Grade 11 Reading List 2009/2010

Students should choose one memoir and one non-fiction and six contemporary novels at least two of which must be a classic novel for their independent reading for the year. You must keep a daily Reading Log.  You will submit three Book reviews during the year.

 

Memoirs

 

Smashed-a story of a drunken girlhood

Koren Zailckas

Reading level 9

Plot
Koren Zailckas, 24, examines her own alcohol abuse as a young teenager. She experiences out of control parties, blackouts, a trip to the hospital and the depression of the problems that impact her life until she is finally able to tackle her problems and right herself.

 

Cockeyed-a memoir

Ryan Knighton

Reading Level 7

When Ryan turns 18, he is diagnosed with a disease causing progressive blindness. His experiences of dating, falling in love, hiding and finally coming to terms with his disability offers insight into our culture, identity, and values.

An Ordinary Man

Tom Zoellner

Reading Level

Plot
During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Paul Ruseasabagina, the manager of the upscale Hotel Milles Collines, manages to save not only his immediate family, but more than 1200 other Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees. Using only his verbal skills (and a few well chosen bottles of alcohol), he keeps everyone safe in the hotel for seventy-six days. The story of this remarkable feat is coupled with his personal history, as well as the history of a country that rose at a slow boil to a horrific conclusion while the rest of the world watched.

Catch Me If You Can-the true story of a real fake

Frank W. Abagnale with Stan Redding

Reading Level 8

Plot
Catch Me If you Can is based on the true story of Frank W. Abagnale who, armed with numerous aliases, has come to be known as one of the most daring con men and escape artists in the world. Frank travels the world as a mere teenager, impersonating airline pilots, a professor, doctors, lawyer, and FBI agent in order to forge checks and con people to live a life of luxury.

Come Back to Afghanistan-a California Teenager’s story

Siad Hyder Akbar and Susan Burton

Reading Level 10

Plot
After the fall of the Taliban, Said Hyder Akbar's father returns to Afghanistan from California to play a role in the new government. Said, in his last year of high school and anxious to learn more about his homeland and to record his impressions, accompanies his father back to Afghanistan three summers in a row. As he describes his daily experiences, he reveals much about the land, the people, and the complex history and current situation in Afghanistan. This book conveys the impression that the Afghanistan people want and need the help of outsiders to protect their government, but that Afghanistan is different and more complex than many westerners, including the American military, might think. The reader is left caring about what is happening in Afghanistan, and wanting to know more.

The Glass Castle- a memoir

Jeannette Walls

Reading Level

Plot
This powerful memoir is the story of a young woman's childhood. The narrator shares her experiences of living with an alcoholic father and a mother who likely suffered with some mental health issues. As a result of having unstable parents, the family lived in extreme poverty. Frequently, they were forced to move to varying parts of the USA.

This true story sheds light on the resiliency of the human spirit. The author's experiences show how complicated relationships truly are. Her parents, who were, by generally accepted standards, incompetent, also showed moments of unconditional love. As well, they were able to instil a love for learning in their children even though they were not always attending school and often did not have any food to eat.

 

Anne Frank Remembered

Miep Gies

 

Plot
Miep Gies’ book is an autobiographical account of her early years in Holland and the hiding of the Frank family during World War II. She offers an account of her life as a child refugee being sent from Vienna to Amsterdam, where she is taken in by a family that eventually become her own. Miep meets Otto Frank, father to Anne, when she starts work at his company office. She and Henk, her husband, become friendly with the Franks. As the world is once again drawn into war, Holland is occupied by Nazi Germany. With the occupation comes the persecution and deportation of Jews. The Franks spend two years in hiding. It is with the help of Miep and her husband that Frank family is undiscovered until in August of 1944. The book gives details not only about Miep and the Franks, but also about Amsterdam, the war, and the people’s responses. It uses language from the time, and contains photographs which help the reader connect with the people. It is a mature read.

Three Cups of Tea

Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

The chronicle of a real-life Indiana Jones and his remarkable humanitarian campaign in Pakistan and Afghanistan to build schools for impoverished villages and promote peace.

 

 

 

 

Novels

The Poisonwood Bible

Barbara Kingsolver

 

Plot
Set in the Congo in 1959, a family is led by an overzealous, evangelical Baptist father on a mission to save the souls of the local native Africans. His wife is one of five narrators who tells the story, mingling her version with those of her four daughters. The women slowly become shaken by the challenges of this new culture; however, the father remains steadfast in his goal of baptizing all the villagers. But, the death of her youngest daughter transforms the submissive wife, to an empowered mother, who sets in motion a plan to save herself and the remainder of her family.

 

Radiance

Shaena Lambert

Reading Level 10

Plot

Keiko is a survivor of the nuclear attack at Hiroshima in World War II. She is chosen to represent the anti-nuclear cause in the United States and flown there. She is taken in by a couple in a home-stay situation. She becomes quite close with her home-stay family. The anti-nuclear project forces her to turn on her home-stay family in order to preserve the original purpose of her trip in a story of hope and betrayal. There is continual reference to the Cold War era.

 

The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri

Reading Level 10

Plot
The Namesake begins in India and builds up narrative momentum immediately with an arranged marriage and a deadly train crash. But the story quickly shifts to 1968 Boston where the Ganguli family have moved to begin a new and promising life. Soon Ashima Ganguli is pregnant, and a son, Gogol Ganguli, becomes the beloved first addition to their family and a symbol of their new hope. But as he grows up, Gogol seemingly rejects first his name, which he perceives as foreign and foolish, and then further markers of his Bengali heritage. It is his precarious and often exhausting negotiation of old world traditions balanced against new world habits that forms the central motif of the story. Lahiri paints an intimate collection of almost mundane suburban scenes that, bound together, illustrate an expansive family landscape where bonds cannot be broken, even across oceans.

The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Amy Tan

Plot
The novel tells the story of a contemporary, Chinese/American middle aged woman dealing with her mother’s rapid decline into Alzheimer’s and her own struggling relationship with her chosen partner. When she begins to read her mother’s written account of her own life in China and her life in America, she learns more than she realizes, about not only her mother, but herself as well.

Sold

Patricia McCormick

Reading Level 7

Plot
Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut in the mountains of Nepal. Her family is desperately poor. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid working for a wealthy family in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi undertakes the long journey to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution. An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family's debt – then cheats Lakshmi of her meagre earnings so she can never leave. Lakshmi becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother's words – "Simply to endure is to triumph" – and gradually she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision – will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life? Written in spare and evocative prose, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.

A  Kind of Courage

Colleen Hefferman

Reading Level

Plot
The story takes place from 1910 to 1918 and is set in the Canadian Prairie and is told in two voices. The first belongs to Hattie, a farm girl, and the second belongs to David, a city boy from a well to do family. Hattie's story explores loss suffered in war. Her mother is broken when her older brother enlists. While Hattie does her best to help with farm work, it is not enough. Father seeks outside help and brings a CO to the farm. The children are disgusted. The conscientious objector is David. His story explores belief and personal integrity. In an interesting twist of fate, it was his relationship with a German immigrant organist that made him aware of the biases around him that seemed based on emotion rather than fact. As the two story tellers lives become entwined, David's story prevails and he wins Hattie over with his courage.

A Bend in the River

V.S. Naipaul

Reading Level 10

Plot
Set in an unnamed African country after independence, the book is narrated by Salim, an ethnic Indian Muslim and a shopkeeper in a small, growing city in the country's remote interior. Though born and raised in another country in a more cosmopolitan city on the coast during the colonial period, as neither European nor fully African, Salim observes the rapid changes in his homeland with an outsider's distance.

The Last Town on Earth

Thomas Mullen

Reading Level 9

Commonwealth was built on hope. In reaction to labour unrest, Charles and Rebecca Worthy created this town to prove that a mill can be both sustainable and equitable. This, however, was before the influenza epidemic began ravaging the country which already is at war. In an attempt to keep their town safe, the townsfolk vote to implement a quarantine, placing armed guards at its entrance to keep out anybody who might be a threat. When a weak soldier stumbles out of the forest pleading for food, he is shot while attempting to break the quarantine. As those who know of the shooting are forced to grapple with the moral implications of this act and the quarantine as a whole, the illness eventually takes hold, ultimately threatening the very foundation of this Utopian town.

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

 

Plot
Life of Pi is a story of survival divided into three parts. Part I establishes the background of the protagonist and his voice, that of an adult recalling an incredible experience. Pi’s formative years occur in India, where he learns that animals are conditioned creatures of habit and that true religion is based on loving God. Part II, the longest section in the novel, deals with Pi's physical ordeal at sea and his psychological survival. Initially, Pi finds himself adrift in a lifeboat accompanied by a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger. After a terrifying struggle for dominance among the animals, Pi manages to keep the 450 lb. cat content and subservient for 227 days. While the reader is drawn into the realism of Pi's relationship with the tiger, the latter events of Part II become surreal when Pi and the tiger encounter a mysterious stranger adrift at sea, and then a carnivorous island. Part III serves as the denouement, where Pi washes ashore in Mexico and is interrogated in his hospital bed by Japanese insurance investigators. They badger Pi for a plausible story, leaving all to question what actually happened during Pi's adventure at sea.

Water for Elephants

Sara Gruen

Reading Level 8 (mature)

Plot
Orphaned by the death of his parents in an accident, the protagonist abandons his studies at an Ivy League school for the life of a hobo in Depression era America. He falls in with a travelling circus where his training as a veterinarian student gives him a job and the opportunity to observe and interact with a cast of extraordinary characters

The Things they Carried -a work of fiction

Tim O’Brien

Plot
This novel is a series of short stories which work together to create a whole. Through it we gain some insight into what life was like for a company of young, American soldiers, struggling to survive during the Vietnam war.

After River

Donna J. Milner

Reading Level 9

Plot
A complex story of how a small-town teen's life changes from one of near idealism, to one of devastation as her life, and that of her family, is torn apart after a Vietnam war resister comes to stay with the family one summer. The story is told in present tense and flashback, alternating between the protagonist's life as an adult woman, and who she was as a teen. Some students may need support with this style.

The Chrysalids

John Wyndham

Reading Level

Plot
“The Chrysalids” portrays a post-apocalyptic society suffering from the long term effects of radiation. As a result, the society withdraws into itself, creating a small, xenophobic world where all must adhere to its extremist Christian beliefs, in particular the notion that “man is created in God’s image.” As a result, all “mutants” are dealt with severely. When the young protagonist learns that he, and a few others, has telepathic abilities, the novels becomes a fight for survival.

 

Someday this pain will be useful to you

Peter Cameron

Plot / Reasons for Recommendation
This coming-of-age tale features a protagonist named James who is nearing graduation and struggles with his trying to find and love his true self. He deals with questions around sexuality and his academic future as well as his familial relationships. James is a loner with a strong voice, much like Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye.

 

To Kill A Mockingbird

Harper Lee

 

Plot
This story takes place in small town Alabama, during the Depression. The novel takes the reader through three years in the lives of young Scout Finch, and her brother Jem. Harper Lee introduces a varied cast of characters, White and Black. The central event of the story is Scout's father defending a young black man accused of raping a white woman. The author explores themes of growing up, race relations, and the meaning of justice.

 

 

Natasha and other stories

David Bezmozgis

Reading Level10

Natasha follows the story of a family who fled Russia in search of a better life in Canada. From the point of view of the son Mark, the novel chronicles stories of this family from their efforts to fit into a new life to Mark's relationship with the alluring and sexually experienced Natasha.

 

The Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time

Mark Haddon

The Boy in the striped pajamas

John Boyne

Reading Level8

DVD Available

Classic Fiction

 

 

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

 

The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane

A young soldier tells his story of the American Civil War.

 

Pride and Prejudice

Emma

Jane Austen

 

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte

 

Jane, who survives an unhappy childhood in an orphanage embarks on a career as a governess, and falls in love with a man whose terrible secret is revealed on her wedding day.

 

 

 

Wuthering Heights

Charlotte Bronte

 

Plot
This is the classic story of an unwanted upper middle class orphan sent to Lowood girl's school, where the stoic doctrine of poverty and privation is meted out to the students. Jane rises above the treatment to become a governess in a private manor, Thornfield, owned by Rochester. At Thornfield Manor, Jane falls in love with the much older Rochester who reciprocates but whose past prevents a marriage. There is a mad woman in the attic who is in fact married to Rochester yet. Jane leaves Thornfield with nothing and survives by the kindness of three siblings living at Moor House. The male sibling, St. John, a clergyman, finds a job for Jane in a charity school. A long lost uncle bequeaths 20,000 pounds to Jane who shares with the siblings whom she finds out are in fact relations to her. St. John proposes loveless marriage to Jane. She returns to a burned down Thornfield to confirm Rochesters condition which has declined since Jane left. They meet and finally get married.

 

The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane

A young soldier tells his story of the American Civil War.

 

Under Western Eyes

Joseph Conrad

An intense novel set in Russia in 1911.

 

The Tale of Two Cities

David Copperfield

Charles Dickens

 

Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas

Historical romantic novel set in France in the 17^th century.

 

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Animal Farm

1984

George Orwell

 

The Grapes of Wrath

East of Eden

John Steinbeck

A family of farmers flees from their farm in Oklahoma to California during the depression in the 1930s.

 

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson

 

The Old Man and the Sea or anything else by Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

 

Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Terror

Edgar Allan Poe

 

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Thomas Hardy

A tragic tale of Michael Henchard who sells his wife and daughter and then rises to power to become the mayor of Casterbridge.

 

The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams

 

Journey to the Center of the Earth

 

The War of the Worlds