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June 2009
Dear High School Students and Parents,
The high school English department is again asking for book reports from each student who is coming to Highland Hall in the fall. These reports are due the first day of class in September (not beach day, unless you are an incoming 9th grader).
Enclosed you will find several pages:
-- the book report format/book report grading guidelines
-- the list of required books for each grade
-- a list of books from which to choose for each grade
-- things to be careful of with book reports
We are asking the students to read the required books as well as one book from the appropriate reading list. However, we are only asking for one written book report from the reading list for grades 9 through 12. Students entering 9th grade will take a test on the two required book reports on the first day of school, Tuesday, September 8.
Reports that do not follow the proper format – for instance, reports that are entirely summaries of the books – will be graded down. A student writing a report on a book that is not on the list will receive a lower grade (two full grades). The students must remember to be particularly careful about spelling, about double spacing, about using blue or black pen, and about using the correct-sized font (12-point). Students must proofread carefully. Even the most brilliant book reports will be graded down for silly errors.
Failure to turn in the book reports will result in a lower grade in the next English track. Students cannot receive an A in the English track if they haven’t completed the written book report.
Thank you for your support. Not only are the students reading great books, they are also practicing necessary writing skills and exercising the ability to summarize and analyze. We also hope they are gaining pleasure from the reading.
Sincerely,
Christine Meyer for the English Department
Summer before
The King Must Die - Mary Renault (No written report)
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (No written report)
A written report on a book from the reading list
Eurythmy Track
Written reports on The Great Gatsby -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
and a book from the reading list
The students will write in class about the books for which no report is due.
Summer reports:
Three books should be read during the summer vacation: two required books and one of your choice from the book list.
10th - 12th Grades: Write one book report from the list. You will be given a test on the two required books. The report is due on the first day of school. Give it to your English teacher during the 10:45 period.
Eurythmy reports:
You are to read the required book and one book from the appropriate list. Write one report on your choice of books from the list.
The reports are due on the last day of Eurythmy if it is the last track of the school year, or on the first day of the English track that follows the Eurythmy track during the school year. Actual dates will be given when the schedule for the upcoming school year is available.
For full credit, all book reports should be given to your English teacher
on the due date.
Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons
Pearl Buck The Good Earth
Willa Cather My Antonia
Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe
Alexander Dumas The Three Musketeers
Henry Fielding Tom Jones
Robert Graves I, Claudius
Zane Grey Riders of the Purple Sage
Thomas Hardy Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls
John Hersey A Bell for Adano, Hiroshima
James Hilton Lost Horizon
Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Henry James The Turn of the Screw
Bernard Malamud The Fixer
Thomas Malory Le Morte D’Arthur
Carson McCullers The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Herman Melville Moby Dick
George Orwell Animal Farm
Chaim Potok The Chosen
Walter Scott Ivanhoe
Bram Stoker Dracula
William Thackeray Vanity Fair
J.R.R. Tolkein The Lord of the Rings
Thornton Wilder The Bridge at San Luis Rey
Kurt Vonnegut Cat’s Cradle
Book List Reviews All reviews and synopses are from Amazon.com
Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the brilliant, sonorous story of poet Maya Angelou's early life in Arkansas and California. After a traumatic event, Maya stops speaking for five years but becomes a keen observer of everything around her, including the racial politics and divisions of her town. One character tells the silent child: "Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning." So begins the reawakening of Maya's voice and her own music.
Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons
Sir Robert Bolt's play, A Man For All Seasons, is set against King Henry VIII's break with Rome, made necessary by his desire to divorce Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn. When Sir Thomas More refused to sign the Act of Supremacy, he was brought to trial on trumped-up charges and ultimately beheaded. More had sought refuge in the letter of the law, but he was required to state his approval of the Act in an oath --an oath which would have required him to state something that he did not believe. For More, an oath was an invitation to God to act as witness and judge. In existentialist terms, the oath would have shattered his integrity, his humanity, that "...something within himself without which life is meaningless."
Pearl Buck The Good Earth
The Good Earth presents a graphic view of a China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings for the ordinary people. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century. Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions and rewards. Her brilliant novel -- beloved by millions of readers -- is a universal tale of the destiny of man
Willa Cather My Antonia
My Antonia is set in Nebraska at a time when "there was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made." The people who live here are immigrants - the blue-eyed Burdens, the tragic Russian brothers, Norwegian Lena Lingard with her violet eyes and determination never to marry, and most importantly, Bohemian Antonia Shimerda. Their stories stand out like framed portraits against the backdrop of the prairie and remind us how many different countries make up the United States. In Antonia, Willa Cather portrays one of the great women of literature - strong, capable, and honest.
Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe
Abandoned at birth and threatened with a life in service, Defoe's young heroine sets her heart on independence. One fatal seduction and five husbands later, she resorts to a life of self-supporting crime. Moll Flanders follows this indestructible heroine to the depths of eighteenth century England's corruption.
In Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor marooned on a desert island for nearly three decades. An ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances, Robinson Crusoe wrestles with fate and the nature of God.
Alexander Dumas The Three Musketeers Novel by Alexandre Dumas pere, a historical romance, The Three Musketeers relates the adventures of four fictional swashbuckling heroes who lived during the reigns of the French kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV. At the beginning of the story D'Artagnan arrives in Paris from Gascony and becomes embroiled in three duels with the three musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The four become such close friends that when D'Artagnan serves an apprenticeship as a cadet, which he must do before he can become a musketeer, each of his friends takes turns sharing guard duty with him. The daring escapades of the four comrades are played out against a background of court intrigue involving the powerful Cardinal Richelieu.
Henry Fielding Tom Jones
Tom Jones is constructed around a romance plot. Squire Allworthy suspects that the infant whom he adopts and names Tom Jones is the illegitimate child of his servant Jenny Jones. When Tom is a young man, he falls in love with Sophia Western, his beautiful and virtuous neighbor. In the end his true identity is revealed and he wins Sophia's hand, but numerous obstacles have to be overcome, and in the course of the action the various sets of characters pursue each other from one part of the country to another, giving Fielding an opportunity to paint an incomparably vivid picture of England in the mid-18th century
Robert Graves I, Claudius
Historical novel set in 1st-century-AD, the book is written as an autobiographical memoir by Roman emperor Claudius. Physically weak, afflicted with stammering, and inclined to drool, Claudius is an embarrassment to his family and is shunted to the background of imperial affairs. The benefits of his seeming ineffectuality are twofold: he becomes a scholar and historian, and he is spared the worst cruelties inflicted on the imperial family by its own members during the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula. Palace intrigues and murders surround him. Claudius' informal narration serves to emphasize the banality of the imperial family's endless greed and lust. The story concludes with Claudius ascending to the imperial throne.
Zane Grey Riders of the Purple Sage
Told by a master storyteller who, according to critic Russell Nye, “combined adventure, action, violence, crisis, conflict, sentimentalism, and sex in an extremely shrewd mixture,” Riders of the Purple Sage is a classic of the Western genre. It is the story of Lassiter, a gunslinging avenger in black, who shows up in a remote Utah town just in time to save the young and beautiful rancher Jane Withersteen from having to marry a Mormon elder against her will. Lassiter is on his own quest, one that ends when he discovers a secret grave on Jane’s grounds.
Thomas Hardy Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Now considered Hardy's masterwork, Tess of the D'Urbervilles departed from conventional Victorian fiction in its focus on the rural lower class and in its open treatment of sexuality and religion. After her impoverished family learns of its noble lineage, naive Tess Durbeyfield is sent to make an appeal to a nearby wealthy family who bear the ancestral name d'Urberville. Tess is seduced by dissolute Alec d'Urberville and secretly bears a child, Sorrow, who dies in infancy. Later working as a dairymaid, she meets and marries Angel Clare, an idealistic gentleman who rejects Tess after learning of her past on their wedding night. Emotionally bereft and financially impoverished, Tess is trapped by necessity into giving in once again to d'Urberville, until Angel returns.
Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls
Set near Segovia, Spain, in 1937, the novel tells the story of American teacher Robert Jordan, who has joined the antifascist Loyalist army. Jordan has been sent to make contact with a guerrilla band and blow up a bridge to advance a Loyalist offensive. The action takes place during Jordan's 72 hours at the guerrilla camp. During this period he falls in love with Maria, and he befriends the shrewd but cowardly guerrilla leader Pablo and his courageous wife Pilar. Jordan manages to destroy the bridge; Pablo, Pilar, Maria, and two other guerrillas escape, but Jordan is injured. Proclaiming his love to Maria once more, he awaits the fascist troops and certain death. The title is from a sermon by John Donne containing the famous words "No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
John Hersey Hiroshima
When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could have anticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winning author John Hersey recorded the stories of Hiroshima residents shortly after the explosion and, in 1946, Hiroshima was published, giving the world first-hand accounts from people who had survived it. The words of Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamara, Father Kleinsorg, Dr. Sasaki, and the Reverend Tanimoto gave a face to the statistics that saturated the media and solicited an overwhelming public response. Whether you believe the bomb made the difference in the war or that it should never have been dropped, "Hiroshima" is a must read for all of us who live in the shadow of armed conflict
James Hilton Lost Horizon
Lost Horizon is the tale of three men and a woman seeking escape from a political upheaval in the Orient. Their airplane crashes high on a Tibetan plateau. They are saved by a party of natives and taken to Shangri-La. Finding themselves prisoners at first, then visitors, they soon become willing captives until they discover the secret of that hidden paradise.
Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Set in medieval Paris, Victor Hugo’s powerful historical romance The Hunchback of Notre-Dame has resonated with succeeding generations ever since its publication in 1837. It tells the story of the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda, condemned as a witch by the tormented archdeacon Claude Frollo, who lusts after her. Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer of Notre-Dame Cathedral, having fallen in love with the kindhearted Esmeralda, tries to save her by hiding her in the cathedral’s tower. When a crowd of Parisian peasants, misunderstanding Quasimodo’s motives, attacks the church in an attempt to liberate her, the story ends in tragedy.
Henry James The Turn of the Screw A governess strives to protect her bewitching charges from the evil that menaces them, and which they seem strangely to desire, in this fireside tale narrated with stalwart morality and an almost deranged propriety. Terror makes this a ghost story, but uncertainty makes it horrifying: are the apparitions the governess's invention? If so, does the evil lie not in the children, but in the love-starved woman-and in adult society itself?
Bernard Malamud The Fixer
Kiev, in the years before World War I, is a hotbed of anti-Semitism. When a 12-year-old Russian boy is found stabbed to death, his body drained of blood, the accusation of ritual murder is made against the Jews. Yokov Bok, a carpenter, is blamed, arrested and imprisoned without indictment.
Thomas Malory Le Morte D’Arthur The legends of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table have inspired some of the greatest works of literature--from Cervantes's Don Quixote to Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Although many versions exist, Malory's stands as the classic rendition. Malory wrote the book while in Newgate Prison during the last three years of his life; it was published some fourteen years later, in 1485, by William Caxton. The tales, steeped in the magic of Merlin, the powerful cords of the chivalric code, and the age-old dramas of love and death, resound across the centuries.
Carson McCullers The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
When she was only twenty-three, Carson McCullers's first novel created a literary sensation. She was very special, one of America's superlative writers who conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition. This novel is the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal. The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the rejected. Some fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, Some with sex or drink, and some -- like Mick -- with a quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.
Herman Melville Moby Dick Moby-Dick is generally regarded as its author's masterpiece and one of the greatest American novels. The basic plot of Moby-Dick is simple. The narrator (who asks to be called "Ishmael") tells of the last voyage of the ship Pequod out of New Bedford, Mass. Captain Ahab is obsessed with the pursuit of the white whale Moby-Dick, which finally kills him. On that level, the work is an intense, superbly authentic narrative. Its theme and central figure, however, are reminiscent of Job in his search for justice and of Oedipus in his search for truth. The novel's richly symbolic language and tragic hero are indicative of Melville's deeper concerns: the equivocal defeats and triumphs of the human spirit and its fusion of creative and murderous urges
George Orwell Animal Farm
ANIMAL FARM was George Orwell's satirical shot at the then-new totalitarianism of the left. It is so accurate that no one has been able to do it better or more effectively, or even come close. Who can forget "All Animals Are Created Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others." By putting wisdom in the mouths of animals, Orwell uses an age-old artifice and proves again how the pen can be mightier than the sword.
Chaim Potok The Chosen
Few stories offer more warmth, wisdom, or generosity than this tale of two boys, their fathers, their friendship, and the chaotic times in which they live. Though on the surface it explores religious faith--the intellectually committed as well as the passionately observant--the struggles addressed in The Chosen are familiar to families of all faiths and in all nations.
In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love.
Walter Scott Ivanhoe
The epitome of the chivalric novel, Ivanhoe sweeps readers into Medieval England and the lives of a memorable cast of characters. Ivanhoe, a trusted ally of Richard-the-Lion-Hearted, returns from the Crusades to reclaim the inheritance his father denied him. Rebecca, a vibrant, beautiful Jewish woman is defended by Ivanhoe against a charge of witchcraft--but it is Lady Rowena who is Ivanhoe's true love. The wicked Prince John plots to usurp England's throne, but two of the most popular heroes in all of English literature, Richard-the-Lion-Hearted and the well-loved famous outlaw, Robin Hood, team up to defeat the Normans and reagain the castle. The success of this novel lies with Scott's skillful blend of historic reality, chivalric romance, and high adventure.
John Steinbeck East of Eden
This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. "A strange and original work of art."--New York Times Book Review.
Bram Stoker Dracula
A popular bestseller in Victorian England, Stoker's hypnotic tale of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula, whose nocturnal atrocities are symbolic of an evil ages old yet forever new, endures as the quintessential story of suspense and horror. The unbridled lusts and desires, the diabolical cravings that Stoker dramatized with such mythical force, render Dracula resonant and unsettling a century later.
William Thackeray Vanity Fair
This is Thackeray's rich and gloriously chaotic sketch of English society during the Napoleonic wars. At the centre of this picture is the scheming and disreputable Becky Sharp, one of Thackeray's greatest creations. The style here is fast-paced and comic, but the character of Dobbin and his unrequited love for Amelia bring depth and pathos to the novel. Dobbin, the unheroic hero, is Thackeray's realistic answer to the hero-worship of high romanticism. The novel stands as a landmark in the development of European Realism.
J.R.R. Tolkein The Lord of the Rings Trilogy of fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien comprising The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1955), and The Return of the King (1956). The trilogy is the saga of a group of sometimes reluctant heroes who set forth to save their world from consummate evil. Its many worlds and creatures draw their life from Tolkien's extensive knowledge of philology and folklore. At 33, the age of adulthood among hobbits, Frodo Baggins receives a magic Ring of Invisibility from his uncle Bilbo. A Christlike figure, Frodo learns that the ring has the power to control the entire world and, he discovers, to corrupt its owner. A fellowship of hobbits, elves, dwarfs, and men is formed to destroy the Ring by casting it into the volcanic fires of the Crack of Doom where it was forged. They are opposed on their harrowing mission by the evil Sauron and his Black Riders.
Thornton Wilder The Bridge at San Luis Rey
Pulitzer prize-winning novel by Thornton Wilder, published in 1927. Wilder's career was established with this book, in which he first made use of historical subject matter as a background for his interwoven themes of the search for justice, the possibility of altruism, and the role of Christianity in human relationships. The plot centers on five travelers in 18th-century Peru who are killed when a bridge across a canyon collapses; a priest interprets the story of each victim in an attempt to explain the workings of divine providence.
Kurt Vonnegut Cat’s Cradle
Cat's Cradle, one of Vonnegut's most entertaining novels, is filled with scientists and G-men and even ordinary folks caught up in the game. These assorted characters chase each other around in search of the world's most important and dangerous substance, a new form of ice that freezes at room temperature
Things to be Careful of with Book Reports
1 – Always double space. The teacher needs room to make comments.
2 – Always underline book titles (or italicize, if you have a computer). Book titles never, never, never go in quotation marks. Other things that are underlined are the names of newspapers, magazines, movies, operas, record albums, etc.
3 – Don’t switch tenses in the middle of a report. Stick with either the present or the past. Too many students switch tenses within the same sentence; e.g. “The girl fell down but Mrs. Rappaport comes and helps her.”
4 – Watch out for run-on sentences that just go on and on and even if your idea changes to something else that might be in another paragraph, such as a story about Joan of Arc, you just can’t stop that sentence from running all up and down the page, which, by the way, should always be double spaced.
5 – Fragments. Don’t. Writing in fragments, which don’t have a subject and a verb. Causing much confusion in the reader. Because your sentences need to breathe, and have a beginning, middle, and end.
Don’t write in fragments. Be sure that every sentence has a subject and a verb.
6 – Always proofread everything you have written. Expect to write a first draft. Then expect to read it and edit it – cutting out unnecessary words, fixing spelling, etc. Then write the new draft and proofread it. If you find more errors, or areas that need fine-tuning, rewrite the paper again. DON’T EXPECT YOUR FIRST DRAFT TO BE THE FINAL DRAFT – IT NEVER IS!
Your Name
English
Book Report
Date due (day month year: 8 Sept 2009)
HHWS Book Report Guidelines – 5 Paragraph Essay
Heading, Title, and General Format
Identify student, class, assignment, due date, and page number as illustrated above. Put the last name and page number in the header function of your computer.. Create an original title, uniquely relevant to this essay (not the book's title). Center it on the page, not underlined, below the heading and above the first paragraph. Double space and use a legible 12-point font and one-inch margins throughout. Staple multiple pages together.
Introduction (first paragraph)
Begin with a catchy opening statement. Go on to identify the book's title (underlined or italicized), author, type of work (eg. historical novel, not "fictional novel" or just "book"—all novels are fictional, all novels are books), genre (look it up!), and major themes. Briefly introduce the main characters and describe the setting (time and place). If you wish, you may also mention other titles by the author and /or pertinent details of the author's background. The last sentence of the introduction MUST be a thesis statement that previews the ideas you will explore in paragraphs 2, 3, and 4. Be certain that there is a direct connection between this statement and the topic sentence of each of your three body paragraphs (below).
Synopsis (second paragraph)
Begin this paragraph with the book's main idea in a single topic sentence. Go on to present a complete but concise synopsis of the book in one paragraph. This is a brief sketch of what happens: the beginning, the middle, and the end. Think about the major conflict, the rising action, the climax of the story, and the resolution. Keep it brief.
Observations (third and fourth paragraphs)
In each of these two paragraphs, narrow the discussion to a significant topic. Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence that makes an observation about a particular aspect of the book: a character, a feature of the plot, an element of style, or a theme. Go on to support and expand upon your idea with specific examples, incidents, details, and at least one relevant quote from the book. Write in flowing sentences, weaving these elements from the book into your writing, not simply listing them. (Cite the page number for each quote used.) End each paragraph with a wrap-up sentence that ties your examples and details together in support of your topic sentence; show how they add up to your main point, what they have in common. The paragraph that makes the most important point should be the fourth one, right before your conclusion.
Conclusion (fifth paragraph)
Begin this paragraph with your reaction to this piece of literature, your response to it as a reader. Avoid writing, "I think," "I feel," "I believe," or "In my opinion," but do try to expresss how the work has affected you, deepened your understanding, alerted or enlightened you (or even a wider audience) in some way. Go on to integrate the themes of your three body paragraphs and your essay's unique title, revealing how they relate to one another. End with a thoughtful closing statement: a concluding remark for the whole report. This could be your most important evaluative point, an intriguing twist on your title, a fitting quote, or a compelling question. (Hint: Save time to sleep on it, read it aloud, and revise.)
Book Report Grading , ________________________________________________________________
Student Class Date
High School Book Report__________________________________________
I. Introduction ____ A. Opening Statement
____ B. Title, author, genre, theme
____ C. Main characters, setting
____ D. Thesis statement
II. Synopsis ____ A. Complete
____ B. Concise (a paragraph, not a lengthy summary)
III. Observation #1 ____ A. Topic sentence
____ B. Support for topic
____ C. Supporting quote(s)
____ D. Wrap-up sentence
IV. Observation #2 ____ A. Topic sentence
____ B. Support for topic
____ C. Supporting quote(s)
____ D. Wrap-up sentence (+)
V. Conclusion ____ A. Writer’s reaction
____ B. Integration of themes
____ C. Closing statement
Extra credit for style ____ A. Transitions
____ B. Language
____ C. Voice
VII. Mechanics ____ A. Heading and header (see top of page)
____ B. Title
____ C. Format (5 paragraph essay) ____ D. Spell./punct./cap.
____ E. Grammar (tenses, person, etc.)
____ F. Fluency, clarity
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