Tenth Grade Regents

Summer 2008 Required Reading

English 2R:

Select ONE Fiction and ONE Non-fiction book from the lists below. You should have received a reading log for your FICTION Book. You must complete the reading log as it will be collected and graded.

In addition, take sufficient notes on your NON-FICTION book so that you will be prepared for a writing assessment in the fall.

FICTION

	Achebe, Chinua - Arrow of God A tale of the colonial and missionary encroachment upon traditional Ibo culture.
	Choi, Sook Nyul - Gathering of Pearls Sookan struggles to balance her new life as a college freshman in the U.S. and deals with the demands from her family in Korea.
	Cisneros, Sandra - The House on Mango Street The story of a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago.
	Joffo, Joseph - A Bag of Marbles This memoir relates how two young brothers adventure across France during World War II to evade the Nazis.
	Kidd, Sue Monk - The Secret Life of Bees In 1963, Lilly finds the key to her mother's past in South Carolina.
	Malamud, Bernard - The Assistant Frank, a young, Gentile nogoodnik, comes to work for a Jewish ma-and-pa grocery in return for room and board. The family owners don't know that Frank was one of the thieves who previously robbed the place and clubbed Morris, the paterfamilias. For his part, Frank is at war with himself, ever vacillating between his good and brutal instincts.
	Miller, Arthur - Death of a Salesman Miller won a Pulitzer Prize for the work, which he described as "the tragedy of a man who gave his life, or sold it" in pursuit of the American Dream. After many years on the road as a traveling salesman, Willy Loman realizes he has been a failure as a father and husband.
	Morpurgo, Michael - Private Peaceful When Thomas Peaceful's older brother is forced to join the British Army, Thomas decides to sign up as well, although he is only fourteen years old, to prove himself to his country, his family, his childhood love, Molly, and himself.
	Morrison, Toni - Sula Nel and Sula have been friends since childhood. Nel remains in their hometown to become a wife and mother, but Sula leaves to make another life for herself.
	Namioka, Lensey - Ties That Bind, Ties That Break Ailin's life takes a different turn when she defies the traditions of upper class Chinese society by refusing to have her feet bound.
	Patterson, James - Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the "bird kids," who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose.
	Osa, Nancy - Cuba 15 Violet Paz, a Chicago high school student, reluctantly prepares for her upcoming "quince," a Spanish nickname for the celebration of an Hispanic girl's fifteenth birthday.
	Sleator, William - House of Stairs Five sixteen-year-old orphans of widely varying personality characteristics are involuntarily placed in a house of endless stairs as subjects for a psychological experiment on conditioned human response.
	Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie Dramatic script relating the interactions of Amanda, her son, and her daughter, Laura and the very important gentleman caller.

NON-FICTION

	Angelou, Maya - All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes In this continuation of her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou relates how she joins a "colony" of Black American expatriates in Ghana--only to discover no one ever goes home again.
	Carson, Ben - Gifted Hands Carson tells of his inspiring odyssey from his childhood in inner-city Detroit to his position as director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at age 33.
	Delany, Sarah and Elizabeth - Having Our Say Sadie and Bessie Delaney were each over one hundred years old when they dictated this memoir. Live through the post-Reconstruction South, the Golden Age of Harlem, and the Civil Rights Movement with them as your guides.
	Feiler, Bruce S. - Learning to Bow The author offers a humorous story about his teaching experiences in Japan's renowned school system.
	Griffin, John Howard - Black Like Me The author tells of his experiences after he darkened his skin and traveled through the South in order to find out how it feels to be black.
	Lobel, Anita - No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War The author conveys her childhood experiences as a Holocaust survivor in Nazi-occupied Poland.
	McBride, James - The Color of Water This biography tells the story of McBride and his mother - a rabbi's daughter - born in Poland and raised in the South, who fled to Harlem, married a black man, founded a church, and put twelve children through college.
	Nelson, Peter - Left for Dead Recalls the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis at the end of World War II, the navy cover-up and unfair court martial of the ship's captain, and how a young boy helped the survivors set the record straight fifty-five years later.
	Reiss, Johanna - Upstairs Room In this autobiography a Dutch Jewish girl describes the two-and-one-half years she spent in hiding in the upstairs bedroom of a farmer's house during World War II.
	Sasson, Jean - Princess Princess Sultana's story depicts how women suffer injustices in the rich and mysterious society of Saudia Arabia.
	Ung, Loung - First They Killed My Father Loung Ung's family was broken up when Pol Pot's brutal regime took over Cambodia. Despite the deaths of some of her family, Ung survives and eventually escapes to Thailand and then America.