Penncrest High School
Required Summer Reading Program
2017
The goal of the Penncrest Summer Reading Program is to expose students to quality literature that will
inspire them to expand and explore connections to the classroom, to the community, and to the world.
All students entering Penncrest High School’s grades 9 through 12 must select two books to read during
the summer. One selection is a mandatory core reading, and the other may be self-selected. Students
entering Rank Level I and Advanced Placement courses are required to read a third book. Your English
teacher will assess your reading in September. Please bring any optional reading records or completed
parent interview responses with you on the first day of class.
I. Mandatory Core Reading: Choose one (1) book in your incoming grade level category. Students
entering rank 1 or A. P. courses must read two books from the list: the required Rank 1/A.P. book
and any other menu selection.
Grade 9
Grade 10
Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
The Terrorist’s Son by Zak Ebrahim
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Phoenix Island by John Dixon
Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon
Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco Stork
Endangered by Eliot Schrefer
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse
Anderson
Rank One Selection:
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
Rank One Selection:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Grade 11
Grade 12
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman
Alexie
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark
Haddon
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Warrior’s Heart by Eric Greitens
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Rank One Selection:
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Rank One Selection:
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
AP Selection:
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
AP Selection:
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
II. Self-selected Reading: Choose and read a book that interests you. You may choose any book that you
would like to read. See the back of this sheet for more ideas about where to go for ideas.
Ideas for Self-Selected Reading
From Penncrest Students
Promise Not To Tell by Jennifer McMahon
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
Playing For Pizza by John Grisham
Safe Haven by Jodi Picoult
I am Number Four by Piccuras Lore
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Project 17 by Laurie Faria Stolarz
Dog On It! by Spencer Quinn
The Long Walk by Stephen King
Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
On the Edge Allison Van Diepen
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Island by Olivia Levez
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Play Like You Mean It by Rex Ryan
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre
Looking for Alaska by John Green
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
If I was Your Girl by Meredith Russo
The 13 ½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moors
From Penncrest Parents
Twenty Chickens for a Saddle by Robyn Scott
Standing Tall by C. Vivian Stringer
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Cane River by Lalita Tademy
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
From Penncrest Teachers
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Profiles in Courage by John Kennedy
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay Mcinerney
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt Stephen Dubner
Escape from Slavery by Francis Bok
Devil in the White City by Eric Larsen
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred
Lansing
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
The Tequila Worm by Viola Canales
For more ideas, visit these websites:
http://www.ala.org
Untouchables by Narenda Jadhav
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Gifted Hands by Ben Carson and Cecil Murphey
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
The Nightengale by Kristen Hannah
Days of Grace by Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad
Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi
Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell
Breaking Night by Liz Murray
Shantram by Gregory David Roberts
The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
Into Thin Air by John Krakauer
The Pianist by Wladyslaw Szpilman
Homecoming by Cathy Kelly
The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barberry
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes
Moore
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
11/22/63 by Stephen King
The American Library Association
www.reading.org
The International Reading Association
libwww.freelibrary.org/onebook/obop09/index.cfm
“One Book, One Philadelphia”
www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/one-book.html
The Library of Congress