DVFS Upper School Summer Reading 2015 July 2, 2015 updated Dear Students & Parents,
After receiving positive feedback about last year’s community-oriented summer reading
project, we will again use this model for the assignment in 2015. Accordingly, rising
upper school students will read two books of their own choosing, according to individual
taste. The only restrictions we ask are that these two books be within a reasonable
reading range and that they be from different authors and in different genres. The third
book, however, must come from a list that addresses the theme of “Persistence, Purpose,
and Grit.” These books, which represent a variety of genres and reading levels, have been
selected by a committee of faculty and students both for their literary merit and their
applicability to the Quaker testimony of Community:
•Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
•March by John Lewis (et al.)
•Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
•Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
•Buck: A Memoir by M.K. Asante (this memoir is recommended only for rising Juniors and
Seniors due to explicit language)
When school resumes in September, students and faculty will engage in a query-style
dialogue that uses these texts to explore broader issues of what it means to struggle,
persist, and ultimately, prevail in the face of adversity in the context of a larger
community. (You will find a brief description for each of these books on the next page.)
As was the case in previous years, students will submit an expanded paragraph book
review for each book when school begins in the Fall.
Thank you in advance for your participation!
The DVFS English Department
P.S. Using audio books to assist you in your reading is not only ok, but strongly
encouraged. See your English teacher for help in setting up Learning Ally Link on your
phone, iPad, or home computer and for how to put these books on your audio bookshelf
so you can access them over the summer when you don’t have access to your school
computer.
(please see the next page for descriptions of each literary selection)
1 DVFS Upper School Summer Reading 2015 July 2, 2015 updated Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
This novel tells the story of a Chinese-American man named Henry Lee who is looking
back at a relationship he had over 50 years ago as a young man with a JapaneseAmerican girl, Keiko. The novel deals with the racism that Henry and Keiko experience
as Asian Americans during WWII, shows how Henry's life unfolds after they were
separated by war (when many Japanese American families were forced into internment
camps), and ultimately explores issues of love, family, and connection that link people
together across cultural differences.
March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
Based on the life of Congressman John Lewis, this memoir recounts the story of how the
son of a black sharecropper in Alabama finds his path to join Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
in the now-infamous march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside of Selma. Unlike
traditional memoirs, the authors use the ‘graphic novel’ form to tell Lewis’s story—and
that of the Civil Rights movement more broadly—visually as well as verbally.
Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
This young adult novel is set in the Warsaw Ghetto at the time of the Holocaust. The
main character is a very young orphan who thinks his name is "Stopthief." As he
struggles to survive on the streets of the Ghetto, he admires the Nazis who patrol the area
and helps provide food to other orphans. His experiences bring him to the realization that
no one is safe from the treachery of the Nazis.
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998,
Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the debate
surrounding minimum wage, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the ticket to a
better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $7 an hour? To find out,
Ehrenreich left her home, accepted whatever jobs she was offered, and tried to live only
on what she earned. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity,
anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand
desperate strategies for survival.
Buck: A Memoir by M.K. Asante (this memoir is recommended only for rising Juniors
and Seniors due to explicit language)
Buck is a coming-of-age story about navigating the wilds of urban America and the
shrapnel of a self-destructing family. MK Asante was born in Zimbabwe to American
parents: his mother a dancer, his father a revered professor. But as a teenager, MK is
alone on the streets of North Philadelphia, swept up in a world of drugs, sex, and
violence. MK’s memoir is an unforgettable tale of how one smart, confused kid educated
himself through gangs, rap, mystic cults, ghetto philosophy, and, eventually, books.
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