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TREE Academy - English Department

Summer 2022

Suggested Summer Reading

NOTE:

The suggested summer reading assignments and other suggested English development programs are purely optional and merely suggestions from the English department. Students will not be graded or quizzed on these assignments at the return of school, and there will be no assignments attached during the school year contingent upon these assignments. The suggested reading material on this list may or may not be included in students’ English curricula during the school year. However, each teacher has carefully selected their suggestions based on the curriculum for the upcoming year, and students will benefit from these assignments and will be able to use them as references in future assignments (essays, discussions, etc.).

English Development Programs

In strengthening their foundations in writing cogently, reading independently, and thinking critically and analytically, TREE Academy students engage with challenging and thought-provoking reading material in each grade level in order to engage in socratic discussion with their instructors and peers and to produce increasingly more sophisticated writing assignments. During the school year, reading material includes rhetoric, poetry, short stories; plays, critical essays, articles and novels.

9th Grade

Novels

I'll Give You The Sun - Jandy Nelson

The novel follows a set of twins, Jude and Noah. Although they were incredibly close at thirteen, three years later they are hardly speaking to each other. The early years are narrated by Noah as he struggles with an enormous secret that affects his past, present, and future. The later years are narrated by Jude as her life changes when she meets an arrogant and broken, yet beautiful boy. Jude also encounters a tormented, mysterious artist—an even more unpredictable force that changes her life, and Noah's, forever.

The Poet X - Elizabeth Acevedo

Xiomara Batista is a fifteen-year-old Dominican teenager living in Harlem who loves to write poetry. Though she longs to share it with the world, her religious mother is only concerned with her being confirmed, which has been put off for three years. She feels inferior to her brother, Xavier (affectionately called Twin) as he receives much praise for his work. During the school year, she develops a love for her lab partner, Aman. However, the relationship is broken when her mother sees them kissing on a train. Eventually, her mother finds her poetry, forcing a confrontation between the two.

9th Grade

10th Grade

Novels

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 is set in a dystopian society that burns books in order to control dangerous ideas and unhappy concepts. The novel tells the story of Guy Montag, a fireman who questions the book-burning policy and undergoes extraordinary suffering and transformation as a result.

Looking for Alaska - John Greene

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

10th Grade

11th Grade

The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore CooperDeep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas become embroiled in the bloody battles of the French and Indian War. The abduction of the beautiful Munro sisters by hostile savages, the treachery of the renegade brave Magua, the ambush of innocent settlers, and the thrilling events that lead to the final tragic confrontation between rival war parties create an unforgettable, spine-tingling picture of life on the frontier. And as the idyllic wilderness gives way to the forces of civilization, the novel presents a moving portrayal of a vanishing race and the end of its way of life in the great American forests.

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones is a 2002 novel by American writer Alice Sebold. It is the story of a teenage girl who, after being raped and murdered, watches from her personal Heaven as her family and friends struggle to move on with their lives while she comes to terms with her own death.

11th Grade
12th Grade

12th Grade

The Bell jar - Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar details the life of Esther Greenwood, a college student who dreams of becoming a poet. She is selected for a month-long summer internship as a guest editor of Ladies' Day magazine, but her time in New York City is unfulfilling as she struggles with issues of identity and societal norms.

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative serves as a study of institutional processes and the human mind, including a critique of psychiatry and a tribute to individualistic principles.

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