Suggested works
Freshman English – Unit #1
(E) indicates a CCSS exemplar text; (EA) indicates a text from a writer with other works identified as
exemplars; (R) indicates required texts
LITERARY TEXTS [ 1 REQUIRED]
Poems



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


Different myths - Story of Pandora, for example
“Hiawatha’s Fasting” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow/hero archetype)
“Fire and Ice” (Robert Frost)
“Hope is the Thing with Feathers” (Emily Dickinson)
“The Raven” (Edgar Allan Poe)
“Paradise Lost” excerpts (John Milton)
“Christ in Alabama” (Langston Hughes)
Short Stories
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
“The Lottery” – Shirley Jackson (plotline, scapegoat archetype)
“Young Goodman Brown” – Nathaniel Hawthorne (multiple archetypes, monomyth, symbolism)
“The Red Convertible” (Louise Erdrich/monomyth)
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” (Flannery O’Connor/misfit archetype)
“The One Who Walked Away from Omelas” (Ursula K. Le Guin/scapegoat)
“The Devil and Tom Walker” (Washington Irving)
“Bearskin” (The Brothers Grimm)
“Thank You, Ma’am” (Langston Hughes)
“The Most Dangerous Game” (Richard Connell)
“The Interlopers” (Saki)
Grimm Fairytales
“The Lady, or the Tiger?” (Frank R. Stockton)
“The Princess and the Tin Box” (James Thurber)
“Recitatif” (Toni Morrison)
“The Riddle” (The Brothers Grimm)
“The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story” (Joel Chandler Harris)
“The Lesson” (Toni Cade Bambara)
“The Poet” (Hermann Hesse)
“Adventures of Great Rabbit” (Native American Legend)
Semester Novels


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

Bless Me Ultima (Rudolfo Anaya)
The Princess Bride (William Goldman)
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Plays



The Tempest (William Shakespeare)
Oedipus the King (Sophocles)
Richard III (William Shakespeare)
Suggested works

Henry V (William Shakespeare)
INFORMATIONAL TEXTS [1 REQUIRED]
Speeches

St. Crispin’s Day Speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V (hero archetype)
Essays




“Shooting an Elephant” (George Orwell)
“Shame” - (Dick Gregory)
“Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders his Power to Alter Public Space” (Brent Staples)
“The Orchestra Played On” (Joanne Lipman)
ART, MUSIC, AND M EDIA [1 REQUIRED]
Art


Fall of Icarus (Brueghel)
The Outcast (Richard Redgrave)
Music


‘“Hurricane” (Bob Dylan/scapegoat archetype)
“Sympathy for the Devil” (Rolling Stones)
Media
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
Various Star Wars (clips)
Bugs Bunny (clips)
The Princess Bride (clips)
Harry Potter (clips)
The Jungle Book (clips)
The Lion King (clips)
The Hunger Games (clips)
Suggested works
Freshman English – Unit #2
(E) indicates a CCSS exemplar text; (EA) indicates a text from a writer with other works identified as
exemplars; (R) indicates required texts
REQUIRED TEXT

The Odyssey (Homer) (E)
LITERARY TEXTS [ 1REQUIRED]
Poems



“Ulysses” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
The Metamorphoses (Ovid) (E) (selections)

Book I – “Apollo and Daphne”

Book VIII – “Baucis and Philemon” (highly suggested)

Book XIII – “The Dispute over Achilles Armor”; “The Fall of Troy”
“The Lotus Eaters” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (John Keats)

“Leda and the Swan” (W.B. Yeats)

“Penelope’s Song” (Louise Gluck)

“An Ancient Gesture” (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
Short Stories



“An Indian Odyssey” (David Iglehart)
“A Mystery of Heroism: A Detail of an American Battle” (Stephen Crane)
“The Hero and Tin Soldiers” (Henry Van Dyke)
Novels


The Penelopiad (Margaret Atwood)
Mythology (Edith Hamilton)
Plays


Ajax (Sophocles) (EA)
Philoctetes (Sophocles) (EA)
INFORMATIONAL TEXTS [1 REQUIRED]
Speeches

“Heroism is Here”, January 12, 2011 (Barack Obama)
The text of the President’s speech at the Tucson Memorial:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41047381/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/obama-heroism-here/
Essays

Spires, Michael J. “The Human Element and the Scale of the Odyssey.” Epics for Students,
Gale Research, 1997.
http://wp.stockton.edu/epicpoem/files/2010/09/odysseyspiresessay.doc

Louen, B. (2011). “Is there early recognition between Penelope and Odysseus? Book 19 in the
larger context of the Odyssey.” College Literature, 38 (2), 76-102. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/863243807?accountid=44709
Suggested works
Newspaper/Magazine Articles


Anonymous. "Fact Eclipses Fiction in Epic Poem." Current Science. 06 Feb. 2009: 12. eLibrary. Web.
22 Jun. 2012.
Blanshard, Alastair. "The Ancient Art of Hospitality." Australian. 29 Apr. 2009: 34. eLibrary. Web. 22
Jun. 2012.

Bloom, Jim. "Did Homer Base the Remarkable VOYAGES OF ODYSSEUS on Fact?." Sea Classics. 01
Jul. 2008: 46. eLibrary. Web. 22 Jun. 2012.

Grayling, A. C. "Saturday Review: The Last Word on Heroism." The Guardian: 12.
International Newspapers. Mar 09 2002. ProQuest Platinum. Web. 25 June 2012 .

Marilyn Gardner, Staff writer of The Christian,Science Monitor. "Americans Say what Makes a Hero
National Survey Serves as a Snapshot of Current Values." The Christian Science
Monitor (pre-1997 Fulltext): 13. National Newspapers Core; U.S. National Newspapers.
Aug 21 1995. ProQuest Platinum. Web. 25 June 2012 .

Bordewich, Fergus, M. “Odyssey’s End: The Search for Ancient Ithaca.” Smithsonian Magazine. April
2006. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Odysseys-End-The-Search-forAncient-Ithaca.html

Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew. "Why do we still read Homer?." American Scholar, The. 01 Jan. 2002: 95.
eLibrary. Web. 22 Jun. 2012.
ART, MUSIC, AND MEDI A [1 REQUIRED]
Art

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
Saturn Devouring his Son (Francisco Goya)



The Lotus Eaters (Romare Bearden) http://www.sites.si.edu/romarebearden/
Circe (Dossi)
Apollo and Daphne (Bernini)
Baucis and Philemon (Adam Elsheimer)
The Burning of Troy (Jan Brueghel the Elder)
Odysseus and Calypso (Arnold Bocklin)
Odysseus and Nausicaa (Christoph Amberger)
Odysseus at the Palace of Alcinous (Francesco Hayez)
Land of the Lotus Eaters (Robert Duncanson)
Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus (John Williams Waterhouse)
Circe Entertaining Odysseus at a Banquet (Giovanni Paolo Pannini)
Odysseus and the Sirens (Siren Painter)
Ulysses and the Sirens (John William Waterhouse)
The Sirens (Alfred Woolmer)
Odysseus in Front of Scylla and Charybdis (Johann Fuseli)
The Return of Odysseus (Claude Lorrain)
Odysseus Fighting with the Beggar (Lovis Corinth)
Penelope Unraveling her Web (Joseph Wright of Derby)
Slaughter of the Suitors – from a Red-Figure Bell- Krater c. 330 BC
Odysseus and Penelope (Francesco Primaticcio)
Circe (von Stuck)
Music




Soundtrack from O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?
Home at Last (Steely Dan)
Tales of Brave Ulysses (Cream)
The Odyssey (Symphony X)
Suggested works
Media

The Odyssey – film

O’ Brother, Where Art Thou? – film (clips)

Gods and Monsters – film

Audiobook – Ian McKellen


Lord of the Rings (clips)
Smoke Signals (monomyth archetype) -- film
Power Point

Reading a Painting – South H Drive
Suggested works
Freshman English – Unit #3
(E) indicates a CCSS exemplar text; (EA) indicates a text from a writer with other works identified as
exemplars; (R) indicates required texts
LITERARY TEXTS ( SEE REQUIREMENTS BEL OW – IF NOT COVERING A NO VEL/PLAY
DURING THIS UNI T, TE XTS WILL CONSIST OF A VARIETY OF MULTI PLE TEXTS FROM
EACH GENRE LI STED) (AT LEAST 1 REQUIRED )
Poems

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






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





“The Road not Taken” (Robert Frost)
“Little Sister Born in this Land” (Debbie Diaz)
“Legal Alien” (Pat Mora)
“I’m Nobody! Who are You?” (Emily Dickinson)
“I Went to the Movies Hoping Just Once the Monster Got the Girl” (Rontald Koertge)
“I, too” (Langston Hughes)
“We Wear the Mask” (Paul Laurence Dunbar)
Maya Angelou’s Inaugural poem “On the Pulse of Morning”
“Goblin Market” (Christina Rossetti)
Eavan Boland Poems
“Patterns” (Amy Lowell)
“Ex-basketball Player” (John Updike)
“We Real Cool” (Gwendolyn Brooks)
“Woman Work” (Maya Angelou)
“The Courage That My Mother Had” (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (William Wordsworth)
“Hope is the Thing with Feathers” (Emily Dickinson)
Short Stories
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

“The Necklace” (Guy de Maupassant)
“Every Day Use” (Alice Walker)
“Gooseberries” (Anton Chekhov)
“The Birthmark” (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
“Good Country People” (Flannery O’Connor)
“Girl” (Jamaica Kincaid)
“The Lesson” (Toni Cade Bambara)
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (James Thurber)
“Fishergirl” (Gretchen Legler)
“Greasy Lake” ( T. C. Boyle)
“Somewhere with Sven” (Pam Houston)
“Beware of the Dog” (Roald Dahl)
“The Slip-over Sweater” (Jesse Stuart)
“A Christmas Memory” (Truman Capote)
“Seven Ages of Man” (William Shakespeare)
Novels (OPTIONAL)


Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) (full text or excerpts: Jane’s portrait of herself compared to her
perception of Blanche Ingram)
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
Suggested works










A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison) (excerpts: Claudia tries to discover the secret power of the
bluest eye doll)
The Color Purple (Alice Walker) (excerpts: Celie compares herself to Shug Avery)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison) (excerpt: “I am an invisible man . . .”)
Peace Like a River (Leif Enger)
Bean Trees (Barbara Kingsolver)
Boy’s Life (Robert McCammon)
Elephant Man (Christine Sparks)
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Plays [OPTIONAL]




The Tempest (William Shakespeare) (excerpt—“This thing of darkness . . .”; Caliban, Ariel,
etc.)
The Darker Face of the Earth (Rita Dove)
The Janitor (August Wilson)
M Butterfly (David Henry Hwang)
Independent Reading Suggestions [MAY USE OTHER APPROPRIATE SELF-IDENITY TEXTS
AS WELL]









A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
The Hobbit (J.R.R Tolkien)
How’s Moving Castle (Diana Wynne Jones)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Sherman Alexie)
The Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
Mythology (Edith Hamilton)
The Book of Dun Cow (Walter Wangerin, Jr.)
Grendel (John Gardner)
INFORMATIONAL TEXTS [AT LEAST 1 REQUIRED]
Books


Reviving Ophelia (Dr. Mary Pipher)
Walden (Henry David Thoreau)


Autobiography of a Face (Lucy Grealy)
Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature (Joyce Sidman)
Historical Texts

The Preamble to the Constitution (American Identity)
Essays




“Tools of Torture” (Phyllis Rose)
“About Men” –(Gretel Ehrlich)
“Why Looks are the Last Bastion of Discrimination” (Deborah Rhode)
“Conk” from The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Suggested works



“On Necklaces” (Emily Grosholz) (excerpts)
“I Used To Be Hot, Now I’m Not” (Leslie Bennetts)
Erik Erikson’s identity formation (excerpts)
Newspaper/Magazine Articles





Magazine covers of Vogue, Seventeen, Men’s Health
“Ashley Judd Slaps Media”
Men’s Health articles about men as physical objects
“Looking Good: The Psychology and Biology of Beauty” by Charles Feng (physical symmetry)
KIPP Character Chart
ART, MUSIC, AND MEDIA [AT LEAST 1 REQUIRED]
Art


Compare contrast pre-historic fertility images to Rubens portrayal of ideal beauty to 1960’s
and 1990’s fashion models (Google images)
Examine artists’ self-portraits: what image do they project to the world? Pair with short
biographical sketches (Google images)
Music



“Peace of Mind” (Boston)
“The Grand Illusion” (Styx)
“At Seventeen” (Janis Ian)
Media









Advertisements that create social constructs for beauty for both women and men
Dove soap beauty campaign - real women
Elephant Man film (clips)
Twilight Zone episode with pig nosed beauty (clips)
Killing Us Softly 3 (Documentary about advertising)
Mean Girls film (clips)
Real Women Have Curves film (clips)
YouTube videos on Facial Symmetry
YouTube video on wide screen vs. full screen
Suggested works
Freshman English – Unit #4
LITERARY TEXTS [AT LEAST 1 REQUIRED ]
Poems










“Woman Work” (Maya Angelou)
“Folding Won Tons In” (Abraham Chang)
“Women” (May Swenson)
“The Courage That My Mother Had” (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
“Those Winter Sundays” (Robert Hayden)
“Exile” (Julia Alvarez)
“Internment” (Juliet Kono)
“Ballad of Birmingham” (Dudley Randall)
“Legal Alien” (Pat Mora)
“American Hero” (Essex Hemphill)
Short Stories








“A Christmas Memory” (Truman Capote)
“Thank You Ma’am” (Langston Hughes)
“The Scarlet Ibis” (James Hurst)
“Everyday Use” (Alice Walker)
“Two Kinds” (Amy Tan)
“The Cask of Amontillado” (Edgar Allan Poe)(irony, tone)
“The Sniper” (Liam O’Flaherty)
“The Grandfather” (Gary Soto)
Novels








Great Expectations (Charles Dickens) (Full text or excerpts)
The Bean Trees (Barbara Kingsolver)
Night (Elie Wiesel)
The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
Warriors Don’t Cry (Melba Pattillo Beals)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)
1984 (George Orwell)
Plays



The Piano Lesson (August Wilson)
Master Harold and the Boys (Athol Fugard)
The Miracle Worker (William Gibson)
INFORMATIONAL TEXTS [AT LEAST 1 REQUI RED ]
Speeches

Transcripts from a School Board meeting (related to family and community)
Essays

“My Purple House” (Sandra Cisneros)
Newspaper/Magazine Articles

Homeowner’s Association lawsuits
Suggested works

“Where were parents during kids’ rampage?” The Chicago Sun-Times
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1465281.html
ART, MUSIC, AND MEDI A
Art

A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte (Georges Seurat)
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/27992
Suggested works
Freshman English – Unit #5
LITERARY TEXTS [AT LEAST 1 REQUIRED ]
Poems











“The Road Not Taken” (Robert Frost)
“The Choice” (William Butler Yeats)
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (Robert Frost)
“On a Tree Fallen Across the Road” (Robert Frost)
“Invictus” (William Ernest Henley)
“The Choice” (Dorothy Parker)
“The Long Hill” (Sara Teasdale)
“The Choice” (Robert William Service)
“Consequences” (William Meredith)
“The Goblin Market” (Christina Rossetti)
Sonnets 30, 44, 130, 144 (William Shakespeare)
Short Stories







“Who’s Passing for Who?” (Langston Hughes)
“The Gift of the Magi” (O. Henry)
“The Interlopers” (Saki)
“The Necklace” (Guy de Maupassant)
“The Scarlet Ibis” (James Hurst)
“The Cask of Amontillado” (Edgar Allan Poe)
“The Choice of Hercules” (James Baldwin)
Novels



1984 (George Orwell)
The Bean Trees (Barbara Kingsolver)
Night (Elie Weisel)
Plays


Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare) [Required]
Antigone (Sophocles)
INFORMATIONAL TEXTS [AT LEAST 1 REQUI RED ]
Speeches

“Loving your Enemies” (Martin Luther King Jr.)
http://www.mlkonline.net/enemies.html
Essays



Rubinstein, William. "Who was Shakespeare?." History Today. 01 Aug. 2001: 28. eLibrary.
Web. 25 Jul. 2012.
Mansour, Wisam. "The Taming of Romeo in Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET." The
Explicator 66.4 (2008): 206-8. ProQuest Platinum; ProQuest Research Library. Web.
25 July 2012.
Moffatt, Laurel. "Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET 3.2.2-4." The Explicator 62.3 (2004):
138-41. ProQuest Platinum; ProQuest Research Library. Web. 25 July 2012.
Newspaper/Magazine Articles

Massie, Allan. "How sacred is Shakespeare?." Spectator. 13 Oct. 2007: n/a. eLibrary. Web. 25
Jul. 2012.
Suggested works

Puente, Maria. "You've got mail, Juliet Capulet ; 'Secretaries' in Verona write back." USA
Today. 12 May. 2010: D5. eLibrary. Web. 25 Jul. 2012.
ART, MUSIC, AND MEDI A [AT LEAST 1 REQUI RED ]
Art

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

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


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
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

“The Dance of Albion” (William Blake)
“Romeo and Juliet” (Ford Madox Brown)
“Romeo and Juliet with Friar Laurence” (Henry William Bunbury)
“Juliet” (Philip H. Calderon)
“Romeo and Juliet” (Frank Dicksee)
“Where’s Romeo” (William Hatherell)
“Count Paris” (Frederick Leighton)
“The Reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets” (Frederick Leighton)
The Reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets over the Dead Bodies of Romeo and Juliet”
(Frederick Leighton)
“The Death of Romeo and Juliet” (John Everett Millais)
“Friar Laurence and Juliet” – John Pettie
“Juliet and her Nurse” (John R.S. Stanhope)
“Juliet’s Chamber, Act IV, Scene 5” (James Stephanoff)
“Romeo and Juliet” (Benjamin West)
“Romeo and Juliet: The Tomb Scene” (Joseph Wright of Derby)
Music






“Lay Me Down a Pallet on the Floor” (Traditional Blues song)
“Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture” (Tchaikovsky)
Romeo et Juliette "Love Scene: Serene Night” (Hector Berlioz)
Romeo et Juliette (Charles Gounod)
“Love Story” (Taylor Swift)
“Romeo and Juliet” (Dire Straits)
Media



Romeo and Juliet (1968) (Franco Zeffirelli)
Romeo and Juliet (1996) (Baz Luhrmann)
West Side Story (Leonard Bernstein)
Suggested works
Freshman English – Unit #6
LITERARY TEXTS [AT LEAST 1 REQUIRED ]
Poems

“Richard Cory” (E.A. Robinson)

“Harlem” (Langston Hughes)

“Yet Do I Marvel” (Countee Cullen)



“The Road Not Taken” (Robert Frost)
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (T.S. Eliot)
“Conscientious Objector” (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

“The Death of the Hired Man” (Robert Frost)

“A Wreath for Emmett Till” (Marilyn Nelson)

“The Silent Slain” (Archibald MacLeish)
Short Stories

“Everyday Use” (Alice Walker)

“Two Kinds” (Amy Tan)


“By Any Other Name” (Santha Rama Rau)
“The Big Black and White Game” (Ray Bradbury)
Novels

To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) [Required]

Mississippi Trial 1955 (Chris Crowe)
Plays

The Piano Lesson (August Wilson)

Twelve Angry Men (Reginald Rose)
INFORMATIONAL TEXTS [AT LEAST 1 REQUI RED ]
Speeches

“I Have a Dream” (Martin Luther King Jr.) (August 28, 1963)

“The Spirit of Liberty” (Learned Hand) (May 21, 1944)


“The Solitude of Self” (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) (February 20, 1892)
“Freedom: Address to Cape Town” (Nelson Mandela) (February 11, 1990)
Essays

“If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” (James Baldwin)

“Letter from Birmingham Jail” (Martin Luther King Jr.)

Preamble of the Constitution

"'Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee” (Charles J. Shields)


“Justice as a Virtue” (Michael Slote)
“Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do” (Michael J. Sandel)
Suggested works

“Why I Joined the Klan” (from “Latitudes,” Perfection Learning teacher’s resource)

“To Kill A Mockingbird and the Scottsboro Boys Trial: Profiles in Courage” (from “The Best
Humanities on the Web,” EDSITEment teacher’s resource)
““White Women Speak Up Against Lynchings” (from “Latitudes,” Perfection Learning teacher’s
resource)

Other Nonfiction

“The Other Side of the River” (Alex Kotlowitz)
ART, MUSIC, AND MEDIA [AT LEAST 1 REQUI RED ]
Media





The Scottsboro Nine (The History Channel)
“Beyond the Border” (images and article) (Ginger Thompson)
“Hey Boo” (PBS documentary)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Directed by Robert Mulligan)
The Help (film) (Directed by Tate Taylor)
Art

Migrant Mother (1936) (Dorothea Lange) [Required]

War Series: The Letter (1946) (Jacob Lawrence)

From the Back Window, 291 (1915) (Alfred Stieglitz)

Art of courage, perseverance (Mike Isaacs)

Women of Courage: Beyond Boundaries (Andrea Harris)