Earlier this summer, I looked up my freshman daughter’s summer reading list. I was not at all impressed. Here’s the list for freshman students in the gifted and above-level classes (which aren’t really above level since any student who has kept a C average can take them, but that’s another rant for another time):
- Maximum Ride
- The Red Pyramid
- Acceleration
- Ender’s Game
They have to read one book, one fairly easy very mainstream book. Fortunately for my kids, they have a mean mom who insures they are reading a whole lot more than one book. Both of my kids read a book this summer alright — a book a week, more like.
When we went to freshman orientation, my ire began to dissolve a little. We were given a list of her required reading and were able to buy some books there (that started up a whole new rant, because back when I was in school, those books were checked out like textbooks, but. . . . ).
The list is pretty standard:
- George Orwell’s Animal Farm
- Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet
- More Shakespeare: Midsummer Night’s Dream (I think — the particular title/version was listed as not available, but I’m thinking they’ll replace it with another edition?)
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Edith Hamilton’s Mythology
I remember when we were doing the Classics Bookclub here. The idea was that youth is wasted on the lost. I read many of those books — or was supposed to (cough, cough). I generally did, but I have to admit to relying heavily on Cliff and his notes for Dickens. But even when I read the books, and discussed the historical and contextual significance of them, and wrote essays about them, the true beauty was still lost.
I’m thinking that I might read A Tale of Two Cities this year in solidarity. But since I don’t have to, and she does, I’m not promising anything.
But I’m curious — were there novels or authors you remember reading in high school who captured your heart? Or made you want to read more? Or write something? Or relate? Let me know.
Jennifer Donovan survived high school once with no visible physical or mental scars and is hoping the same will be true for seeing her daughter through. She blogs at Snapshot.
I hated The Old Man and the Sea when we were assigned to read it in high school. I decided to read it again years later when my husband re-read it. I was surprised that after all that time of thinking it was the most overrated book ever, I finally “got” why it is a classic, and my impression of the story and the writing is quite different now than before. I’m not even sure if I could pinpoint why or what changed, but life experience and getting older changed my view of the book.
Exactly! I just don’t think we are ready to process a lot of it at that stage in our life.
Ever since I read The Paris Wife I’ve been wanting to revisit Hemingway myself!
I first read Romeo and Juliet as a freshman and even though it was a difficult read for a 14 yr old it impacted me in a way that kept me reading Shakespeare all thru high school because I wanted to!
I’m hoping that happens for my daughter this year!
I read Tale of Two Cities when I was a teenager and it is one of my favourite books ever ! Didn’t read it at school though. To kill a Mockingbird was one of the ones we read at school that I never forgot and would like to read again.
I’m thinking I might enjoy it a bit more now that I’ve read Les Miserables since some of the context is similar. But I don’t know. . . .
Yup, the usual Shakespeare readings stuck with me– R&J and Hamlet, especially. I fell in LOVE with Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby, too. Oh, and The Catcher in the Rye- can’t forget that one. Seems I didn’t veer too far from the well-beaten path, but I still adore all of these today!
Wuthering Heights has actually been on my re-read list. I’d like to revisit it.
And I never had to read Catcher in the Rye, but did read it a few years ago. I actually think that’s one that would be better appreciated as a teenager.
When I re-read The Catcher in the Rye a couple years ago, I was struck by my change in perspective… how I related to it as a teenager differed than how I came to it as an adult!
Actually, I love that the summer reading list was FUN. Good for the school for not wanting to torture students. I swear that high school reading is designed to make students hate it. Hasn’t anything good been written since To Kill a Mockingbird? That said, I really Liked Fahrenheit 451, and Animal Farm surprises me every time with how good it is. I think high schoolers should read YA books, not adult books, but I realize I’m in the minority.
Okay, I’ll give you that. I guess it’s not so much that it was fun that bugged me, but James Patterson?? UGH. And my daughter happened to have already read all of them except Acceleration, so that’s what she’s going to read. She started Ender’s Game a couple of years ago and didn’t like it, though she might like it more if she gave it another try.
Also, they don’t take the quiz until Sept. 11, so she has purposefully not read it, knowing she can do it over the long weekend next week.
I remember reading “The Pearl” by Steinbeck my Freshman year. When we moved from Indiana to Florida the books we had for my sophmore year were the same ones we had used for my 7th grade year in Indiana. Needless to say I was allowed to read books from the library and turn in book reports. I gave my sixth grade students a list of books 2 pages long and they had to choose 3 books to read and 3 written projects to complete, and they had math homework as well. Our 8th grade team gave a list of 4 books. I was really disappointed since they had to read 3 books and only had 4 to choose from. I had students email me and ask if they could read a book that wasn’t on the list. There was a lot of YA reading going on with my incoming 6th graders. I learned to choose books based on my own preferences and not from the books we had in high school.
I agree with you and Mrs. Yingling. They’d probably enjoy them more if they could relate to them better.
That’s another beef I have. They would do a unit, and have a long list to choose from (at least 10, which is great). For example, they did a unit on Holocaust literature. Again, this is in the supposedly above-level 8th grade class, clustered with Gifted students as well. The list had only one book that was at a 7th – 10th grade reading level. The others were on about a 4th or 5th grade level! Granted, the content was slightly more mature, but why not challenge them a bit more??
That is why I had such an extensive list. It was all different genres and reading levels. There was something for everyone. If someone had a book they wanted to add on they checked with me, I checked it out and usually approved it. Kids must have a say it their reading or they lose out on the pleasure part.
Love to hear about teacher who will help kids find their interests in reading! There are some grades I really wish I had you for a teacher. 🙂
Favorite reads from high school include Jane Eyre and To Kill a Mockingbird. We did read some “popular” stuff (is it still popular now? probably not) like The Outsiders and Where the Red Fern Grows (both in ninth grade, which I think is way too old now). I was introduced to Dickens in 9th grade, too–Great Expectations. I read the whole thing, and still remember parts of it. It was character building. 😉 I was probably one of the only ones in my class who actually read it, though. (I say this because I have since taught English, both in high school and college, for eight years or so, so I know these statistics. . . )
I think my daughter missed out on Where the Red Fern Grows, but I remember that one from middle school, and I do think that kids are still reading it.
And yes, even though I was/am a reader, Dickens in high school was a bit much and boring for me.
I loved Shakespeare, and both versions of Antigone. We also saw the movie, which was excellent. I also loved Animal Farm, and 1984, hated Swiftwater and Call Of The Wild and also Of Mice and Men, but mostly that is because of the animals being hurt, and in the Steinbeck novel bth the mouse and the man were killled. I could not get over that… I owe so much to my teachers for opening my eyes to great literature but also have to admit I have always been a bookworm and was reading A Wrinkle In Time, and other speculative fiction, at the same time as I was reading the books I was assigned to read.
I remember Beowolf and the Iliad, but not so much for the reading, but because I had a spectacular senior English teacher, and we did some great projects with them.
I just don’t understand why we punish the kids willing to tackle the harder classes with homework in the summer! My kids will read anyway. They don’t need an assignment to do it.
I’m obviously in the minority here, but even though I was a big reader when young, required reading of books like The Red Pony, The Red Badge of Courage, 1984, Animal Farm and others turned me *off* to reading. It took me years to start reading for pleasure again. My son has had to read Where the Red Fern Grows and the Outsiders and didn’t like either one. As an adult, I can understand why some people like books like that. (And it seems that is the favorite type of book that most English teachers who can’t comprehend how anyone could like different types of books.) But I imagine them too vividly, get to involved, and find them depressing. I like happy books. To me the problem with the summer required list isn’t the books on it individually, but that there isn’t much variety. A classic and some other contemporary books – maybe Hattie Big Sky or The Goose Girl to name a couple – would have given more varied choices.
It has been a long time since I was in high school. 🙂 I remember reading Animal Farm and thinking I probably would not have gotten nearly as much out of it if we hadn’t discussed it in class. I know we read something of Shakespeare every year of high school, but I don’t remember being particularly inspired by it. I don’t know if that was because of how it was taught or what. I didn’t enjoy Shakespeare until I got to college, where they produced at least one, sometimes two Shakespearean plays every year. But maybe I wouldn’t have enjoyed those as much if I hadn’t had the earlier exposure to him — I don’t know.
A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite Dickens book and ties with Les Mis as my favorite novel. It took me several attempts to get through it, but once I did I loved it and immediately reread it.
The required reading book I most remember was The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I loved it.I pretty much hated the classics that even over 40 years later seem to still be on the lists! I skimmed most things and like Jennifer, relied a bit on the Cliff Notes to get me through!
I am so glad to see the districts bringing more accessible summer reading to the table. There is a large contingent of teachers that seem to think nothing valuable has been written since before 1950. I shun them. Nothing makes a child dread reading more than a book that is inaccessible to them-both in content and reading level. So if we want kids to read over the summer, why not choose books that are a bit easier to read, with compelling and relevant subject matter?
Now I’m with you on James Patterson-I don’t get that dude’s writing at all-BUT in this age of instant gratification and short attention spans, his books may very well be the gateway drug for a child to dive into meatier, better written texts.
I think a lot of the “classics” that we assign in high school are completely inappropriate developmentally. Sure the “reading level” (which is rarely an accurate sole measure of a book’s suitability for a specific age or audience) says 12th grade, but I had not lived near enough life to get what was going on with Tess of the D’Urbevilles. When I read it again as a junior in college it made way more sense to me-maybe because I had a wider variety of life experience to bring to my reading.
Waiting to assign a classic until the school year is a good idea because it ensures that a student will read it with the support and guidance of a teacher (and yes, probably Cliff Notes) that can help the weed through the themes, symbols and differing writing styles.
The thing is, by the time a kid gets to high school, many educators have done a really good job of turning them off to reading all together. The very kids who proudly showed off their ability to read sight words in elementary school would rather gargle broken glass than pick up a book in high school, because too many teachers have made reading a chore by assigning aged books with pointless projects.
All that said-to answer your original question-I loved Tale of Two Cities. I think my teacher’s enthusiasm for the book had a lot to do with that. I also loved Julius Caesar. To me, reading Shakespeare was like doing a puzzle (I love puzzles).
Wasn’t a huge fan of The Good Earth (my mom’s fave and a summer reading assignment), but am proud to say I have never used Cliff’s notes!