2007 Summer Reading - Ninth Grade
 (printable format)

Students are to choose THREE books to read. For ONE book, the student will make an 8 1/2 x 11 poster that contains the following information:

An artistic representation means a drawing, magazine cut outs that represent your thoughts or perhaps even a 3-D representation of some important aspect of the book. The poster should be cardboard or poster board but not to exceed 8 1/2 x 11" size poster. The English teacher will tell you the type of assessment style for the other two books during the second week of September. This project will be due during the second week of school.
 

Summer Reading 2007 Book List

Atwater-Rhodes, Amelia -Shattered Mirror
 As seventeen-year-old Sarah, daughter of a powerful line of vampire-hunting witches, continues to pursue the ancient bloodsucker Nikolas, she finds herself in a dangerous friendship with two vampire siblings in her high school.

Anderson, Laurie Raise - Fever 1793
 Fever 1793 is based on an actual epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia that wiped out 5,000 people-- or 10 percent of the city's population--in three months.

Blais, Madeleine - In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle
 Chronicles one basketball season of a girls' high school team in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Card, Orson Scott - Ender's Game
 Ender, who is the result of genetic experimentation, may be the military genius Earth needs in its war against an alien enemy.

Chbosky, Stephen -The Perks of Being a Wallflower
 Charlie, a freshman in high school, explores the dilemmas of growing up through a collection of letters he sends to an unknown receiver.

Curtis, Christopher Paul - Bucking the Sarge
Luther is one of the wealthiest 15 year olds in Flint, Michigan.  He is in an enviable position…or is he.  He runs the Happy Neighbor Group Home for Men, all the while dreaming of going to college, becoming a philosopher, and having to deal with his difficult mother.

Farmer, Nancy - Sea of Trolls
After Jack becomes apprenticed to a Druid bard, he and his little sister Lucy are captured by Viking Berserkers and taken to the home of King Ivar the Boneless and his half-troll queen, leading Jack to undertake a vital quest to Jotunheim, home of the trolls.

Finn, Alex – Nothing to Lose
A year after running away with a traveling carnival to escape his unbearable home life, sixteen-year-old Michael returns to Miami, Florida, to find that his mother is going on trial for the murder of his abusive stepfather.

Katz, Jon - Geeks : How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho
 Tells the true story of Jesse and Eric.. nineteen-year-old roommates in the small town of Caldwell, Idaho who changed their lives and built a new future for themselves with the power of the Internet.

Levitin, Sonia - The Cure
 A young boy living in 2407 collides with the past when he finds himself in Strasbourg in 1348 confronting the anti-Semitism that sweeps through Europe during the Black Plague.

Mowry, Jess - Babylon Boyz
 Inner-city teenagers find a suitcase full of cocaine and must decide whether to sell it and take the opportunities the money would provide or to destroy it to keep the drug from poisoning their community.

Myers, Walter Dean - Bad Boy: A Memoir
 Author Walter Dean Myers describes his childhood in Harlem in the 1940s and 1950s, discussing his loving stepmother, his problems in school, his reasons for leaving home, and his beginnings as a writer.

Myers, Walter Dean - Fallen Angels
 Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

Nye, Naomi Shihab – Habibi
When fourteen-year-old Liyanne Abboud, her younger brother, and her parents move from St. Louis to a new home between Jerusalem and the Palestinian village where her father was born, they face many changes and must deal with the tensions between Jews and Palestinians.

Oates, Joyce Carol -Big mouth & ugly girl
While horsing around in the high school cafeteria, Matt Donaghy makes some remarks that land him in a world of trouble.  Only the resolutely individualistic, somewhat frightening Ursula Riggs, a girl he barely knows, is willing to speak up on Matt's behalf..

Plum-Ucci, Carol- The Body of Christopher Creed
 Torey Adams, a high school junior with a seemingly perfect life, struggles with doubts and questions surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the class outcast.

Porter, Connie Rose- Imani All Mine
Tasha, a fifteen-year-old mother, is proud of her baby and is determined to be a good parent to her child, but she must draw upon her newfound faith to go on when tragedy strikes.

Reese, Celia - Witch Child
In 1659, fourteen-year-old Mary Newbury keeps a journal of her voyage from England to the New World and her experiences living as a witch in a community of Puritans near Salem, Massachusetts.

Rennison, Louise - On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God; Further Confessions of Georgia Nicolson
 Fourteen-year-old Georgia continues her diary in which she records her misadventures trying to reclaim the attention of seventeen-year-old Robbie, while coping with her friends, family, and dog-like cat Angus at the same time.

Sones, Sonya – One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies
Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.

Uchida, Yoshiko - A Jar of Dreams
 A young girl grows up in a closely-knit Japanese American family in California during the 1930's, a time of great prejudice.

Williams-Garcia, Rita - Like Sisters on the Homefront
 Troubled fourteen-year-old Gayle is sent down South to live with her uncle and aunt, where her life begins to change as she experiences the healing power of the family.

Woods, Brenda - Emako Blue
 Monterey, Savannah, Jamal, and Eddie have never had much to do with each other until Emako Blue shows up at chorus practice, but just as the lives of the five Los Angeles high school students become intertwined, tragedy tears them apart.

Wittlinger, Ellen - Razzle 
 About how one boy's Cape Cod summer provides valuable insight into topics that teens endlessly struggle with, the nature of friendship, the difference between infatuation and love, and inner versus outer beauty.

Wolff, Virginia Euwer - Make Lemonade
 In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn baby sits for a teenage mother.

Yep, Laurence - Dragon's Gate
 A fifteen-year-old Chinese boy is sent to America to join his father, an uncle, and other Chinese working to build a tunnel for the transcontinental railroad through the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1867.