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English 7
Core Novels
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
Summary:
Here is the story of Tom, Huck, Becky, and Aunt Polly; a tale of adventures,
pranks, playing hookey, and summertime fun. Written by the author sometimes
called "the Lincoln of literature," The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was surprisingly
neither a critical nor a financial success when it was first published
in 1876. It was Mark Twain's first novel. However, since then Tom Sawyer
has become his most popular work, enjoying dramatic, film, and even Broadway
musical interpretations.
The Diary of Anne Frank
Summary:
For almost fifty years, Anne Frank's diary has moved millions with
its testament to the human spirit's indestructibility, but readers have
never seen the full text of this beloved book - until now. This new translation,
performed by Winona Ryder, restores nearly one third of Anne's entries,
excised by her father in previous editions, revealing her burgeoning sexuality,
her stormy relationship with her mother, and more.
Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
Summary:Composed toward the end of the first millennium of our era, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid fight against a dragon. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in Beowulf and its immense emotional credibility, Heaney gives these epic qualities new and convincing reality for the contemporary reader.
Literature Circle Books
Silver by Norma Fox Mazer
Summary:
My mother is determined that I will have a wonderful life - better
than her own. I guess she can't imagine what it is like for me, a kid from
a trailer park, to transfer to the junior high school where all the rich
kids go - the kind of kids who come from homes where my mother works as
a cleaning woman.... But somehow, miraculously, I've become part of a little
clique of pretty and popular girls who have everything money can buy. And
sometimes they also have secrets in their lives more painful than anything
I've ever known.
Holes by Louis Sachar
Summary:
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 Yelnats. Now Stanley has been unjustly
sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the warden makes
the boys "build character" by spending all day, every day, digging holes:
five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn't take long for Stanley to
realize there's more than character improvement going on at Camp Green
Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something.
Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous
tale of crime and punishmentand redemption.
The Language of Goldfish by Zibby O'Neal
Summary:
In this gripping, widely praised novel chronicling a mental breakdown,
the parents and friends of eighth-grader Carrie Stokes do not understand
the seriousness of her frequent daydreams and dizzy spells. Ages 12-up.
(Nov.)
The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Summary:
The Outsiders is a book that delves deeply into the hearts, minds,
and stories of a group that had no voice before S. E. Hinton gave them
one. She began writing the book at age 15, spurred on by the disturbing
trend she saw growing in her high school towards division between groups.
"I was worried and angered by the social situation," Hinton writes. "I
saw two groups at the extreme ends of the social scale behaving in an idiotic
fashion -- one group was being condemned and one wasn't.... When a friend
of mine was beaten up for no other reason than that some people didn't
like the way he combed his hair, I took my anger out by writing about it.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Summary:
First, there were ten - a curious assortment of strangers summoned
as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host,
an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found.
All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to
reveal - and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked
for murder. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there
will be none. And only the dead are above suspicion.
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Summary:
This dramatization of Christie's famous murder mystery is admirably
presented by the BBC. Hercule Poirot unravels a murder when the train from
Istanbul to Paris--the Orient Express--is stopped by a snow drift in the
Balkans. Using his flawless logic and innate ability to evaluate the evidence,
Poirot solves the mystery and the dilemma faced by the occupants of the
coach. The various narrators who portray the story's numerous characters
are uniformly excellent, and the sound quality is good. Recommended for
most mystery collections.