Summer Reading

1. Summer Reading Going into 10th Grade * Honors must choose books with an asterisk

2. * Honors option Lieutenant Jimmy Cross' platoon of soldiers are a group of very young men, most of whom are unprepared for the Vietnam War. They carry heavy rations and supplies, and pictures of their girlfriends, and fear and sadness and confusion. They often pretend that they do not feel as much as they do, because they don't want to look silly to the other soldiers. O’Brien tells this story in an arc of fictional episodes, taking place in the childhoods of its characters, in the jungles of Vietnam and back home in America two decades later.

3. * Honors option Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ... Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness.

4. * Honors option Lily Owens is an emotionally abused white girl living with her cold, uncaring father on a farm in rural South Carolina. The memory of her mother, who was accidentally killed in Lily's presence haunts her constantly. Lily's companion during her childhood has been Rosaleen, the black woman hired to care for her. After Rosaleen goes to town to register to vote she is beaten up and hospitalized. While racial tensions simmer around them, the women help Lily accept her loss and learn the power of forgiveness.

5. * Honors option After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving.

6. On the hot Texas army base she calls home, Katie spends the lazy days of her summer waiting: waiting to grow up; waiting for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her; waiting for the beatings to stop. Since their mother died, Katie and her older sister, Diane, have struggled to understand their increasingly distant, often violent father. While Diane escapes into the arms of her boyfriend, Katie hides in her room or escapes to her best friend's house--until Katie's admiration for her strong-willed sister leads her on an adventure that transforms her life.

7. * Honors option The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves , and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway--a duel between two young magicians, who have been trained since childhood for this purpose. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will.