Entering 7th Grade

Required
The Giver
Lois Lowry
In Lois Lowry’s Newbery Medal-winning classic, twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community. Life in the community where Jonas lives is idyllic. No one thinks to ask questions. Everyone obeys. Everyone is the same. Except Jonas. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. Told with simplicity, this is a story of a boy who experiences something incredible and
undertakes something impossible. In the telling it questions every value we have taken for granted and reexamines our most deeply held beliefs. The Giver has become one of the most influential novels of our time.

7th Graders Also Choose One Novel from the Following List
Third Novel is Student Choice
How to Catch a Bogle
By Catherine Jinks
How to Catch a Bogle is a thrilling fantasy that blends Dickensian charm and great suspense. This book is wonderful both as a thrilling fantasy and a charming period piece, and it’s all the better because of the way these strong elements are combined. This is a novel that can make fantasy lovers out of historical fiction fans, and vice versa. (Review by Barbara Shultz for Common Sense Media).

I Lived on Butterfly Hill
By Marjorie Agosin
An eleven-year-old’s world is upended by political turmoil in this “lyrically ambitious tale of exile and reunification” (Kirkus Reviews) from an award-winning poet, based on true events in Chile. Celeste Marconi is a dreamer. She lives peacefully among friends and neighbors and family in the idyllic town of Valparaiso, Chile—until one day when warships are spotted in the harbor and schoolmates start disappearing from class without a word. Celeste doesn’t quite know what is happening, but one thing is clear: no one is safe, not anymore.

Holes
Louis Sachar
Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the
boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes. (Review from Amazon)

Entering 8th Grade

Required
To Kill A Mockingbird
By Harper Lee
Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus–three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

8th Graders Also Choose One Novel from the Following List
Third Novel is Student Choice

A Single Shard
By Linda Sue Park
In this Newbery Medal-winning book set in 12th century Korea, Tree-ear, a 13-year-old orphan, lives under a bridge in Ch’ulp’o, a potters’ village famed for delicate celadon ware. He has become fascinated with the potter’s craft; he wants nothing more than to watch master potter Min at work, and he dreams of making a pot of his own someday. When Min takes Tree-ear on as his helper, Tree-ear is elated — until he finds obstacles in his path: the backbreaking labor of digging and hauling clay, Min’s irascible temper, and his own ignorance. But Tree-ear is determined to prove himself — even if it means taking a long, solitary journey on foot to present Min’s work in the hope of a royal commission . . . even if it means arriving at the royal court with nothing to show but a single celadon shard.

Bud, Not Buddy
By Christopher Paul Curtis
It’s 1936, in Flint, Michigan, and when 10-year-old Bud decides to hit the road to find his father, nothing can stop him.

The Diary of a Young Girl
By Anne Frank
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen – year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annex” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever- present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period.

Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier
With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten—a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house’s current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim’s first wife—the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca.

Entering 9th Grade

Required
Of Mice and Men
By John Steinbeck
“A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression
They are an unlikely pair: George is “small and quick and dark of face”; Lennie,
a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have
formed a “family,” clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.
Laborers in California’s dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can,
living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own
an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a
ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within
their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a
flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie’s unswerving
obedience to the things George taught him.”

9th Graders Also Choose
One Novel from the Following List:

Third Novel is Student Choice
The Old Man and the Sea
By Ernest Hemingway
“The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s most enduring
works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of
an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal, a
relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf
Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the
classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won
from loss.
Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed Hemingway’s
power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his
winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.”

My Name is Asher Lev
By Chaim Potok
“Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a
day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe.
He grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a
world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. He
is torn between two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other
devoted only to art and his imagination, and in time, his artistic gift
threatens to estrange him from that world and the parents he adores.
As it follows his struggle, My Name Is Asher Lev becomes a luminous,
visionary portrait of the artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant.”

Life of Pi
By Yann Martel
“Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an
encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of
stories and practices not only his native Hinduism but also Christianity
and Islam. When Pi is 16, his family emigrates from India to North
America aboard a Japanese cargo ship along with their zoo animals
bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a
lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra,
and Richard Parker, a 450 pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has
dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to
coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. When they finally
reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to
be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to
believe his story and press him to tell them “the truth”. After hours of
coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much
more conventional – but is it more true?
Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival
that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative
nature of fiction. It’s a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in
God.”

Entering 10th Grade

Required
Lord of Flies
By William Golding
Golding’s iconic 1954 novel remains one of the greatest books ever written
for young adults and an unforgettable classic for readers of any age.
At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island,
stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their
freedom is something to celebrate. This far from civilization they can do
anything they want. Anything. But as order collapses, as strange howls echo
in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far
removed from reality as the hope of being rescued.

10th Graders Also Choose
One Novel from the Following List:
Third Novel is Student Choice
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
By Carson McCullers
“Carson McCullers was all of 23 when she published her first novel, The
Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. She became an overnight literary sensation, and
soon such authors as Tennessee Williams were calling her “the greatest
prose writer that the South [has] produced.” The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
tells an unforgettable tale of moral isolation in a small southern mill town in
the 1930s.
Richard Wright was astonished by McCullers’s ability “to rise above the
pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one
sweep of apprehension and tenderness.” Hers is a humanity that touches all
who come to her work, whether for the first time or, as so many do, time and
time again. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is Carson McCullers at her most
compassionate, most enduring best.”

Bless Me, Ultima
By Rudolfo Anaya
“Although only six years old, Antonio Marez is perceptive beyond his years.
He was brought into the world with the help of Ultima, a curandera, or folk
healer, in touch with nature and the spirit world. Revered by some as a
wisewoman but rebuked by others as a witch, Ultima has now come back to
stay with Tony’s family in New Mexico. As Tony seeks out his destiny—torn
between his mother’s farming forebears and his father’s wandering vaquero
roots, between Spanish Catholicism and the gods of his indigenous
ancestors—Ultima’s loving tutelage will help him navigate questions of life
and death, good and evil, and reveal to him the vastness of the heritage that
shapes him, in this pioneering work of literature.”

Ethan Frome
By Edith Wharton
“Ethan Frome, written by Edith Wharton, is a classic American novel that
focuses on the story of a broken “ruin of a man” — the titular Ethan Frome —
and the series of misfortunes in life and love that contribute to his fate. Set in
the rural town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, this novel follows Ethan’s
struggles as he attempts to escape his oppressive and loveless marriage to
his sickly wife, Zeena. When a young woman, Mattie Silver, arrives to care
for Zeena, Ethan finds himself torn between his loyalty to his wife and his
growing passionate feelings for Mattie. As Ethan’s life continues to spiral out
of control, the novel culminates in a tragic, heartbreaking finale. Ethan
Frome is a powerful story that highlights the struggles of a man who is
caught between duty and desire. With its powerful themes and unforgettable
characters, it is a must-read for any fan of classic literature.
Originally published in 1911, this novella was an instant classic and is
considered one of Edith Wharton’s most lasting masterpieces. It differs from
Wharton’s other works, in that it focuses on an “ordinary” man — not a
member of the upper class elite society — yet the challenges Ethan Frome
faces are similar to those faced by all of her other famous protagonists: the
conflict between duty and desire.”

The Joy Luck Club
By Amy Tan
“Four Chinese women, drawn together by the shadow of their past, meet in
San Francisco to play mahjong, invest in stocks, eat dim sum, and to “say”
stories to each other. Nearly 40 years later, one of the women has died, and
her daughter arrives to take her place. However, the daughter never
expected to learn of her mother’s secret lifelong wish – and the tragic way in
which it has come true. The revelation creates among the women an urgent
need to remember the past. What is lost between generations and among
friends – and what is salvaged – resonates throughout this novel of friendship
among women and the relations between mothers and daughters.”

Entering 11th Grade

 
Required
The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s portrait of the Jazz Age in all its
decadence and excess, is, as editor Maxwell Perkins praised it in 1924, “a
wonder.” It remains one of the most widely read, translated, admired,
imitated and studied twentieth-century works of American fiction.
This deceptively simple work, Fitzger-ald’s best known, was hailed by critics
as capturing the spirit of the generation.
In Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald embodies some of America’s strongest
obses-sions: wealth, power, greed, and the promise of new beginnings.