The Hull High School Blog: Summer Reading for Incoming Seniors

Summer Reading Book Assignments

for Incoming 12^th Graders

Hull High School is committed to preparing all students for success in college and career. We believe that strategic reading is an essential skill for all students, and one that must be practiced in order to be improved on. Research shows that “summer reading programs can be effective in lessening summer learning loss and increasing reading achievement” (www.cslpreads.org). To that end, all HHS students are required to read over the summer in preparation of the upcoming school year.

** Honors students will be required to read two books: the primary text and one choice from the secondary choice list.

** College Prep students will be required to read the primary text. CP students also have the option to read one choice from the secondary choice list for extra credit.

Incoming 12^th Grade – “World Perspectives: Beyond the Rotary”

Required primary text: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

--Goodreads.com

Assignment:

College Prep students must read the required text assigned for their grade. Honors students must read both the required text and one choice from the secondary text list below. While reading, students will take notes in two-column note format (template is attached). Notes will be collected on the first day of school and will be used for an in-class writing assessment during the first week of school.

College Prep students may choose to read a text from the secondary list below to receive extra credit. If the extra credit option is chosen, students should also fill out the set of two-column notes for the secondary text.

Secondary text choices:

Kitchen God’s Wife – Amy Tan

Girl in Translation – Jean Kwok

All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Name__________________________________________ Date____________________

Grade 12 Summer Reading Notes

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Note taking on the summer reading will help you do the following:

● become intimately familiar with the content of the source

● modify your own thoughts on the topic

● create a shortened version of the source material suitable for study

● personalize the information provided in the source by making personal connections; Record your thinking about the content – don’t just copy

● practice note-taking in preparation for note-taking during lectures and presentations as well as during research in all subjects

● practice using abbreviations that allow you to record ideas efficiently

Task:	Reactions:
Describe the use of repetition within the text.	What is the purpose of this repetition?
Describe the details and imagery within the text.	What is the purpose of the details and imagery
Describe the speaker’s point of view.	What is your reaction to the speaker’s point of view?
Describe the tone of the text.	What is your reaction to the tone of this excerpt?
Identify one theme of the text and provide evidence showing that theme.	Describe how the author’s tone contributes to theme.
Identify and provide examples of four other literary devices used in the novel. 1.	2.
3.	4.