Summer Reading 2024

 Harrison Public Library: Adventure Begins at your Library

If you are looking for a reading experience of just some great books to choose from check out our Reading with the Huskies program.  

Dear Sixth Grade Reader:

As you eagerly anticipate summer vacation, it is important to allocate time to read and build on academic curiosities. To support academic growth over the summer, please be sure to read. Take advantage of thoughtful selections that are enjoyable to read.  Challenge yourself, and choose a novel that embraces cultures from all over the world.

When choosing a book, we recommend that you read the back cover or jacket of the book to see if the plot interests you.  You might also read the summaries available online. We also suggest that you read a page anywhere in the book to make sure that the vocabulary level and author’s style are a suitable, “just right” book for you.   To help you, we have curated a bookshelf of some great authors. 

Check this out. 

We hope that you have the opportunity to read many books this summer. 

Happy reading!

Sincerely,

ELA 6 Teachers

Summer Reading Journey

7th graders:  Use the road map to record your summer reading plan.  You will add the titles of the books you are excited to read this summer into the spaces provided. We invite you to add at least two books to this summer reading plan.   

8th graders: Check out this summer reading journey! 

Summer Reading Journey

Use the road map to record your summer reading plan.  You will add the titles of the books you are excited to read this summer into the spaces provided. We invite you to add at least 2 books to this summer reading plan.   

10th graders can find some great texts here. 

IB Language and Literature students can find some great texts here. 

This summer please read Frankenstein (the 1831 revised edition) by Mary Shelley with care and take some notes on characters, plot, themes, ideas, etc.  Throughout September and October, you will write a practice IB HL Essay (a process essay) on a motif in the novel.  Frankenstein is also one of the texts that may be utilized on another official IB assessment.  Enjoy!

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

"I expected this reception," said the daemon. "All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends." 

Frankenstein’s creation rails at his creator, Victor, a scientist obsessed with his desire to unlock the secret of life and create a “perfect” creature. Frankenstein, a series of stories within stories, presents Victor Frankenstein’s doppelganger in the form of Captain Robert Walton, whose ambition to sail toward the North Pole in hopes of discovering a northern passage to the New World, mirrors Frankenstein’s own blind ambition. Frankenstein recounts his strange tale aboard Walton’s ship, yet at the novel’s center is the monster’s own story, as told to Frankenstein. The creature yearns for love and acceptance, but all people are horrified by him in Shelley’s cautionary tale of passion versus reason. 

The Queue (Basma Abdel Aziz, trans. Elisabeth Jaquette)

“The Queue… has drawn comparisons to Western classics like George Orwell’s 1984 and The Trial by Franz Kafka. It represents a new wave of dystopian and surrealist fiction from Middle Eastern writers who are grappling with the chaotic aftermath and stinging disappointments of the Arab Spring.” —The New York Times

In an unnamed Middle Eastern city, a centralized authority known as the Gate has risen to power in the aftermath of the “Disgraceful Events,” a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate for even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the building never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer and longer.

Citizens from all walks of life wait in the sun: a revolutionary journalist, a sheikh, the cousin of a security officer killed in the clashes with protestors, and a man with injuries The Gate would prefer to keep quiet.

A very real vision of life after the Arab Spring written with dark, subtle intelligence, The Queue describes the sinister nature of authoritarianism, and illuminates the way that absolute authority manipulates information, mobilizes others in service to it, and fails to uphold the rights of even those faithful to it.

BASMA ABDEL AZIZ is an Egyptian writer, psychiatrist, and visual artist. Early on, she earned the nickname ‘the rebel’ for her indefatigable struggle against injustice, torture, and corruption. A weekly columnist for Egypt’s al-Shorouk newspaper, she represents a fresh and necessary female voice in Arabic journalism and fiction. She is the winner of the Sawiris Cultural Award, the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces award, and the Ahmed Bahaa-Eddin Award. She lives in Cairo.

(Source: Melville House, 2016)