Summer Reading Program: Seniors 2018-2019 - Central Catholic ...
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Summer Reading Program: Seniors
2018-2019
The goals of the Central Catholic High School summer reading program are to encourage
students to read, improve their reading skills, and have knowledge of modern authors. Students
who read are better academic achievers and, for that reason, summer reading is essential.
Contemporary works are stressed.
1. All students are required to participate in the summer reading program. Seniors in the AP
course and the Humanities and Theater course have their own reading list and
assignments, provided by the teacher.
2. All seniors must read the required selection (The Kite Runner) and two additional
selections from this list. Seniors in the Honors class must read two additional required
novels (I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai and Jarhead by Anthony Swofford).
3. All seniors will complete the Summer Reading Double Entry Journal Assignment before
the first week of school. Due date for Double Entry Journals is Friday, August 31,
2018 by 11:59 PM on Turnitin; no late assignments will be accepted. The Double
Entry Journals will be worth 25% of an essay grade in your Senior English course. Please
see the Summer Reading Double Entry Journal Assignment document for further details.
4. Each grade level has a devoted Summer Reading page on Moodle. Please consult this
page for copies of this list, the Summer Read Double Entry Journal Assignment, and a
forum in which you may post questions about the novels. These pages will be monitored
over the summer by the English faculty.
All seniors must read
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the
son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is
in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the
possibility of redemption and it is also about the power of fathers over sons-their love, their
sacrifices, their lies. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner tells a
sweeping story of family, love, and friendship against a backdrop of history that has not been
told in fiction before, bringing to mind the large canvases of the Russian writers of the nineteenth
century. But just as it is old-fashioned in its narration, it is contemporary in its subject-the
devastating history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years. As emotionally gripping as it is
tender, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful debut.
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2018-2019
Additional selections
Night
Elie Wiesel
Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical
account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion
Wiesel, Elie s wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and
spirit truest to the author s original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the
enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world
never forgets man s capacity for inhumanity to man. Night offers much more than a litany of the
daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also
eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any
serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will
be.
Kaffir Boy
Mark Mathabane
Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South
Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites
of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure
his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a
hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to
an American university. This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the
human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. For Mark Mathabane did what no
physically and psychologically battered "Kaffir" from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was
supposed to do - he escaped to tell about it. A unique, first-person account of growing up black
under apartheid.
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
Catch-22 is like no other novel we have ever read. It has its own style, its own rationale, its own
extraordinary character. It moves back and forth from hilarity to horror. It is outrageously funny
and strangely affecting. It is totally original. It is set in the closing months of World War II, in an
American bomber squadron on a small island off Italy. Its hero is a bombardier named
Yossarian, who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he hasn't even met keep
trying to kill him. (He has decided to live forever even if he has to die in the attempt.) His
problem is Colonel Cathcart, who keeps raising the number of missions the men have to fly. The
others range from Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, a dedicated entrepreneur (he bombs his own
airfield when the Germans make him a reasonable offer: cost plus 6%), to the dead man in
Page 2 of 6Summer Reading Program: Seniors
2018-2019
Yossarian's tent; from Major Major Major, whose tragedy is that he resembles Henry Fonda, to
Nately's whore's kid sister; from Lieutenant Scheisskopf (he loves a parade) to Major -- de
Coverley, whose face is so forbidding no one has ever dared ask him his first name; from
Clevinger, who is lost in the clouds, to the soldier in white, who lies encased in bandages from
head to toe and may not even be there at all; from Dori Duz, who does, to the wounded gunner
Snowden, who lies dying in the tail of Yossarian' s plane and at last reveals his terrifying secret.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Jonathan Safran Foer
Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler,
pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is
on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the
lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who. died in the World Trade Center on
9/11. An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he
careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always
dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let
you flyaway? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the
past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams
New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own
way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State
Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at
his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the
spare room of his grandmother’s apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world's great antiwar books. Centering
on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the
mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most.
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Garth Stein
Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an
obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively,
and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car
driver. Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he
sees that life, like racing, isn't simply about going fast. Using the techniques needed on the race
track, one can successfully navigate all of life's ordeals. On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock
of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through: the sacrifices Denny has made
to succeed professionally; the unexpected loss of Eve, Denny's wife; the three-year battle over
Page 3 of 6Summer Reading Program: Seniors
2018-2019
their daughter, Zoe, whose maternal grandparents pulled every string to gain custody. In the end,
despite what he sees as his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift
family, holding in his heart the dream that Denny will become a racing champion with Zoe at his
side. Having learned what it takes to be a compassionate and successful person, the wise canine
can barely wait until his next lifetime, when he is sure he will return as a man.
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into
the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had
given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all
the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed
body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of
Into the Wild. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the
disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he
searches for the clues to the dries and desires that propelled McCandless. Digging deeply, he
takes an inherently compelling mystery and unravels the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull
of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of
a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.
The Help
Kathryn Stockett
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may
have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring
on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the
woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she
has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child.
Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked
the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts
may be broken. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in
Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet
another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her
reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as
can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them
all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and
their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
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2018-2019
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
A searing, post-apocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece. A father
and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save
the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky
is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them
there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk
the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-and each other.
You Shall Know Our Velocity!
Dave Eggers
In his first novel, Dave Eggers has written a moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly
around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound loss. lt
reminds us once again what an important, necessary talent Dave Eggers is. The book has an
unorthodox design. There are no end plates, no title pages, and the text starts on the front cover.
It has no dust jacket, and the plain cardboard covers are bound by black cloth, with the title
embossed on the spine. The cover line reads, in all caps: "Everything within takes place after
Jack died and before my Mom and I drowned in a burning ferry in the cool--tannin-tinted
Guaviare River, in East-central Colombia with forty-two locals we hadn't yet met." The
endpapers are red and contain the copyright page, various thank yous and a dedication to Eggers'
sister Beth, who died last year.
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History AND
Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
Art Spiegelman
Maus I is the first half of the tale of survival of the author's parents, charting their desperate
progress from prewar Poland Auschwitz. Maus II is the continuation, in which the father
survives the camp and is at last reunited with his wife.
*Must be read together as ONE summer reading option
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2018-2019
All the Light We Cannot See
by Anthony Doerr
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works
as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father
builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate
her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the
walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by
the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by
a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new
instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special
assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence,
Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and
Marie-Laure’s converge.
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
by Michael Chabon
The enthralling debut from bestselling novelist Michael Chabon is a penetrating narrative of
complex friendships, father-son conflicts, and the awakening of a young man’s sexual identity.
Chabon masterfully renders the funny, tender, and captivating first-person narrative of Art
Bechstein, whose confusion and heartache echo the tones of literary forebears like The Catcher
in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield and The Great Gatsby’s Nick Carraway. The Mysteries of
Pittsburgh incontrovertibly established Chabon as a powerful force in contemporary fiction, even
before his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay set the
literary world spinning. An unforgettable story of coming of age in America, it is also an
essential milestone in the movement of American fiction, from a novelist who has become one of
the most important and enduring voices of this generation.
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