Cliffside Park High School
Palisade and Riverview Avenues
Cliffside Park, New Jersey 07010
(201) 313-2370
The Cliffside Park High School English Department wants to encourage you to keep your mind
exploring this summer---- through reading! Summer reading can help you retain the skills you
need to continue to enjoy academic success. Testing shows that students who read for pleasure in
the summer do better and forget less when they return to school in September. Therefore, the
English Department would like to help you keep your mind active and prevent summer set back
by offering this incentive:
When you return to school in September, the book you read over the summer will be
accepted toward the independent reading assignment given in the first marking period. A
homework pass!
However, what will NOT be accepted are:

Books previously read, and recorded on your record card.

Books covered in class, as indicated on the CPHS curriculum

Books made into movies, unless they are classics.
Other than that, you are free to read a grade-level appropriate book as you wish; however, we
encourage you to choose a book from the following worthwhile titles:
FRESHMEN
Black Like Me John Howard Griffin
The Secret Life of Bees Sue Monk Kidd
My Sister’s Keeper Jodi Picoult
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith
A Lesson Before Dying Ernest J. Gaines
Two Old Women Velma Wallis
The Crossing, Gary Paulsen
Thirteen-year old Manny, a street kid fighting for survival in a Mexican border
town, develops a strange friendship with an emotionally disturbed American
soldier who decides to help him get across the border.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy,
and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her
grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional
woman and the tightly-knit black community there.
Tortilla Flat, John Steinbeck
A great look at the lazy lives of some Paisonos of Southern California. The
Characters in this book are fantastic, and it’s funny as well.
Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
A quick read with a bunch of very interesting characters.
SOPHOMORES
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Set in an Ibo village in Nigeria, this novel vividly portrays pre-Christian tribal life
and shows how the coming of the white man led to the breaking up of the old
ways.
We All Fall Down, Robert Cormier
When Karen Jerome walks in on the thrashers who are destroying her family’s
Cape Cod cottage, she is thrown down the stairs and slips into a coma. Important
issues are raised in this essentially moral novel such as the dissolution of family,
societal violence, person responsibility, and guilt.
A Separate Peace, John Knowles
Set in 1941, this powerful young adult classic recounts the tragedy that forever
marks the fleeting, intense friendship between two roommates at Devon, a New
England boarding school.
Teen Angst? Naaah . . . ,Ned Vizzini
Ned Vizzini writes about the weird, funny and sometimes mortifying moments
that made up his teen years. With wit, irony, and honesty, Teen Angst? Naaah . . .
invites you into Ned’s world of school, parents, cool (and almost cool), street
people, rock bands, friends, fame, camp, sex (sort of), Cancun (almost), prom,
beer, video games, and more.
Silent Spring, Carson, Rachel
Carson’s original clarion call to environmental action sets the stage for saving our
planet
JUNIORS
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon
The Prince of Tides Pat Conroy
Into the Wild Jon Krakauer
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café Fannie Flagg
Snow in August Pete Hamill
The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
Taylor heads west from her native Kentucky with little more than high hopes. By
the time she arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she must come to terms with both
motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots.
Blue Highways: A Journey into America, William Least Heat Moon
Moon’s 13,000 mile journey across America through small, forgotten towns is
filled with people and events that are unexpected, sometimes mysterious, and full
of the spark and wonder of ordinary life.
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison tells an ugly story, creating real beauty in the process. The story
centers on the plight of a black girl in Ohio who longs for blue eyes so that she
will be lovable.
SENIORS
Into Thin Air, John Krakauer
By expedition’s end, Mount Everest has claimed six lives, and Krakauer had
enough material for a book—one he would have given anything not to write. This
is horrifying, lucid survivor’s account by the author of Into the Wild.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A spectacular wedding, a sudden scandal, and a murder to which an entire town
appears to be an accessory are the elements of this extraordinary short novel.
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway’s first bestseller captures life among the expatriates on Paris’s Left
Bank during the 1920s, the brutality of bullfighting in Spain, and the moral and
spiritual end of a generation.
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
This is a disturbing look at a future where a group of teenage boys commit every
crime imaginable; the protagonist later has his behavior “modified.”
The Dragonlance Chronicles: The Dragons of Autumn Twilight, The Dragons of
Winter Night, and The Dragons of Spring Dawning, Margeret Weis and Tracy Hickman
A great fantasy series where good and evil dragons fight alongside dwarves,
elves, and humans for the survival of the world of Krynn. A group of friends are
thrust into a position to save the world.
Homeland, Exile and Sojourn, RA Salvatore
A series of books about a good Dark Elf from an underground city who escapes
his evil society and attempts to do good in the fantasy world of Forgotten Realms.
The author does a great job creating a society in which women, deception, and
magic rule.
2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
While human space explorers investigate a mysterious monolith, two astronauts
find their journey into space and their very lives jeopardized by the jealousy of an
extraordinary computer named Hal.
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Set in the years immediately following the Civil War, Beloved tells the story of an
escaped slave haunted by the memory of her murdered daughter.
Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat
Set in Haiti’s impoverished villages and in New York’s Haitian community, this
is the story of Sophie Caco, who is conceived in an act of violence, abandoned by
her mother and then summoned to America. In New York, Sophie discovers that
Haiti imposes harsh rules on its own.
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Huxley’s visionary novel of social engineering postulates a future world in which
for the sake of social stability drugs, sex and mindlessness replace truth and
Beauty.
Crime and Punishment, Feodor Dostoevsky
A psychological novel about a poor student who murders an old woman
pawnbroker and her sister.
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
After her mother’s death, a young Chinese-American woman learns of her
mother’s tragic early life in China.
The Yankee Years, Joe Torre and Tom Verducci
An in-depth view of the World Series winning 1990s Yankee teams. The book
also goes through Joe Torre’s whole tenure as manager of the New York Yankees.