March 9, 2016
BOOK REVIEWS:
AP ENGLISH III
You will read two of the following during the school year, one from
each page.
For semester 1, you are to submit a 3-4 page review and
evaluation that includes an introductory “trailer.”. Use of citation(s)
is an expectation of any AP English III teacher.
Any book not on this
list must be approved by the teacher.
Your REVIEW & EVALUATION should include:
a) Trailer (as, in essence, the introduction to the book; i.e., you
give a sneak preview of what the reader can expect when reading the
book)
b) Explain why you think the author wrote this book
c) EVALUATE the book: your educated opinion about the value and merit
of the book.
First semester report due the last class before Thanksgiving.
The
second semester report (memoir) is due the last class before the Easter
break.
** Murph’s Book Club
recommendation
Alvarez, Julia
**Anderson, Laurie
Cisneros, Sandra
Gaines, Ernest
In the Time of the Butterflies
Speak
The House on Mango Street
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
**Green, Hannah
Guidry, Jacqueline
Haddon, Mark
Nighttime
**Hillerman, Tony
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden
The Year The Colored Sisters Came To Town
A Curious Incident of the Dog in the
MC
MC
Talking God
OR
A Thief of Time
MC
Irving, John
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Kidd, Sue Monk
The Mermaid Chair
Kingsolver, Barbara
The Poisonwood Bible
Hosseini, Khaled
A Thousand Splendid Suns OR When The Mountains
Echoed
Lee, Harper
Go Set a Watchman
Letts, Billie
Where The Heart Is
McCullers, Carson
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Martel, Yann
Life of Pi
Mengestu, Dinaw
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Potok, Chaim
The Promise OR
My Name is Asher Lev
MC
**Remarque, Erich Maria
All Quiet on the Western Front
**Smith, Betty
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
**Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath
OR
East of Eden
Tan, Amy
The Joy Luck Club
Walker, Alice
The Color Purple
**Willis, Sarah
Some Things That Stay
MC = multi-cultural literature
SF = science fiction
MC
MC
MC
MEMOIR & BIOGRAPHY / AUTOBIOGRAPHY CHOICES
Your Memoir REVIEW & EVALUATION should address these ideas:
a) Brief summary (1 – ½ pages max)
b) Author’s purpose in writing the memoir (autobiography, biography)
c) EVALUATE the book: your substantiated opinion about the value and
merit of the book.
Use of direct citations is an expectation of
any AP English III paper.
***Murph’s Book Club Recommendations
A Long Way Home: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Ishmeal Beah
America Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood
Marie Arana
Angela’s Ashes
Frank McCourt
Bad Boy: A Memoir
Walter Dean Myers
***Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Katherine Boo
***Black Like Me
John Howard Griffin
Breaking Night
Liz Murray
Colors of the Mountain
Da Chen
Death, Be Not Proud
John Donne
Diary of a Young Girl
Anne Frank
Dreams From My Father
Barack Obama
I Know Why the Caged Birds Sing
Maya Angelou
***Into the Deep
Robert Rogers
***Kisses From Katie
Katie J. Davis Majors (with
Beth Clark)
***Marcus: The Autobiography of Marcus Allen
Marcus Allen and
Carlton Stowers
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi
Gateway to History: The Unwritten History of the
Underground Railroad
Foner, Eric
Sipping from the Nile: My Exodus from Egypt
Jean Naggar
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Attallah Shabazz, Alex Haley,
and Malcolm X
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Clayborne Carson
and Martin Luther King
***The Color of Water
James McBride
***The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
The Hiding Place
Corrie Ten Boom (w/John &
Elizabeth Sherrill)
The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood
Kien Nguyen
***The Worst Hard Time
Timothy Egan
There Are No Children Here
Alan Kotlowitz
***Three Cups of Tea
Greg Mortenson & David Oliver
Relin
Up From Slavery
Booker T. Washington
When A Crocodile Eats the Sun
Peter Godwin
Second Suns:
Two Doctors and Their Amazing
David Oliver Relin
Quest to Restore Sight & Save Lives
Unbroken:
A World War II Story of Survival,
Resilience, and Redemption
Laura Hillenbrand