Does this summer reading seem hard to you?

Question

This is the school I'm going to, and I'm going to have to do this work next year. Does this seem hard to you? Because it seems unreasonably ridiculous to me.

English 3 Honors Summer Reading 2008
Sprague/Evans

Your summer work is intended to bridge your work from English 2 Honors and prepare you for the first month of English 3 Honors—the first four weeks of the English 3 Honors curriculum is based on the novels that you will read in the summer. Therefore, the summer reading is not just one assignment among many in the class; it is essential to your success in the course’s first quarter. You will be responsible for reading four novels.

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried:

For this novel, you will write a one- to two-page essay, comparing O’Brien’s novel about the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried, with Remarque’s novel about World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front. Of course, there will be many comparisons that can be made: we want you to focus on one idea, one theme (the flexibility of truth in war or the psychological effects of war are examples), showing how each novel treats such a theme. Use this reading strategy to prepare you for this essay: as you read The Things They Carried, you will notice similarities to All Quiet on the Western Front; when you do, put a post-it note on that page (or write in the margin if you own the book). When you finish the book, look back at the marked pages until you find a pattern; from that pattern, create a thesis statement that illuminates your theme. The quotes that will support this thesis statement will come from your marked pages. If you did not read All Quiet on the Western Front in English 2 or English 2 Honors, you will need to read this text as well.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved:

Morrison’s Beloved is a contemporary novel that chronicles ex-slaves’ attempts to rebuild their lives while beating back their memories of slavery. The novel is structured like memory itself: it is fragmented, without transitions, recursive, cryptic. In other words, unlike Huck Finn, the story does not move in a linear fashion, but attempts to replicate the traumatized memories of slaves. Therefore, you may struggle with this text. While reading, we’d like you to take notes: write down questions that you have, and then attempt to answer them; write down troubling passages and attempt to interpret them; write down a summary of each section; look for patterns—repeated images, phrases and incidents and record them. We will collect these notes on the second day of school; in February, we will reread the novel as a class. These notes will serve as a foundation for our study of the novel. Therefore, we do not expect you to have a total grasp of the novel on a first reading. Creating notes will help you to work through this difficult text.

For the next two texts, you will not be turning in written work. However, you will be responsible for having read (and retained) the essence of these books in order to perform various tasks with these novels during the first four weeks of school: activities can include timed writings, presentations, Socratic Seminars (open, student-led discussions), one-page interpretations and group tasks (group tasks will require each individual to bring something to the table; one cannot rely on one group member who has read).

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:

Huck Finn and escaped slave Jim travel on the Mississippi River—trace the classic elements of the hero’s journey in this piece. It is both a physical journey on a river, but also an emotional journey for Huck: he learns what is wrong with the world and what is right for him.

Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior:

Kingston’s collection of four stories explores her identity as a Chinese American woman: what in her is Chinese? What is American? Her identity draws on both cultures, like in “White Tigers”, for example, when she takes the Chinese folktale of Mulan and attempts to translate the story to an American environment.

English 3 Honors intends to help you to become an independent reader, writer and thinker: though we offer you several tools that can assist you in your work, you must decide what helps you to access meaning within any given text. Employ one or more of the tools below in accessing the texts of Huck Finn and The Woman Warrior:

• Underline/highlight important passages and write interpretations, inferences or questions in the margins. If you don’t own the book, use post-it notes.
• Create a dialectical journal: write down significant quotes and then respond to them in writing.
• Write a reaction, interpretation or summary of each chapter/story.
• Take notes on important events in each chapter; record questions that you have in each chapter; trace a character’s development throughout the story.
• Gather with a group from the class and have a discussion.
• Compare the text to something else you’ve read, seen

Answer 1

you only had for books? lucky! i had five with outlines and essays for all of them. so no, i don't think yours is too hard. You can do it!! :) keep going! it seemed really hard, but then i got used to it.

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Answer 2

hells yeah, i thought i had a lot of work ot do!

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Answer 3

You're in honors --- you're supposed to have a bus load of work to do. I'm not taking honors english, but I'm in AP World, Honors Alg II/Trig, Honors Latin II and Honors Chemistry, and I get similar loads of work but in my other subjects. Neither you nor I have it that bad.

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Answer 4

A LOT!! I didn't even read it all because there's so much. And I thought reading 7 books and writing mini-reports for them was hard.

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Answer 5

Not nearly as hard as what me and my friends had to do
They gave us 8 books to read this summer.
All ranging from 800-1300 pages!!!
Then we had to write essays comparing that book to every other book.

Then a project on all the books
It was toatlly ridiculous!
I still have to read the last and biggest book in less then a week!!

Good luck

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Answer 6

Well yes and no. The fact that it is summer reading kinda throws me off a little on how much it is, but just thinking that there are months of summer i guess that it is ok..... but i would be frustrated if it was my summer reading list.

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Answer 7

sounds like fun. not much of a work load. think ill check out some of those books. haven't been in school in such a long time. enjoy it while you can.

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