AP English Literature & Composition (AP English 12) Tallwood High School Summer 2016 Assignment Your summer assignment has three (3) parts: 1. Write one College Essay Research the application essay prompts of some colleges you would like to apply to. Choose one prompt and write the essay. Formatting: typed, MLA style (size 12, Times New Roman, double-spaced.) o Need help with MLA? Go to the Purdue Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu Where you would normally write your name, put your STUDENT ID# ONLY since these essays will be read by your peers. Where you would normally put the title, include the prompt and the college the prompt came from. Need help? Try one of these resources: Khan Academy s Applying to College Page: https://www.khanacademy.org/college-admissions/applyingto-college How To Write a Great College Application Essay by U.S. News Education (20:41) (YouTube) Due date: Your teacher will collect your typed, printed, stapled draft on the first day of class. 2. Read How to Read Literature Like A Professor* a. Read this book in its entirety. If you have read parts of it before, make sure you still fully read all the concepts and critical thinking outlined in this book. b. After or during reading, complete the outline provided to you in this packet. The outline must be handwritten and should not resemble any other student s outline. c. Due date: 2 nd week of class 3. Read one Choice Novel a. Choose one of the following four novels: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Kahled Hosseini Life of Pi by Yann Martel* The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd* All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr b. While reading, you should highlight and annotate the novel. If you have your own copy, you can write directly in the book. If you borrow a copy, use post-its to annotate. If you have questions about how to annotate a novel, see your English teacher. c. Due date: On the first day of class you will be given an assignment about your novel. The assignment will be due in the third week of class. About books If possible, it is recommended that procure your own copies of the books at a local bookstore or online so that you can highlight and annotate in your own book. However, if you need or prefer to borrow, the books marked with an asterisk (*) are available in the THS English Dept. To borrow a book, see Mrs. Peterson (107) or Mrs. Free (114), before or after school on June 1-10, 2015. No books will be available for check-out after June 13, 2015.
Choice Novel Summaries (all taken from Barnes&Noble.com) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Kahled Hosseini A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of selfsacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. Life of Pi by Yann Martel* After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan and a 450-pound royal bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and beloved works of fiction in recent years. Universally acclaimed upon publication, Life of Pi is a modern classic. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd* Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around one devastating, blurred memory - the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily was four. Since then, her only real companion has been the fierce-hearted, and sometimes just fierce, black woman Rosaleen, who acts as her "stand-in mother." When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it's time to spring them both free. They take off in the only direction Lily can think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina - a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her mother. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of strong, wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in a story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr A beautiful, stunningly ambitious, instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum s most valuable and dangerous jewel
How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster AP English Literature & Composition (AP12) Summer Assignment Outline/Notes Assignment Introduction: This is a reference book, not a novel. It is filled with information that will help you throughout your year in AP English AND BEYOND! The insights you read in this book will help you ANALYZE the literature you read. It will also help you analyze movies, history, and life in general. Thus, taking good notes will benefit you both during and after reading this book. As you read each chapter, keep notes on this sheet. You may add additional sheets of paper if necessary. Directions: The titles of every chapter are included. Under write notes about how/what this chapter is teaching you about how to analyze literature. For, write down a book or movie that you are familiar with and what part applies to this analysis. The first chapter is done for you read it to see how your notes should look. You must HANDWRITE this outline. Chapter 1. Every Trip is a Quest (Except When it s Not) : Many stories follow the Quest model/archetype. The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge (3). Parts of a Quest (the archetype how you know if the story is a Quest): quester, a place to go, a reason to go, challenges & trials along the way, the REAL reason to go. (4-5) : Shrek (the 1 st movie) Shrek is the quester, going to rescue the princess, with his sidekick Donkey. He faces trials like the rickety bridge and the dragon, and his real quest is his journey to accept himself and love himself. [Star Wars, The Odyssey, the story of Jesus Christ, and Finding Nemo are also quests.] 2. Nice to Eat With You: Acts of Communion 3. Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires
4. If It s Square, It s a Sonnet (*Only in the original edition! Skip this for now if you have the revised edition.) 5. Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before? 6. When in Doubt, It s from Shakespeare 7. Or the Bible 8. Hanseldee and Greteldum
9. It s Greek to Me 10. It s More Than Just Rain or Snow 10. Never Stand Next to the Hero (*Only in the revised edition! Skip this for now if you have the original edition.) 11. More Than It s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence 12. Is That a Symbol?
13. It s All Political 14. Yes, She s a Christ Figure, Too 15. Flights of Fancy 16. It s All About Sex 17. Except Sex.
18. If She Comes Up, It s Baptism 19. Geography Matters 20. So Does Season 21. Marked for Greatness 22. He s Blind for a Reason, You Know
23. It s Never Just Heart Disease... 24. And Rarely Just Illness 25. Don t Read with Your Eyes 26. Is He Serious? And Other Ironies 27. Test Case: A Reading of The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield What are some ways Foster analyzes this story? (Refer to previous chapters!) What did YOU think of the Test Case Story?