High School
Summer Reading 2015
Non-Fiction
Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina
By Michaela De Prince
Michaela De Prince was known as girl Number 27 at the orphanage,
where she was abandoned at a young age and tormented as a "devil
child" for a skin condition that makes her skin appear spotted. But it was
at the orphanage that Michaela would find a picture of a beautiful
ballerina en pointe that would help change the course of her life. At the
age of four, Michaela was adopted by an American family, who
encouraged her love of dancing and enrolled her in classes.
Chocolate: Sweet Science & Dark Secrets of the World's Most
Favorite Treat
By Kay Frydenborg
Chocolate hits all the right sweet--and bitter-- notes: cutting-edge
genetic science whisked in with a strong social conscience, history, and
culture yield one thought-provoking look into one of the world's most
popular foods. Readers who savored Chew on This and Food, Inc. and
lovers of chocolate will relish this fascinating read.
Guilty? Crime, Punishment, and the Changing Face of
Criminal Justice
By Teri Kanefield
When does strategy become cheating? Can good luck be theft? Is killing
always a crime? Real-world cases show there are often no clear-cut
answers in this fascinating look at the ever-evolving world of law and
order, and crime and punishment.
I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives
By Caitlin Alifirenka, and Martin Ganda, with Liz Welch
It started as an assignment. Everyone in Caitlin's class wrote to an
unknown student somewhere in a distant place. All the other kids picked
countries like France or Germany, but when Caitlin saw Zimbabwe writer
on the board, it sounded like the most exotic place she had ever heard
of--so she chose it.
I am Malala: How one Girl Stood up for Education and Changed
the World
By Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai's describes her fight for education for girls under
Taliban rule, the support she received from her parents to pursue an
education, and how the Taliban retaliated against her by trying to kill
her.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and
Redemption
By Laura Hillebrand
Louis Zamperini, who had been rambunctious in childhood before
succeeding in track and eventually serving in the military, which led to a
trial in which he was forced to find a way to survive in the open ocean
after being shot down.
Brown Girl Dreaming
By Jacqueline Woodson
The author shares her childhood memories and reveals the first sparks
that ignited her writing career in free-verse poems about growing up in
the North and South.
Unlikely Warrior: A Jewish Soldier in Hitler's Army
By Georg Rauch
A memoir of an 18-year old part-Jewish youth who, despite his heritage,
is drafted into Hitler's army and sent to serve on the Russian front.
Graphic
Steve Jobs Insanely Great
By Jesse Hartland
Presenting the story of the ultimate American entrepreneur, who brought
us Apple Computer, Pixar, Macs, iPods, iPhones and more, this unique
and stylish book is sure to appeal to the legions of readers who live and
breathe the techno- centric world Jobs created.
March
By John Lewis
Presents in graphic novel format events from the life of Georgia
congressman John Lewis, focusing on his youth in rural Alabama, his
meeting with Martin Luther King Jr., and the beginning of the Nashville
Student Movement.
My Life in the Kitchen
By Lucy Knisley
Knisley, daughter of a chef mother and gourmand father, had the kind of
upbringing that would make any foodie salivate, and she’s happy to
share. In this collection of memories studded with recipes, she explores
how food shaped her family life, friendships, travel experiences, and early
career as a cartoonist.
Just So Happens
By Fumio Obata
Yumiko is a young Japanese woman who has made London her home.
Then, out of the blue, her brother calls to tell her that her father has died
in a mountaineering accident. Yumiko returns to Tokyo for the funeral
and finds herself immersed in the rituals of Japanese life and death - and
confronting a decision she hadn't expected to have to make.
In Real Life
By Cory Doctorow with Jen Wang
Anda loves Coarsegold Online, the massively- multiplayer role playing
game that she spends most of her free time on. It's a place where she
can be a leader, a fighter, a hero and make friends from all over the
world. Things become complicated when Anda befriends a poor Chinese
kid whose avatar in the game illegally collects valuable objects and then
sells them to players from developed countries. This behavior is strictly
against the rules in Coarsegold, but Anda soon comes to realize that
questions of right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real
person's real livelihood is at stake.
The Rise of Aurora West
By JT Petty
Aurora West has a busy life of martial arts lessons, chemistry and math
classes, helping her father on his missions, and unraveling the mystery
of her mother's death, and to make matters worse, she must survive the
monster, Sadisto, and his murderous clan.
Tomboy
By Liz Prince
Growing up, Liz Prince wasn't a girly girl playing pretty, pretty princess
like the other girls in her neighborhood. But she wasn't exactly one of
the guys either, as she quickly learned when her Little League baseball
coach exiled her to the outfield instead of letting her take the pitcher's
mound. Liz was somewhere in the middle, and Tomboy is the story of
her struggle to find the place where she belonged.
Briar Rose
By Jane Yolen
Fiction
Ever since she was a child, Rebecca has been enchanted by her
grandmother Gemma’s stories about Briar Rose. But a promise Rebecca
makes to her dying grandmother will lead her on a remarkable journey
to uncover the truth of Gemma’s astonishing claim: I am Briar Rose. A
journey that will lead her to unspeakable brutality and horror. But also to
redemption and hope.
Article 5
By Kristen Simmons
Seventeen-year-old Ember Miller, living in a world in which the Bill of
Rights has been revoked, is able to keep a low profile until her mother is
arrested for non-compliance and she realizes the officer responsible is
her first love, Chase Jennings.
Expiration Day
By William Campbell Powell
It is the year 2049, and humanity is on the brink of extinction.... Tania
Deeley has always been told that she's a rarity: a human child in a world
where most children are sophisticated androids manufactured by Oxted
Corporation.
The Truth About Alice
By Jennifer Matthieu
Everyone knows Alice slept with two guys at one party. But did you know
Alice was sexting Brandon when he crashed his car? It's true. Ask
ANYBODY. Rumor has it that Alice Franklin is a slut. It's written all over
the bathroom stall at Healy High for everyone to see. And after star
quarterback Brandon Fitzsimmons dies in a car accident, the rumors
start to spiral out of control. In this remarkable debut novel, four Healy
High students—the girl who has the infamous party, the car accident
survivor, the former best friend, and the boy next door—tell all they
know. But exactly what is the truth about Alice? In the end there's only
one person to ask: Alice herself
We Were Liars
By E. Lockhart
Spending the summers on her family's private island off the coast of
Massachusetts with her cousins and a special boy named Gat, teenaged
Cadence struggles to remember what happened during her fifteenth
summer.
Thirteen Reasons Why
By Jay Asher
High school student Clay Jensen receives a box in the mail containing
seven cassette tapes recorded by his crush, Hannah Baker, who
committed suicide, and spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night
crisscrossing their town, listening to Hannah's voice recounting the
events leading up to her death.
I’ll Give You The Sun
By Janday Nelson
Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen,
isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic
boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick
and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and
Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in
different and dramatic ways. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The
later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each
have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one
another, they'd have a chance to remake their world.
*Mature content
All the Bright Places
By Jennifer Niven
Told in alternating voices, when Theodore Finch and Violet Markey meet
on the ledge of the bell tower at school, both teetering on the edge, it's
the beginning of an unlikely relationship, a journey to discover the
"natural wonders" of the state of Indiana, and two teens' desperate
desire to heal and save one another *Mature content
Half Bad
By Sally Green
In modern-day England, where witches live alongside humans, Nathan,
son of a White witch and the most powerful Black witch, must escape
captivity before his seventeenth birthday and receive the gifts that will
determine his future.
Half Wild
By Sally Green
In a modern-day England where two warring factions of witches live
amongst humans, seventeen-year-old Nathan has come into his own
unique magical Gift, but he is on the run with the Hunters close behind,
and they will stop at nothing until they have captured Nathan and
destroyed his father.
Noggin
By john Corey Whaley
After dying at age sixteen, Travis Coates' head was removed and frozen
for five years before being attached to another body, and now the old
Travis and the new must find a way to coexist while figuring out changes
in his relationships.
Red Rising
By Pierce Brown
Darrow, a Red, which is the lowest caste in the color-coded society of
the future, joins a revolutionary cell and attempts to infiltrate an elite
military academy after witnessing the execution of his wife.
When I was the Greatest
By Jason Reynolds
Ali lives in Bed-Stuy, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for guns and
drugs, but he and his sister, Jazz, and their neighbors, Needles and
Noodles, stay out of trouble until they go to the wrong party, where one
gets badly hurt and another leaves with a target on his back.
All the Light We Cannot See
By Anthony Doerr
A blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied
France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II
The Maze Runner
By James Dashner
Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a
maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds
himself if he is to escape.
Afterworlds
By Scott Westerfield
In alternating chapters, eighteen-year-old Darcy Patel navigates the New
York City publishing world and Lizzie, the heroine of Darcy's novel, slips
into the "Afterworld" to survive a terrorist attack and becomes a spirit
guide, as both face many challenges and both fall in love.
The Book Thief
By Markus Zusak
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the
story of Liesel—a book-stealing, young German girl, whose story-telling
talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as
well as their neighbors.
Dorothy Must Die
By D.M. Paige
Amy Gumm, the other girl from Kansas, has been recruited by the
Revolutionary Order of the Wicked to stop Dorothy who has found a way
to come back to Oz, seizing a power that has gone to her head.
The Wicked Will Rise
By D.M. Paige
Sequel to: Dorothy must die. Amy's job as assassin didn't work out as
planned. Dorothy is still alive. The Order has vanished. And the home
she couldn't wait to leave behind might be in danger.
Crash and Burn
By Michael Hassan
Steven "Crash" Crashinsky relates his sordid ten-year relationship with
David "Burn" Burnett, the boy he stopped from taking their high school
hostage at gunpoint.
Breathing Underwater
By Alex Flinn
Sent to counseling for hitting his girlfriend, Caitlin, and ordered to keep a
journal, sixteen- year-old Nick recounts his relationship with Caitlin,
examines his controlling behavior and anger, and describes living with his
abusive father.
Red Queen
By Victoria Aveyard
In a world divided by blood--those with common, Red blood serve the
Silver-blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities-seventeen-year-old Mare, a Red, discovers she has an ability of her own.
To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a
lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. But Mare
risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guard--a
growing Red rebellion--even as her heart tugs her in an impossible
direction.
Love Letters to the Dead
By Ava Dellaira
When Laurel starts writing letters to deadpeople for a school assignment, she
begins to spill about her sister's mysterious death, her mother's departure from
the family, her new friends, and her first love.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
By Jenny Han
Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her.
They aren't love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones
she's written. One for every boy she's ever loved—five in all. When she
writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she
would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only.
Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean's
love life goes from imaginary to out of control.
The Living
By Matt De La Pena
After an earthquake destroys California and a tsunami wrecks the luxury
cruise ship where he is a summer employee, high school student, Shy,
confronts another deadly surprise.
Classic to Modern
If you liked…
(Classic Title)
Then, you’ll love…
(Modern Title)
1984
by George Orwell
Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow
All Quiet on the
Western Front
by Erich M.
Remarque
Fallen Angels
by Walter Dean Myers
American Tragedy
by Theodore Dreiser
A Northern Light
by Jennifer Donnelly
Beauty and the
Beast
Beastly
by Alex Flinn
Beowulf
Grendel
by John Gardner
Book of Genesis
East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
Catcher in the Rye
By J. D. Salinger
King Dork
By Frank Portman
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens
Ellen Foster
by Kaye Gibbons
Just Ella
by Margaret Peterson
Haddix
Cinderella
Confessions of an Ugly
Stepsister
by Gregory Maguire
.
Minister's Daughter
by Julie Hearn
The Crucible
by Arthur Miller
I, Tituba, Black
Witch of Salem
by Maryse Conde
Number the Stars
by Lois Lowry
The Diary of Anne
Frank
by Anne Frank
Yellow Star
by Jennifer Roy
Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde
by Robert Louis
Stevenson
Mary Reilly
by Valerie Martin
Emma
by Jane Austen
Jane Fairfax
by Joan Aiken
Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
Zeena
by Elizabeth Cooke
Truesight
By David Stahler, Jr.
Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
The Giver
by Lois Lowry
City of Ember
by Jeanne Du Prau
Fall of the House of
Usher
by Edgar Allan Poe
Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
Clay
by David Almond
Gone With the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell
Wind Done Gone
by Alice Randall
Gospel of the Bible
Lamb: The Gospel
According to Biff,
Christ’s Childhood
Friend
by Christopher Moore
Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
Esperanza Rising
by Munoz-Ryan
Double Bind
by Chris Bohjalian
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
When She Woke
by Hillary Jordan
Jake Reinvented
by Gordon Korman
Grendel
by John Gardner
Eaters of the Dead
by Michael Crichton
Falling for Hamlet
by Michelle Ray
Hamlet
by William
Shakespeare
Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead
by Tom Stoppard
Something Rotten
by Alan M. Gratz
Story of Edgar
Sawtelle
by David Wroblewski
Dating Hamlet:
Ophelia's Story
by Lisa Fiedler
Hamlet
by William
Shakespeare
Ophelia
by Lisa Klein
Gertrude and Claudius
by John Updike
Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain
My Jim
by Nancy Rawles
Hunchback of Notre
Dame
by Victor Hugo
Hunchback
by Randall Wright
Illiad
by Homer
Troy
by Adele Geras
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte
Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
The Jungle Book
by Rudyard Kipling
Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman
Thousand Acres
by Jane Smiley
King Lear
by William
Shakespeare
Fool
by Christopher Moore
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
March
by Geraldine Brooks
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
Chocolate War
by Robert Cormier
Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
Gone
by Michael Grant
Inventing Elliot
by Graham Gardner
Macbeth
by William
Shakespeare
Third Witch
by Rebecca Reisert
Enter Three Witches
by Caroline B. Cooney
Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen
Mansfield Revisited
by Joan Aiken
Merchant of Venice
by William
Shakespeare
Blue Avenger Cracks
the Code
by Norma Howe
Moby Dick
by Herman Melville
Ahab’s Wife
by Sena Jeter Naslund
Le Morte d’Arthur
by Sir Thomas Malory
Mists of Avalon
by Marion Zimmer
Bradley
Old Man and the
Sea
by Ernest
Hemmingway
Young Man and the
Sea
by Rodman Philbrick
The Garden
by Elsie V. Aidinoff
Old Testament
In the Shadow of the
Ark
by Anne Provoost
Dark Sons
by Nikki Grimes
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
Ellen Foster
by Kaye Gibbons
Othello
by William
Shakespeare
Othello: A Novel
by Julius Lester
Myth of Persephone
Wintergirls
by Laurie Halse
Anderson
Peter Pan
By J. M. Barrie
Peter and the
Starcatchers
by Dave Barry
Portrait of Harper
Lee
Mockingbird
by Charles J. Shields
Jane
by April Lindner
Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen
Enthusiasm
by Polly Shulman
Mr. Darcy’s Daughters
by Elizabeth Aston
Quarantine
by Emmy Laybourne
Jake, Reinvented
by Gordon Korman
Red Badge of
Courage by Stephen
Crane
Soldier's Heart
by Gary Paulsen
Juliet Immortal
by Stacey Jay
Romeo's Ex: The story
of Rosaline
by Lisa Fiedler
Romeo and Juliet
by William
Shakespeare
Romeo Redeemed
by Stacey Jay
The Juliet Spell
by Douglas Rees
Romiette and Julio
by Sharon M. Draper
Julie and Romeo: A
Novel
by Jeanne Ray
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel
Hawthorne
Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson
Something Wicked
by Alan Gratz
Anything
Shakespeare
Kissing Shakespeare
by Pamela Mingle
Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
Red Necklace
by Sally Gardner
To Kill a
Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
In Search of
Mockingbird by Loretta
Ellsworth
Poetry of William
Blake
Burning Bright
by Tracy Chevelier
Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
Wicked
by Gregory Maguire