Summer Reading Guide Questions (9th-11th grade)
Assignment: Answer each of the following questions in complete sentences. Whenever possible, use
textual evidence (quotations from the text – with page numbers) to support your answers. This
assignment should be completed using only your big brain and your novel. Remember to type your
answers.
Plot
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What is the story’s central conflict?
Who is the protagonist? What does he or she want?
What is at stake for the protagonist in the conflict?
What stands in the way of the protagonist easily achieving his or her goal?
What are the main events that take place in the story? How does each event relate to the
protagonist’s struggle?
Where do you find the story’s climax, or crisis?
How is the conflict resolved?
Does the protagonist succeed in obtaining his or her goals?
What is the impact of success, failure, or a surprising outcome on the protagonist?
Point of View
10. How is the story narrated? Is it told in the first or the third person?
11. If the story is told in the third person, is the point of view omniscient, or does it stick closely to
what is perceived by a particular character?
12. What is gained by the choice of narrator?
13. If the story is told by a first person narrator, what is the speaker’s main reason for telling the
story?
14. Does the narrator have something at stake in presenting the events? What does the narrator
have to gain by making us believe his or her account?
15. Does the first person narrator fully understand his or her own motivations? Is there some
important aspect of the narrator’s character of situation that is being overlooked?
16. If the story is told in the first person, is there anything peculiar about the narrator? Does this
peculiarity create any suspicions about the narrator’s accuracy or reliability?
17. What does the speaker’s perspective add? Would the story seem as memorable if related from
another narrative angle?
Character
18. Who is the main character or protagonist of the story?
19. Make a quick list of the character’s physical, mental, moral, and behavioral traits. Which of
these characteristics seem especially significant to the action of the story?
20. Does the main character have an antagonist in the story? How do they differ? Does the way the
protagonist speak reveal anything about his or her character?
21. If the story is told in the first person, what is the revealed about how the protagonist views his
or her surroundings?
22. What is the character’s primary motivation? Does this motivation seem as reasonable to you as
it does to the protagonist? If not, what is suggested by this unreasonableness?
23. In what ways is the protagonist changed or tested by the events of the story?
Summer Reading Guide Questions (9th-11th grade)
Setting
24. Where does the story take place?
25. Are there significant differences in the settings for different characters? What does this suggest
about each person?
26. When does the story take place? Is the time of year or time of day significant?
27. Does the weather play a meaningful role in the story’s action?
28. What is the protagonist’s relationship to the setting? Does it create a strongly positive or
negative reaction?
29. Does the setting of the story in some way compel the protagonist into action?
30. Does the story’s time or place suggest something about the character of the protagonist?
31. Does a change in setting during the story suggest some internal change in the protagonist?
Tone and Style
32. Does the writer use word choice in a distinctive way?
33. Does the author tend toward long or short –even fragmented—sentences?
34. How would you characterize the writer’s voice? Is it formal or casual? Distant or intimate?
Impassioned or restrained?
35. Can the narrator’s words be taken at a face value? Is there anything ironic about the narrator’s
voice?
36. How does the writer arrange the material? Is information delivered chronologically, or is the
organization more complex?
37. What is the writer’s attitude toward the material? How can you tell?
Theme
38. List as many possible themes as you can.
39. Circle the two or three most important points and try to combine them into a sentence. This
sentence is your preliminary thesis.
40. Relate particular details of the story to the theme you have spelled out. Consider plot details,
dialogue, setting, point of view, title—any elements that seem especially pertinent.
41. Check whether all the elements of the story fit your thesis. If not, reevaluate your thesis.
42. Have you missed an important aspect of the story? Or have you chosen to focus on a secondary
idea, overlooking the central one?
43. If necessary, rework your thesis until it applies to every element in the story.
Symbol
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48.
What objects, actions, or places seem unusually significant?
List the specific objects, people, and ideas with which a particular symbol is associated.
Locate the exact place in the story where the symbol links itself to the other thing.
Ask whether each symbol comes with ready-made cultural associations. If so, what are these?
Avoid far-fetched interpretations. Focus first on the literal things, places, and actions in the
story.
49. Don’t make a symbol mean too much or too little; don’t limit it to one narrow association or
claim it summons up many different things.
50. Be specific. Identify the exact place in the story where a symbol takes on a deeper meaning.