Summer Reading: AP Literature, Honors 10 Eng, AP Language

Summer 2023

Honors 10 English

Before the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, incoming Honors 10 English students should read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. Students should analyze a character’s development throughout the novel by completing the following:

Double-entry journal: Write down 5 quotations from the novel that demonstrate your chosen character’s development throughout the novel. After each quote, provide three or more sentences that analyze the character at that moment. In other words, what does the reader learn about the character from this quote?
Below your double-entry journal, write 3-5 sentences summarizing your analysis of the character’s development.
The above assignment is due on the first day of school. In addition, students should be prepared to discuss the novel in a Socratic discussion and for an in-class timed writing on the novel during the first week of school.

Questions? Contact Ms. Day at mday@bishopchatard.org, Mrs. Hilton at khilton@bishopchatard.org or Mr. Mann at jmann@bishopchatard.org

AP Literature

Choose one of the books listed below to read and analyze for your summer reading assignment. In addition, complete the following literary analysis assignment for your chosen text.
Before the start of the school year, students should analyze a character’s development throughout the novel by completing the following:

Double-entry journal: Write down 10 quotations from the novel that demonstrate your chosen character’s development throughout the novel. After each quote, provide three or more sentences that analyze the character at that moment. In other words, what does the reader learn about the character from this quote? How is the character developing/changing throughout the course of the plot?
Below your double-entry journal, write 4-6 sentences summarizing your analysis of the character’s development, and what message you believe that the author is attempting to portray through the character’s development.

The assignment is due the first day of school and should be completed electronically. You should also be prepared for a timed writing on your summer reading text during the first week of school.

Questions? Email Ms. Day at mday@bishopchatard.org. She looks forward to having you in class!

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Published in 1849, Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine’s father. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Few creatures of horror have seized readers’ imaginations and held them for so long as the anguished monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The story of Victor Frankenstein’s terrible creation and the havoc it caused has enthralled generations of readers and inspired countless writers of horror and suspense. With Frankenstein, she succeeded admirably in the task she set for herself: to create a story that, in her own words, “would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror — one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.”

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life—until the unthinkable happens.

Published in 2018, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

Fences by August Wilson

Troy Maxson is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s, a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can, a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less. Published in 1985, this is a modern classic, a book that deals with the impossibly difficult themes of race in America, set during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.

*Book summaries are from Amazon.com

AP Language

One of the key elements of AP Language & Composition is being knowledgeable about the world around you AND being able to form a well-educated position about a topic. This assignment is intended to give you a foundation about themes that we will discuss throughout the year. The goal is not just for you to read a nonfiction text but to increase your rhetorical analysis skills, expand your vocabulary, and provide background information on the topics we will cover throughout the school year.

Summer Required Reading

Read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
Submit the written assignment on Day 1 of class
Participate in Socratic Seminars and group discussions during the first week of class.

The Assignment

Do a close reading of the text.Although you do not need to annotate the text, please read closely so that you understand Gladwell’s main points as well as the evidence he presents. Look up words that are unfamiliar; reread passages that are unclear; pause at times to reflect on what he is saying.
As you read, concentrate on Gladwell’s unique definition of success. Notice how he uniquely defines and presents this abstract concept through his chapter titles, research, personal stories, and observations. You will be surprised how much you will learn from this original perspective on success.
For each chapter you will use the following format:
1. Label each chapter.
2. In 3-4 sentences you will write the main claim of that chapter. What point is Gladwell trying to make? What is his argument?
3. After you have decided on Gladwell’s main claim, list a minimum of 5 pieces of evidence that support his main claim. That support may be a quote, a story he has told, research, etc. Each piece of evidence should be a “brief” summary (1-2 sentences at most).
4. Discuss any fallacies you see in his evidence. In other words, are there any problems with the evidence? Are there areas that you don’t quite think are true, or do you personally know instances that disprove Gladwell’s main claim?
5. Finally, what is your opinion of the chapter? What did you find interesting? What did you learn? If you found a chapter uninteresting or confusing, say so and discuss why.
Outliers has 9 chapters, an Introduction, and an Epilogue, so you should have a total of 11 entries, with each entry having the 5 parts outlined above. You may either type your responses into a Google doc that you will submit on the first day of school, or you may handwrite your answers into a notebook that I will collect.

If you have any trouble at all with the assignment or have questions, please do not hesitate to email me over the summer at jmarx@bishopchatard.org or see me in room 308 before school ends on Friday. Do not try to do this assignment the night before school starts. A good plan might be to do a couple of chapters a week to spread out the work. You will really enjoy this book!!