Summer Reading Assignment
Lowell’s English faculty selected the following titles as required summer reading. Please make certain that you have read the two books assigned to your fall English course before you come to school in August. This is a required assignment that will affect the grade you earn in your English class. Early in the semester your English teacher will expect you to demonstrate your ability to identify and understand various literary elements within the works.
To enhance your understanding, ask yourself the following questions as you read:
- Plot What happens in the story? How do events, big and small, affect the characters?
- Characters How would you describe the characters? (Consider what the characters say about themselves or others, how the characters behave and what the narrator says about them.)
- Conflict What problems do the characters face in the story? How do they respond to them?
- Theme What main idea do you think the author is trying to convey? How does the author use the plot, characters, conflict, setting, or other elements to present that idea?
Ninth Grade
Brainard, Cecilia Manguerra When the Rainbow Goddess Wept
Rushdie, Salman Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Tenth Grade
Kingsolver, Barbara The Bean Trees
McBride, James The Color of Water
Tenth Grade Honors
Robinson, Marilynne Housekeeping
Dickens, Charles Great Expectations
Eleventh and Twelfth Grade (This title is for all electives, including Expository Writing and Ms. Innis’s AP Language and Composition course for seniors)
Patchett, Ann Bel Canto
AP 74 (Ritter) (Eleventh Grade)
McCarthy, Cormac The Road
Homer (Robert Fagles’s translation) The Iliad
AP 75 (Moffitt and Yuan) (Eleventh Grade)
Díaz, Junot The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Lee, Chang-Rae Native Speaker
AP 80 (Carney) (Twelfth Grade)
Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
Irving, John A Prayer for Owen Meany
AP 83 (Recht) (Twelfth Grade)
Mahfouz, Naguib Children of Our Alley
Patchett, Ann Bel Canto
