test grade and will cover questions
relating to characters, settings, plots, and themes.
12th Grade - A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The epic story of two cities and two men. Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are alike in appearance, very
different in character, but in love with the same woman. Darnay, who has abandoned the cruelty of the French
nobility for London, must return to Paris during the violent Revolution to rescue his faithful servant from the
guillotine. – scholastic.com
Assignments:
1. Students will complete ten (10) entries on the dialectical journal form which is due on the first day of school
(Wednesday August 12th). The journal entries may be typed or written legibly.
2. Students will be tested over their knowledge of the book on Friday of the first week of school (Friday, August
14th). This assessment will count as a regular test grade and will cover questions relating to characters,
settings, plots, and themes.
Dialectical Response Journal (Sample) edited from docs.google.com
Name: __________________________________
Class: _________________________
Book Title: ______________________________
Author: ________________________
Taking Notes (Quotations, Paraphrase, or
Summary Taken From Reading with book’s
page number(s) cited in parentheses)
"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest
guys in the world. They got no family. They don't
belong no place....”(Steinbeck 13-14)
___________________________________________
"'Well,' said George, 'we'll have a big vegetable
patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens. And when it
rains in the winter, we'll just say the hell with goin' to
work, and we'll build up a fire in the stove and set
around it an' listen to the rain comin' down on the
roof...'" (Steinbeck 14-15)
Making Notes (Personal Response to Passage
Selection)
This made me think about how all of the people
going West just left everything behind because
they thought they could make more out of their
lives by doing so. Leaving behind everything they
had is so risky especially since they had no idea
what they were going to go through and what their
new lives would be like when they got there. The
men that put their families through all of this could
have cause a lot a conflict between all of them. I
would never want my husband or dad to do this to
my family especially because they would have no
idea what they were going to put all of us through.
The guys in the novel don’t even have a family
anymore which makes it easier for them not to
have to worry about feeding and caring for more
than just themselves.
________________________________________
When George talks about doing all of these things
with Lenny, it makes Lenny really happy. The
reason I think that he gets happy about all of it, is
that it’ll be one of the closet things that he would
ever have to owning his own house and taking care
of his own animals and farm. He could actually say
it’s his and not someone else’s. Lenny has never
really had his own family, besides George. If they
owned all of these things together, it could give
George and Lenny the comfort of having their own
house and family. They would also be able to make
a lot more money than they do now, which would
buy them more things to make them more happy.
Dialectical Response Journal Form
edited from docs.google.com
Name: __________________________________
Class: _________________________
Book Title: ______________________________
Author: ________________________
Taking Notes (Quotations, Paraphrase, or
Summary Taken From Reading with book’s page
number(s) cited in parentheses)
Making Notes (Personal Response to Passage
Selection)
ADDITIONAL SUGGESTED READING LIST
(taken from Classical Christian Education Support Loop website – www.classical-homeschooling.org)
Suggested for grades 7-9
Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt
Admiral of the Ocean Sea: Life of Christopher Columbus & others by Samuel E. Morison
Adventures of Richard Hannay and others by John Buchan
All Men Are Brothers and others by Pearl S. Buck
Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
Anne of Green Gables and others by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest Gaines
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Bob, Son of Battle by Alfred Ollivant
Boy Alone and others in the trilogy by Reginald Ottley
Boy on the Rooftop by Tomas Szabo
Boy's War by David J. Michell
Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
Bruchko by Bruce Olson
Bulfinch's Age of Chivalry by Thomas Bulfinch
Bulfinch's Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch
Bulfinch's Legends of Charlemagne by Thomas Bulfinch
Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare
Call of the Canyon and others by Zane Gray
Chase Me, Catch Nobody by Erik Christian Haugaard
Chosen by Chaim Potok
Christy by Catherine Marshall
Chronicles of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters
Cider Days by Mary Stolz
Circuit Rider and others by Edward Eggleston
Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade
Day of Pleasure by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Devil in Print by Mary Drewery
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Flames of Rome by Paul Maier
For Love of Jody by Robbie Branscum
Giants in the Earth and others by O. E. Rolvaag
Good Morning, Miss Dove by Frances Gray Patton
Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton
Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacClean
Hawk That Dare Not Hunt by Day by Scott O'Dell
Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
Hoosier School-Boy by Edward Eggleston
Hoosier Schoolmaster by Edward Eggleston
Hound of the Baskervilles & others by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton
How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
If You Love Me Nothing Else Matters by Patricia St. John
In His Steps by Charles Sheldon
In the Hall of the Dragon King & others in the trilogy by Stephen R. Lawhead
Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
Julius Caesar and other biographies by John Buchan
King's Fifth by Scott O'Dell
Leader by Destiny by Jeanette Eaton
Life of David Crockett by Davey Crockett
Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Likely Lad by Gillian Avery
Lion's Paw by D. R. Sherman
Little White Horse and others by Elizabeth Goudge
Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkein
Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes
Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Max's Dream by William Mayne
Miracle Worker by William Gibson
Moonstone and others by Wilkie Collins
Moves Make the Man by Bruce Brooks
Mrs. Mike by Benedict & Nancy Freedman
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Nikolenka's Childhood by Leo Tolstoy
O! Pioneers by Willa Cather
Odyssey of Homer by Barbara Leonie Picard
Of Courage Undaunted by James Daugherty
One of Ours by Willa Cather
Onion John by Joseph Krumgold
Pictures of Travel in Sweden by Hans Christian Anderson
Pond by Robert Murphy
Portable Chaucer by Theodore Morrison
Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy
Promises in the Wind by Irene Hunt
Prospering by Elizabeth George Speare
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggen
Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
Sarah Bishop by Scott O'Dell
Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter
Second Mrs. Giaconda by E. L. Konigsburg
Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
Silver Chalice and other historical fiction by Thomas B. Costain
Slake's Limbo by Felice Holman
Small Woman by Alan Burgess
Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis
Stories of Charlemagne by Jennifer Westwood
Story of a Bad Boy and others by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Streams to the River, River to the Sea by Scott O'Dell
String in the Harp by Nancy Bond
Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars
Swift Rivers by Cornelia Meigs
Ten Fingers for God by Dorothy Clarke Wilson
Tevye the Dairyman by Sholom Aleichem
Time Enough for Drums by Anne Rinaldi
Time Machine and others by H. G. Wells
To the Tune of a Hickory Stick by Robbie Branscum
Tom Brown at Oxford by Thomas Hughes
Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes
Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly
Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana
Valley of the Shadow by Janet Hickman
Virginian and others by Owen Wister
Voyage Round the World by William Dampier
War of The Worlds by H. G. Wells
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Well at the World's End and others by William Morris
Whale Song by Robert Siegel
White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
White Fang by Jack London
Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings
Young Brontes by Mary Louise Jarden
Suggestions for grades 10-12
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
All Creatures Great and Small and others by James Herriot
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque
Amazing Adventures of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
American Leonardo by Carleton Mabee
Americanization of Edward Bok by Edward Bok
And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov
Animal Farm; 1984 by George Orwell
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Autobiography by Benvenuto Cellini
Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt
Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton
Barchester Towers and others by Anthony Trollope
Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Bible in Spain by George Borrows
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys by John Buchan
Borden of Yale by Mrs. Howard Taylor
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Burning Bush and others by Sigrid Undset
Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead
Cabinet of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac
Captain Cook's Explorations by James Cook
Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset
Charterhouse of Parma and others by Stendahl
Chivalry and others by James Branch Cabell
Conquest of Granada by Washington Irving
Contender by Robert Lipsyte
Covenant and other historical fiction by James A. Michener
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Cripps, the Carrier by Richard Blackmore
Crisis by Thomas Paine
Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson
Cruise of the "Nona" and others by Hilaire Belloc
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Darwin's Black Box by Michel Behe
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Death of Ivan Ilyitch by Leo Tolstoy
Death of the Gods by Dmitri Merejkowski
Diary & Autobiography of John Adams edited by L. Butterfield
Diary by David Brainerd
Diary of a Country Priest and others by George Bernanos
Dream Thief by Stephen R. Lawhead
Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
Emma by Jane Austen
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton
Every Living Thing by James Herriot
Experience the Depths of Jesus Christ by Madame Jeanne Guyon
Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography by Hans Christian Anderson
Fathers and Sons and others by Ivan Turgenev
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Four Voyages to the New World by Christopher Columbus
Foxe's Christian Martyrs by John Foxe, edited by W. Grinton Berry
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Green Mansions and others by William H. Hudson
Heart of Darkness and others by Joseph Conrad
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland H. Bainton
House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga, translated by D. H. Lawrence
House of Seven Gables and others by Nathaniel Hawthorne
How I Found Livingstone by Sir Henry Morton Stanley
Iceland Fisherman and others by Pierre Loti
In This Sign by Joanne Greenburg
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jerusalem and others by Selma Lagerlof
Journal by George Fox
Journal by John Wesley
Lalla Rookh by Tom Moore
Lavengro by George Borrows
Life of Columbus by Washington Irving
Life of George Washington by Washington Irving
Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy
Lord Peter and other mysteries by Dorothy Sayers
Lorna Doone by Richard D. Blackmore
Man Called Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
Martin Chuzzelwitt by Charles Dickens
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Moby Dick and others by Herman Melville
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
My Antonia by Willa Cather
My Confession by Leo Tolstoy
Old Creole Days and others by George Washington Cable
Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
On Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and others by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Paradise War and others in trilogy by Stephen R. Lawhead
Peace Child by Don Richardson
Pere Goirot by Honore de Balzac
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
Pillar of Iron and other historical fiction by Taylor Caldwell
Power & the Glory and other historical fiction by Graham Greene
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Prisoner of Zenda and others by Anthony Hope Hawkins
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Rabble in Arms and others by Kenneth Roberts
Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson
Raven: a Biography of Sam Houston and other biographies by Marquis James
Red and The Black by Stendahl
Romany Rye by George Borrows
Roots of the Mountains by William Morris
Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone
Scott's Last Expedition by Robert Scott
Sense and Sensibility and others by Jane Austen
Servant of Slaves and others by Grace Irwin
Sevastopol Sketches and others by Leo Tolstoy
Shadows on the Park by Willa Cather
Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs by William Morris
Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
Song of the Scaffold by Gertrud von Le Fort
Tale of the South Downs by Richard Blackmore
Taliesin and others in series by Stephen R. Lawhead
Thirty Nine Steps and others by John Buchan
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Tom Jones and others by Henry Fielding
Travels in Arabian Deserts by Charles Doughty
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery
Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
Virginians and others by William Makepeace Thackery
Voyages to the New World by Hakluyt
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
War of the Worldviews by Gary DeMar
Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton
With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Witness by Whittaker Chambers