...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