12th Grade Reading List
Summer Reading, entering Grade 12
Suggestions Off Speed, Baseball, Pitching, and the Art of Deception, by Terry McDermott. (nonfiction) The author describes nine commonly used pitches, weaving in player and coaches’ interviews. A good read for the baseball fan. Dog Gone, by Pauls Toutonghi. (nonfiction) The true story of a lost dog’s journey and the family’s frantic search to find him before it’s too late. If you love dogs, this is a great read. The Disappearing Spoon: And other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements, by Sam Kean (nonfiction) If you love science, especially chemistry, you will enjoy reading why the periodic chart is organized the way it is, as well as learning the interesting stories behind the elements and the scientists who discovered them. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. (nonfiction) The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. Because of their father’s drinking problems and their mother’s free spirit, the children of the family are forced to raise themselves. Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. (nonfiction) The true story of a journalist-mountaineer and his Mount Everest expedition during an historic storm that claimed lives and left countless others with life-changing guilt and questions. The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown. (nonfiction) The improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. A dark secret lurks in the private school of Hailsham in the English countryside, where Kathy, now thirty-one years old, lived as a child. You will be surprised to learn the mystery. The Stand, by Stephen King. An accident at an army lab lets loose a virus that kills nearly the entire U.S. The survivors cross wastelands to band together in Colorado and Las Vegas to decide the fate of humanity. Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. In the year 2044, Wade Watts spends his waking hours in the Utopian world of the OASIS. He stumbles across the first puzzle set up by OASIS creator James Halliday and finds he must compete with thousands of others---including those willing to commit murder. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. A story about friendship among an unlikely group: a secretly educated concierge, a precocious twelve-year-old girl, and an older Japanese gentleman in a Paris apartment. What makes this group stick together? Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs. Jacob goes to a remote English island and meets children he has seen in his grandfather’s old photo album and discovers they are alive and well---despite islanders’ claims the children had died decades ago. What else does Jacob discover? A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. In the summer of 1953, two best friends are playing baseball when one of them hits a foul ball that kills the other boy’s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary. The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. Lily Owens’s life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Looking for Alaska, by John Green. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. He heads off to Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe, because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . . After. Nothing is ever the same. The Stranger, by Albert Camus. Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." A great read for those looking to challenge themselves! Room, by Emma Donoghue. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. The story of various women living in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. Together, these seemingly different women join forces to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town. Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult. The story of the aftermath of a school shooting in a small New Hampshire town. As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show--destroying the closest of friendships and families. Nineteen Minutes asks what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether anyone is ever really who they seem to be. The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein. If you love dogs you must read this book! A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope--a captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life . . . as only a dog could tell it. |