Summer Reading!  Yippee!  So…what do I have to do?

It’s easy—and it’s important.  Summer reading programs help address an educational problem called “summer learning loss,” which you can reading more about here.  To avoid losing the skills you worked hard to earn in the last school year, you will read two books this summer:  one that is required for everyone, and one that you choose from the list provided below.  That’s only two books!  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Everyone entering 9th grade next year will read With the Fire on High by Elizabeth AcevedoWhen you return to school in the Fall, your first writing assignment will be a literary analysis essay about this book, which will serve as my baseline writing sample for you.

For your second book, choose anything that interests you from the Student Choice list below.  You can either buy the book (new or used), or check it out from the library.  After you’ve finished reading, your job is to select one of the options from the “Summer Reading Choice Board” provided and complete the selected project before August 16, 2024, which is the end of the second week of school.  Please pay careful attention to the instructions and the rubric!  

Have a wonderful summer, and happy reading!

Ms. MacDonald
(pmacdonald@abqse.org)

Required Text: (Everyone reads this):

With the Fire on High cover

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

Ever since she got pregnant freshman year, Emoni Santiago's life has been about making the tough decisions--doing what has to be done for her daughter and her abuela. The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Student Choice (pick ONE book from the list below):

*A note to parents: the list below contains books with a wide variety of reading levels and subjects. Our intention is to provide all students with choices that will appeal to them. If you are at all concerned about your child’s reading choices, you can use the website commonsensemedia.org for a detailed overview of the age-appropriateness of a book’s content.

I Am Malala cover

I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World

by Malala Yousafzai

A memoir of a young activist's life in Pakistan, where she fights for girls' education under Taliban rule and becomes a target of assassination. The book teaches the importance of education and the power of speaking out for what is right.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

We Are The Weather cover

We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

by Jonathan Safran Foer

Some people reject the fact, overwhelmingly supported by scientists, that our planet is warming because of human activity. But do those of us who accept the reality of human-caused climate change truly believe it? If we did, surely we would be roused to act on what we know. Will future generations distinguish between those who didn't believe in the science of global warming and those who said they accepted the science but failed to change their lives in response?

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Dig cover

Dig

by A. S. King

Five estranged cousins are lost in a maze of their family's tangled secrets. Their grandparents, former potato farmers Gottfried and Marla Hemmings, managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions and now they sit atop a million-dollar bank account--wealth they've refused to pass on to their adult children or their five teenage grandchildren.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? cover

Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

by Temi Oh

When an Earth-like planet is discovered, a team of six teens, along with three veteran astronauts, embark on a twenty-year trip to set up a planet for human colonization--but find that space is more deadly than they ever could have imagined.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

The Beast Player cover

The Beast Player

by Nahoko Uehashi

Elin's family has an important responsibility: caring for the fearsome water serpents that form the core of their kingdom's army. So when some of the creatures mysteriously die, Elin's mother is sentenced to death as punishment. With her last breath, she manages to send her daughter to safety.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World cover

Brazen : Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World (A Graphic Novel)

by Penelope Bagieu

Throughout history and across the globe, one characteristic connects the daring women of Brazen: their indomitable spirit.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Little & Lion cover

Little & Lion

by Brandy Colbert

When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she's isn't sure if she'll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (as well as her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

A Winter's Promise cover

A Winter's Promise

by Christelle Dabos

Long ago, following a cataclysm called the Rupture, the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands, now known as arks. Over each, the spirit of an omnipotent and immortal ancestor abides. The inhabitants of these arks each possess a unique power. Ophelia, with her ability to read the pasts of objects, must navigate this fantastic, disjointed, perilous world using her trademark tenacity and quiet strength.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Warm Bodies cover

Warm Bodies

by Isaac Marion

"R" is having a no-life crisis--he is a zombie. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but he is a little different from his fellow Dead. He may occasionally eat people, but he'd rather be riding abandoned airport escalators, listening to Sinatra in the cozy 747 he calls home, or collecting souvenirs from the ruins of civilization.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

X: A Novel cover

X: A Novel

by Ilyasah Shabazz with Kekla Magoon

X follows the boy, Malcolm Little, who would become Malcolm X from his childhood to his imprisonment for theft at age twenty, when he found the faith that would lead him to forge a new path and command a voice that still resonates today.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

American Street cover

American Street

by Aanu Zoboi

Fabiola Toussaint, a young Haitian immigrant to the United States, must navigate her life, school and relationships, while dealing with her loud cousins after her mother is detained by the United States immigration department.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World cover

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World

by C. A. Fletcher

Griz and his dog Jip set out in a post-apocalyptic world to find Jess, his other beloved dog, who has been stolen by a mysterious stranger.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Spin cover

Spin

by Lamar Giles

When rising star Paris Secord (aka DJ ParSec) is found dead on her turntables, it sends the local music scene reeling. No one is feeling that grief more than her shunned pre-fame best friend, Kya, and ParSec's chief groupie, Fuse -- two sworn enemies who happened to be the ones who discovered her body.The police have few leads, and when the trail quickly turns cold, the authorities don't seem to be pushing too hard to investigate further. But nobody counted on Paris's deeply loyal fans, ParSec Nation, or the outrage that would drive Fuse and Kya to work together. As ParSec Nation takes to social media and the streets in their crusade for justice, Fuse and Kya start digging into Paris's past, stumbling across a deadly secret. With new info comes new motives. New suspects. And a fandom that will stop at nothing in their obsessive quest for answers, not even murder...

Amazon - ABQ Library - AbeBooks (Used)

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems cover

How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems

by Randall Munroe

For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. This book is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All cover

Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

by Laura Ruby

Their mother dead, Frankie and her sister, Toni, are abandoned by their father and his new wife alongside so many other orphans. They will do everything they can to survive, as the embers of the Great Depression are kindled into fires of World War II, and the shadows of injustice, poverty, and death walk the streets in broad daylight.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Shout cover

Shout: A Poetry Memoir

By Laurie Halse Anderson

A memoir that shares the author's life, covering her rape at thirteen, her difficult early childhood, and her experiences surrounding her publication of Speak.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Kindred cover

Kindred

by Octavia Butler

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is abruptly transported from her California home to the antebellum South to save a white plantation owner’s son from drowning. She is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stays grow longer and more dangerous until it is uncertain if Dana's life will end long before it has a chance to begin.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Labyrinth Lost cover

Labyrinth Lost

by Zoraida Cordova

Alex is a bruja and the most powerful witch in her family. But she's hated magic ever since it made her father disappear into thin air. When a curse she performs to rid herself of magic backfires and her family vanishes, she must travel to Los Lagos, a land in-between as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland, to get her family back

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? cover

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

by Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck-impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence "Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I'll shut up about it?" This is her story.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

All American Boys cover

All American Boys

by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend"

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

More Happy Than Not cover

More Happy Than Not

by Adam Silvera and Angie Thomas

After enduring his father's suicide, his own suicide attempt, broken friendships, and more in the Bronx projects, Aaron Soto, sixteen, is already considering the Leteo Institute's memory-alteration procedure when his new friendship with Thomas turns to unrequited love

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Honors Student Choice (pick ONE book from the list below):

The Nickel Boys cover

The Nickel Boys

by Colson Whitehead

The novel follows the life of Elwood Curtis, an Black teenager who, despite his aspirations for a brighter future, finds himself at Nickel Academy after a misunderstanding. At Nickel, Elwood encounters theharsh realities of institutional racism, abuse, and corruption.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Little Fireflies Everywhere cover

Little Fires Everywhere

by Celeste Ng

It is 1997 in Shaker Heights, the planned suburban community where the Richardson family lives. Mrs. Richardson works as a local reporter, and Mr. Richardson is a lawyer. Their four children—Lexie, Trip, Moody, and Izzy—attend high school. The story begins with the house on fire, and Izzy, whom the others suspect of setting it, has disappeared. The story then shifts to eleven months earlier and reveals all of the events that lead up to the fire.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Frankenstein cover

Frankenstein

by Mary Shelly

Victor Frankenstein tells Walton his story—a happy childhood, an unhealthy obsession with alchemy, and his engagement to his cousin Elizabeth. Victor enrolls at the University of Ingolstadt, where he discovers the secret of life and builds a creature from dead bodies.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Prep cover

Prep

by Curtis Sittenfeld

Prep, a story told by the talented Curtis Sittenfeld, was hard to put down. The narrator, Lee Fiora, an unremarkable girl from South Bend, Indiana, does a remarkable thing. At 13 she decides to apply to East Coast Prep schools and winds up spending an angst-ridden four years at Ault School just outside of Boston, Mass.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Goodbye Days cover

Goodbye Days

by Jeff Zentner

Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner is a powerful novel that delves into the themes of grief and guilt. It follows Carver Briggs as he navigates the aftermath of a tragic car accident that took the lives of his three best friends.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

All The Light We Cannot See cover

All The Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See tells the story of two teenagers during World War II (WWII), one a blind girl in Nazi-occupied France, the other a German orphan boy pressed into service by the Nazi army.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Flight Behavior cover

Flight Behavior

By Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behavior (2012) chronicles a community's reactions to the astonishing arrival of thousands of monarch butterflies, which have forgone their winter migration because of warming temperatures in northern climes.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Things Fall Apart cover

Things Fall Apart

By Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart is about the tragic fall of the protagonist, Okonkwo, and the Igbo culture. Okonkwo is a respected and influential leader within the Igbo community of Umuofia in eastern Nigeria.

Amazon - Abe Books (Used)

Everyone Knows You Go Home cover

Everyone Knows You Go Home

By Natalia Sylvester

This is a magical realism, dual timeline story by Peruvian author Natalia Sylvester, about immigration, adoption and family secrets. The story shifts between 2012 with newly-weds Isabel and Martin in Texas; and 1981 with his parents Omar and Elda making the arduous journey across the Mexican border.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)

Patron Saints of Nothing cover

Patron Saints of Nothing

By Randy Ribay

In Saints, a high school senior named Jason Reguero, a Filipino American and a misfit drifting toward college, reclaims his cultural identity during a two-week trip to the Philippines for answers about the mysterious death of a cousin who Jason suspects became a victim of the government's brutal drug crackdown.

Amazon - ABQ Library - Abe Books (Used)