NOHS 2008 Summer Reading

1. NOHS 2008 Summer Reading “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.” -Mark Twain

2. NOHS Summer Reading Requirements • Every student will participate in the Summer Reading Program by reading one book during the summer break. • Choose from the 2008 NOHS Favorites, independent choice, or AP Requirement • Complete a dialectical journal

3. Dialectical Journaling • A dialectical journal is a conversation between you and what you are reading. You simply write down passages that make you think or interest you and write about your thoughts.

4. Dialectical Journaling • This process is an important way to understand a piece of literature. By writing about literature, you make your own meaning of the work in order to truly understand it. When you do this yourself, then the text belongs to you--you have made it yours..

5. Dialectical Journaling • The passages are there for everyone to read; however, the connections and interpretations are uniquely yours. You are neither right or wrong in your response. So be willing to take risks and be honest.

6. Dialectical Journal Template

7. “-they carried like freight trains; they carried it on their backs and shoulders-and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry”. Page 2 O’brien chooses to end the first section of the novel with this sentence. He provides excellent visual details of what each solider in Vietnam would carry for day-to-day fighting. He makes you feel the physical weight of what soldiers have to carry for simple survival. When you combine the emotional weight of loved ones at home, the fear of death, and the responsibility for the men you fight with, with this physical weight, you start to understand what soldiers in Vietnam dealt with every day. This quote sums up the confusion that the men felt about the reasons they were fighting the war, and how they clung to the only certainty - things they had to carry - in a confusing world where normal rules were suspended. Sample Journal Entries

8. “And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men—to feel whether this time the men would break.  The women studied the men’s faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else remained.” Page 6“… the sun was as red as ripe new blood.” Page 6 bemused—“men lost their bemused perplexity.” Page 6 “A huge red transport truck stood in front of the little roadside restaurant.  The vertical exhaust pipe muttered softly, and an almost invisible haze of steel-blue smoke hovered over its end.  It was a new truck, shining red, and in twelve-inch letters on its side—OKLAHOMA CITY TRANSPORT COMPANY.” Page 8 ·         Steinbeck is pointing out the family relationships here—women standing beside their men as the men decide what to do about the situation.·         What is the “something else” that’s referred to in the quote?  Maybe determination or pride?·         Interesting simile, especially for a description of the sun.·         (adj.) preoccupied, stupefied ·         Why does Steinbeck give such intricate details about this truck—where it’s parked, its color, the lettering?  Perhaps it’s going to show a contrast to the Dust Bowl imagery in the first chapter.·         This is something new in a time when many people couldn’t afford much that was new. Sample Journal Entries Grapes of Wrath

9. NOHS Summer Reading Selections for 2008

10. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. 

11. The Arrival by Shaun Tan. In this wordless graphic novel, a man leaves his homeland and sets off for a new country, where he must build a new life for himself and his family.

12. Before I Die by Jenny Downham. A terminally ill teenaged girl makes and carries out a list of things to do before she dies.

13. Buried by Robin MacCready. When her alcoholic mother goes missing, seventeen-year-old Claudine begins to spin out of control, despite her attempts to impose order on every aspect of her life.

14. Firestorm by David Klass. After learning that he has been sent from the future for a special purpose, eighteen-year-old Jack receives help from an unusual dog and a shape-shifting female fighter

15. First Shot by Walter Sorrells. As David enters his senior year of high school, a family secret emerges that could solve the mystery of why his mother was murdered two years ago.

16. General Winston’s Daughter by Sharon Shinn. Seventeen-year-old heiress Averie Winston travels with her guardian to faraway Chiarrin, a country her father's army has occupied, and once she arrives and is reunited with her fiance, she discovers that her notions about politics, propriety, the military, and even her intended have changed.

17. Gym Candy by Carl Deuker. Groomed by his father to be a star player, football is the only thing that has ever really mattered to Mick Johnson,who works hard for a spot on the varsity team his freshman year, then tries to hold onto his edge by using steroids, despite the consequences to his health and social life.

18. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. Ishmael Beah, now 25 years old, tells how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

19. Red Glass by Laura Resau. Sixteen-year-old Sophie has been frail and delicate since her premature birth, but discovers her true strength during a journey through Mexico, where the six-year-old orphan her family hopes to adopt was born, and to Guatemala, where her would-be boyfriend hopes to find his mother and plans to remain.

20. Slam by Nick Hornby. At the age of fifteen, Sam Jones' girlfriend gets pregnant and Sam's life of skateboarding and daydreaming about Tony Hawk changes drastically.

21. Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr. In the three years since her father caught her in the back seat of a car with an older boy, sixteen-year-old Deanna's life at home and school has been a nightmare, but while dreaming of escaping with her brother and his family, she discovers the power of forgiveness.

22. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.

23. Trigger by Susan Vaught. Teenager Jersey Hatch must work through his extensive brain damage to figure out why he decided to shoot himself.

24. Twisted Laurie Halse Anderson. After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts .

25. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini  Publishers Weekly Review: /* Starred Review * Afghan-American novelist Hosseini follows up his bestselling The Kite Runner with another searing epic of Afghanistan in turmoil. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny through the lives of two women. Mariam is the scorned illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, forced at age 15 into marrying the 40-year-old Rasheed, who grows increasingly brutal as she fails to produce a child. Eighteen later, Rasheed takes another wife, 14-year-old Laila, a smart and spirited girl whose only other options, after her parents are killed by rocket fire, are prostitution or starvation. Against a backdrop of unending war, Mariam And Laila become allies in an asymmetrical battle with Rasheed.

26. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bomb by Adrienne Mayer  Review from Amazon.com Greek Fire is an extraordinary book. To put the subject of the book plainly, it deals with biological and chemical warfare in the ancient world from myth to history. I had not given much thought to the use of chemical and biological agents in the ancient world, focusing instead on the more familiar weaponry and tactics. The majority of historians and certainly the people we know probably believe that chemical weapons were created in World War I, with the advent of mustard and other gasses. This is very far from the truth and Adrienne Mayor provides us with the missing link in the ancient world: the use of dangerous agents to cause mass destruction.

27. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer  Review from Amazon.com Reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion, Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996. He hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours. As he turned to begin the perilous descent from 29,028 feet (roughly the cruising altitude of an Airbus jetliner), twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly to the top, unaware that the sky had begun to roil with clouds.... "This is the terrifying story of what really happened that fateful day at the top of the world, during what would be the deadliest season in the history of Everest. This powerful, cautionary tale of an adventure gone horribly wrong is a must-read.

28. Life of Pi by Yan Martel  Pi Patel, a young man from India, tells how he was shipwrecked and stranded in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger for 227 days. This outlandish story is only the core of a deceptively complex three-part novel about, ultimately, memory as a narrative and about how we choose truths. Pi, regardless of what actually happened to him, earns our trust as a narrator and a character, and makes good, in his way, on the promise in the last sentence of part one--that is, just before the tiger saga--“This story has a happy ending.” If Martel’s strange, touching novel seems a fable without quite a moral, or a parable without quite a metaphor, it still succeeds on its own terms. Oh, the promise in the entertaining “Author’s Note” that this is a “story that will make you believe in God” is perhaps excessive, but there is much in it that verifies Martel’s talent and humanist vision. (Reviewed May 15, 2002) -- Will Hickman

29. Smashed by Koren Zailckas Review from Amazon.com Karen Zailckas recalls her years of binge drinking in college and the effects it had on her relationship and mental state.  “Smashed blows to smithereens the myth that alcohol is the ‘safe drug’ in young people’s lives. Koren Zailckas puts a personal face on the leading drug problem among our youth, and shows the side of teen drinking that won’t appear in a beer ad.” –David Jernigan, Ph.D., research director, Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, Georgetown University.

30. Stuck in Neutral By Terry Truman Review by Booklist Review Shawn McDaniel thinks his father is considering killing him. Of course, no one knows that Shawn is able to think at all because the 14-year-old, who has cerebral palsy, can't speak, interact, or control his movements and bodily functions. But Shawn is also a genius; he remembers everything that he hears and is even able to read. And one more thing--the seizures, which his family members find so pitiable, release his soul in a way that allows him to move about the universe and feel and see things that would be impossible to experience in his trapped body. Shawn would like to live, but he understands that his father, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, who won the award for a poem about Shawn, wants him dead for the most unselfish reasons. This short novel packs a punch that transcends its length. Readers spend the whole book inside Shawn's head, a place that is so vivid, so unique they will be hard pressed to forget its mix of heaven and hell. Nor will they easily stop thinking about all the big issues Shawn raises--not just about life and death, but also about the meaning of freedom, and about the responsibility that comes with love. One wonders how Truman could write something so close to the bone--until the author's note reveals that he is the father of a son like Shawn. An intense reading experience. ((Reviewed July 2000)) -- Ilene Cooper

31. The Education of a Coach by David Halberstam  Review from Amazon.com Joan Vennochi, a political writer who rarely writes about sports said this of Bill Belichick. "Belichick, she noted, wasn't 'glib or glitzy'. At press conferences he sometime seems a little goofy and is often way too grim. But he is a leader without the swagger, selfishness, and pomposity that so many men in business, politics, and sports embrace as an entitlement of their gender and posture." This is not just a book about a man, or just about a coach, or just about a game, or just about football. This is a book about a man, who is a coach, who happens to love football, and the manner in which this man leads his life. David Halberstam, who has written his twentieth book, the last fourteen of which have been best sellers; and the last six, based on sports, has written the coach's coach book in "The Education of a Coach". He has been able to dig deep inside of this man, Bill Belichick. The man who has come to be known as the best professional football coach of our era.

32. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne  Review from Amazon.com This is a high-adventure novel. A German scientist puts together an expedition to follow successfully in the tracks of a previous, attempt to reach the center of the Earth. In Verne's time, it was not known that the Earth had a molten core, and the nature of the core, while believed by many to be molten, was debated. The expedition encounters many unexpected creatures, land-forms, plants, and obstacles. The pace of the writing is very fast, in general, with a few digressions to explain scientific debates. The science in the novel is actually superior to the science of the film, as the dinosaurs of the book are more believable than those of the film. Definitely a fun read!

33. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer  Review from Amazon.com  John Krakauer's novel "Into the Wild" is both a chronicle of the life and time's of American college grad turned Luddite drifter Chris McCandless, and a reflection on people whose somewhat anti-society type views lead them to embrace exploring the outer limits of Nature's dangerous boundaries. Krakauer chronicles the adventure of Chris McCandless, a college graduate who for years has his eyes set on a goal of both personal and spiritual definition as well as outcasting himself from the very society he often loathes. Although the text on the front of this book already spells Chris's fate, the harrowing, chancy and sometimes exhilarating journey that took him there is not lost on this reader. As the saying goes, life is a journey not a destination, and for Chris it is the friendships he accrues as well as the things he learns within himself that make his story so memorable.

34. Fidget's by Jennifer French What's it like to live in a young body and mind while struggling with ADD/ADHD? And how does it feel to have to live with a loved one suffering with this disorder? FIDGETS is an eye-opening novel written especially for teens. Mildred Patterson owns THE OLD HAS-BEEN ANTIQUE SHOP in Evergreen Colorado. Her daughter, Betsy, "keeps hoping a two-ton leech will swallow up her immature, older brother and regurgitate him back up, whole and well." Eventually, and after much heartache, the Patterson family unravels the mystery, finds the culprit (ADD/ADHD) and finally makes an arrest . "a rest" well-deserved by everyone involved. After many years of total chaos, fear, frustration and little hope, this family finally finds an effective treatment; an alternative to Ritalin and other invasive-type drugs. There have been hundreds of non-fiction books written about ADD/ADHD and many are written with 'ho-hum' dry facts. FIDGETS, on the other hand, is a novel that captivates, informs and inspires readers with plenty of action, humor and clear lessons for coping with this little-understood affliction. This entertaining story concludes with a 'new sign of the times' being posted at the store: THE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE