Phoenixville Area High School Summer Reading 2022 - Theme: The Hero Essential Question: What defines a hero?
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Phoenixville Area High School
Summer Reading 2022
Theme: The Hero
Essential Question: What defines a hero?
The following books represent a range of topics, perspectives, and
experiences. Choose the book that you think you will most enjoy reading.
The Song of Achilles By: Madeline Miller Genre: Young Adult Fiction Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath (Goodreads). Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children By: Ransom Riggs Genre: Young Adult Fiction A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience (Goodreads).
Graceling By: Kristin Cashore Genre: Young Adult Fiction Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug (Goodreads) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy By: Douglas Adams Genre: Science Fiction Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor. Together, this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by a galaxy full of fellow travelers: (Goodreads).
Grunt By: Mary Roach Genre: Nonfiction Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them (Goodreads). Endurance By: Alfred Lansing Genre: Non-Fiction In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age (Goodreads).
Jackaby By: William Ritter Genre: Young Adult Fiction Doctor Who meets Sherlock in William Ritter’s debut novel, which features a detective of the paranormal as seen through the eyes of his adventurous and intelligent assistant in a tale brimming with cheeky humor and a dose of the macabre (Goodreads). The Sports Gene By: David Epstein Genre: Non-fiction We all knew a star athlete in high school. The ones who made it look so easy. Naturals. Or were they? The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training? The truth is far messier than a simple dichotomy between nature and nurture (Goodreads).
They Call Me a Hero By: Daniel Hernandez Genre: Non-fiction When Daniel Hernandez was twenty years old, he was working as an intern for US Representative Gabrielle Giffords. On January 8, 2011, during a “Congress on Your Corner” event, Giffords was shot. Daniel Hernandez’s quick thinking before the paramedics arrived and took Giffords to the hospital saved her life. Hernandez’s bravery and heroism has been noted by many, including President Barack Obama (Goodreads). American Shaolin By: Matthew Polly Genre: Non-fiction Bill Bryson meets Bruce Lee in this raucously funny story of one scrawny American’s quest to become a kung fu master at China’s legendary Shaolin Temple (Goodreads).
Parable of the Sower By: Octavia Butler Genre: Fiction In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future (Goodreads). The Girl from Everywhere By: Heidi Heilig Genre: Young Adult Fiction Nix has spent her entire life aboard her father’s ship, sailing across the centuries, across the world, across myth and imagination. As long as her father has a map for it, he can sail to any time, any place, real or imagined: nineteenth-century China, the land from One Thousand and One Nights, a mythic version of Africa. Along the way they have found crewmates and friends, and even a disarming thief who could come to mean much more to Nix. But the end to it all looms closer every day. Her father is obsessed with obtaining the one map, 1868 Honolulu, that could take him back to his lost love, Nix’s mother. Even though getting it—and going there—could erase Nix’s very existence.
March By: John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell Genre: Graphic Novel March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. One Day By: Gene Weingarten Genre: Non-Fiction On New Year's Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day--chosen completely at random--turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing.
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