one last read… final exam: part 1. what to do: choose a book you will actually read & read it...
TRANSCRIPT
...one last read…Final
Exam:
Part 1
What to do:Choose a book
you will actually read & read it
cover to cover
Present your book project to your peers during the final week of May-- [ Date TBD]
Complete the weekly “Book Assignment,” whatever that
may be
The Book ThiefWhile subjected to the horrors of World War II
Germany in 1939, young foster girl living in Munich,
Liesel, finds solace by stealing books and
sharing them with others. In the basement of her
home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents. Find out what happens next!
…WWII era stories
…characters struggling to survive
…historical fiction
…themes of courage and compassion
For readers who like….
The Book Thief
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92EBSmxinus
The Road0 “When he woke in the woods
in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch
the child sleeping beside him.” A father and son are striving to survive a wilderness that
used to be a country that used to be the most prosperous
nation on earth. All that is left is ash, floating and falling
when the wind chooses not to breathe. This is the setting
of The Road, a journey of survival only Cormac
McCarthy could envision.
…strong character bonds: a father’s love for his son in the bleakest of circumstances.
… an author who knows how to make every word count.
… post-apocalyptic world stories that are frighteningly real.
For readers who like….
The Road
http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/the-road/trailer
Pulitzer Prize
Winner
Kill the Messenger
…murder/mystery thrillers
…strong character development
…wondering “whodunit?”!!!
With this new thriller, The New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag delivers her own
message to suspense fans everywhere: Don't turn off the lights, and keep reading if you dare. From the gritty streets of
Los Angeles to its most protected enclaves of prestige
and power to the ruthless glamour of Hollywood, a killer
stalks his prey. A killer so merciless no one in his way is safe—not even the innocent.
For readers who like….
Kill the Messenger
The Notebook
… period historical fiction
… romance!
.For readers who like…. In 1940s South Carolina, mill
worker Noah Calhoun and rich girl Allie are desperately in love. But her parents don't approve.
When Noah goes off to serve in World War II, it seems to mark
the end of their love affair. In the interim, Allie becomes involved
with another man. But when Noah returns to their small town years later, on the cusp of Allie's marriage, it soon becomes clear
that their romance is anything but over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M7LIcH8C9U
The Notebook
Blue Rage, Black Redemption
…reality stories
…people who have faced challenges and push past adversity
…stories with deeper life-lessons that hit home
.For readers who like….
When his L.A. neighborhood was threatened by gangbangers, Stanley Tookie Williams and a friend
formed the Crips, but what began as protection became worse than the original gangs. From deadly street fights with their rivals to drive-by shootings
and stealing cars, the Crips' influence -- and Tookie's reputation -- began to spread across L.A. Soon he was regularly under police surveillance, and, as a result, was arrested often, though always released
because the charges did not stick. But in 1981, Tookie was convicted of murdering four people and
was sent to death row at San Quentin in Marin County, California.
Tookie maintained his innocence and began to work in earnest to prevent others from following his path.
Whether he was creating nationwide peace protocols, discouraging adolescents from joining
gangs, or writing books, Tookie worked tirelessly for the rest of his life to end gang violence. Even after his death, his legacy continues, supported by such individuals as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Snoop
Dogg, Jesse Jackson, and many more.
Tookie Williams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1-CplAj6tw
The Freedom Writers
Straight from the front line of urban America, the inspiring
story of one fiercely determined teacher and her
remarkable students. As an idealistic twenty-three-
year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long
beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of “un-
teachable, at-risk” students and helps them blow away all expectations they and others
have of themselves.
0 …true stories
0 … “ in your face,” honest writing about race, discrimination, prejudice and feeling angry, hopeless
0 …inspirational but gritty storytelling– “tell it like it is, in your own words”
0 …finding yourself and keeping up courage– fighting for yourself when no one else will
For readers who like….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhXMJlm852A
Freedom Writers
DivergentIn Beatrice Prior's dystopian
Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular
virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless),
Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the
intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their
lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone,
including herself.
Fast-paced content Intrigue Futuristic settings /
somewhat “post-apocolyptic”
A main character who is strong, driven, and in the process of questioning their morals and values and discovering who they truly are
Light allusions to romance
For readers who like….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutgWjz10sM
Start the Series!
Angels and Demons
…a fast -paced page turner.
…a mix of religious and historical elements for a unique twist to the mystery – “historical fiction”
…fiction/intrigue ..a puzzle to solve
…plenty of surprises!
This novel examines what happens when religious
organizations overstep their boundaries and create secret
organizations to control information. It involves
conspiracies within the Catholic church, and is mostly set within
Rome and the Vatican. Angels and Demons is a fast- paced thriller that provides an entertaining
escape for the reader.[Fiction!]
For readers who like….
http://videos.simonandschuster.com/video/27794426001
Angels and Demons
The Things They Carried
Real-life remembrances
short stories about one topic
Vietnam War stories
…or can handle more graphic war stories
…thinking about psychological impacts of war – “What do they carry?”– more than their packs….
The Things They Carried is a
collection of short stories by Tim
O'Brien, about a platoon of American
soldiers in the Vietnam War.
For readers who like….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63CwqjYhiPg
The Things They Carried
Tuesdays with Morrie
Real-life stories to focus upon a short
segment of years in the author’s life
reading about life, the human condition, how we treat others, show empathy / love / respect / compassion
bittersweet tales of real-life experiences
Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and
searching, and gave you sound advice to help you
make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that
person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.
For readers who like….
Mitch Albom had that second chance. He
rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older
man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neuron disease - Mitch
visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they
used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship
turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live.
Tuesdays with Morrie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1N4W7_Qhao
The Curious Incident
Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow
or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. Strange as he may seem, other people
are far more of a conundrum to him. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and
Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock
Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents' broken marriage
and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to
navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him.
…stories with teenage characters
…humorous writing
…subtle, serious undertones about people and what makes us the way we are
For readers who like….
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=the+curious+incident+book+trailer&FORM=VIRE15#view=detail&mid=3F00787AC88D129010153F00
787AC88D12901015The Curious Incident
Unwind In America after the Second Civil War, the Pro-Choice and
Pro-Life armies came to an agreement: The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment
of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, a parent
may choose to retroactively get rid of a child through a process called "unwinding." Unwinding ensures that the
child's life doesn’t “technically” end by transplanting all the organs in the child's body to various recipients. Now a
common and accepted practice in society, troublesome or unwanted teens are able to easily be unwound.
With breath-taking suspense, this book follows three teens who all become runaway Unwinds: Connor, a rebel whose parents have ordered his unwinding; Risa, a ward of the
state who is to be unwound due to cost-cutting; and Lev, his parents' tenth child whose unwinding has been planned since birth as a religious tithing. As their paths intersect and lives
hang in the balance, Shusterman examines serious moral issues in a way that will keep readers turning the pages to see if Connor, Risa, and Lev avoid meeting their untimely
ends.
…teenage issues, including right to choose for self…choice versus pro-life debate…use of donor organs
…post- apocolpytic scenario
…deep psychological issues and trauma
… Sci-Fi scenarios
For readers who like to read
about….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th_mB9g_3gE
Unwind
The PactHow can parents distinguish
normal teen-age surliness from debilitating depression? That's
the terrifying question raised by Jodi Picoult's fifth novel. As it
opens, 17-year-old Emily Gold -- talented, pretty and popular --
dies one winter evening of a gunshot wound to the head.
Emily's boyfriend, Chris Harte, claims they had a Romeo-and-
Juliet-style love pact. Her death and how Chris and her parents
cope with guilt and grief, confusion and loss examine how we try to come to terms with the
death of those we love.
…teenage issues
…a love/romantic twist
…deep psychological issues and trauma
…suicide
For readers who like to read
about….
http://vimeo.com/43008652
The Pact
DraculaThe classic Gothic horror novel by Irishman, Bram Stoker. Jonathan Harker,
incarcerated in a Transylvanian castle, has an alluring but terrifying dream of three women, eager to prey upon him.
His host and jailer is none other than Count Dracula,
or Nosferatu, the Un-Dead, controller of the
wolves.
… stories with horror /gothic & romantic elements blended
… villain you love and hate and fear
…heroes who define the word “hero”
…a period piece of literature written in the language and with the ideals of the time
historical fiction… a classic!
For readers who like to read
about….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMvD2Jlyy9U
Dracula
Friday Night Lights
… following characters through personal challenges, hard work and sacrifice
…the familiar—”identify” with the characters and setting
…high school football
…reading about the inner workings of male friendships
The Permian Panthers of Odessa -- the winningest high school football team in Texas history. Odessa is not known to be a town big
on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town
going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust
path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate
skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian
High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. Bissinger chronicles one of the Panthers' dramatic seasons and shows
how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires-and
sometimes shatters-the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms.
For readers who like….
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi4104651033/
Friday Night Lights
The Lovely Bones''My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was 14 when I was murdered on Dec. 6,
1973. In newspaper photos of missing girls from the 70's, most looked like me: white girls with
mousy brown hair. This was before kids of all races and
genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail.
It was still back when people believed things like that didn't
happen.''
… murder/mystery with a unique twist– dead girl narrates her story
…the brutality of man
…seeing how people deal with loss of a loved one, grief
For readers who like to read about….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-YpkyMLQw4
The Lovely Bones
A Thousand Splendid Suns
A Thousand Splendid Suns is set against the volatile events of
Afghanistan's last thirty years, from the Soviet invasion to the
reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding, that puts the violence, fear, hope and faith of this country in intimate, human
terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought
jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal
lives, the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness, are
inextricable from the history playing out around them.
…historical fiction
…a cultural look inside the life of women in the Middle East
…studying the impact of violence, war on civilians
…thinking about hope and courage and how it propels us forward when we think we can’t take another step
For readers who like….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1K7zTE5IuU
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Frankenstein0 “…I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature
open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”
0 And with that, the most important monster in all of literature was born. Not the stiff-legged, grunting version you see in the old black-and-white films, but a cunning creature eight feet tall with amazing speed and strength. The monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a thing to be feared.
0 The story around the creation of this classic novel is almost as good as the tale itself. One evening, an 18-year old Mary Shelley, along with Lord Byron, and her husband the poet Percy Shelley, decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. She emerged the victor, not only beating two literary luminaries, but also creating a masterpiece that is still haunting us today.
- Stories with “horror” elements
- A story set in 1800 Europe / historical fiction
- To read about a “sub-story” -- man’s true nature, cruelty, true beauty & intelligence
- Literary classics
For readers who like….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzPdjdphH3k
Frankenstien
Nickel and DimedOur sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled
worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity.
Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. How does anyone survive, let alone
prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning
woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental
and muscular effort. “Unskilled workers” will need need at least two jobs to survive.
Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate
stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You
will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- in quite the same way again.
For readers who like REALITY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgz-ZfDWrxs Nickel and Dimed
The Glass CastleIn a memoir format, the
author reveals the painful, sometimes abusive and
confusing life she led with her family. At times living
like nomads, others living in dismal conditions with
relatives, the novel examines families and their internal relationships—how abuse, love, pain and hope weave
together to create a person’s story: “This is who I am. “
… true stories about real people in real situations
…reading about the courage to survive, even in the worst of conditions
…reading about family dysfunction and its impact on the psyche, the growth of a child
For readers who like….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE4bwOqrK6M
The Glass Castle
Cold Mountain0 At first glance Cold Mountain may
appear to be a civil war novel following each and every bloody battle.
0 In fact, the civil war is just the background for a more intimate story about the journey of three lost souls.
0 Based on local history and stories passed down through the generations from the author’s great-great grandfather, Cold Mountain tells the tale of Inman, a wounded confederate soldier, who after four years decides to leave behind the horrors of war and walk home to Cold Mountain and his love, Ada
0 At home, Ada struggles to keep up her father’s farm afloat after his death. When Ada is on the verge of starvation, a young drifter Ruby comes to offer her help with the farm.
- More detailed setting & character development
- “odyssey” stories - Historical fiction- Realistic Civil War
era storylines- Romance
For readers who like….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXGtunJ9Jqk
Cold Mountain
What to do now:0Make your list of your top three choices to read
0 Tomorrow, we will go to the ERC and check out your book
0Wednesday and Thursday will be in-class reading days.
0 Bring a blanket those days – if it’s nice out, we will go outside to read