Grades 9-12 Assignment:

Instructions: Students in grades 9 through 12 are to read any three books assigned to their grade. On the first day back to school, they should turn into their English teacher ONE carefully written essay. The essay will be three pages in length and review each of the assigned books read, their strengths and weaknesses, and the student’s favorite characters, scenes, or themes. The books need not concern the same subject – though the essay should be a coherent whole, with a title such as “My Summer Reading Experience.” Grading will be based on how well reasoned the essays are, how well they incorporate detail from the books to convey their points, and on use of proper grammar and style. Standards, of course, will be based on the respective grade level of the student. The mark will stand as a significant grade in the English class for the first quarter.


Grade 9:
 

• The Once and Future King, T.H.White
• Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington
• The Sea Wolf, Jack London
• David Copperfield (counts as 2 books), Charles Dickens
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
• Black Like Me, John Howard Griffith
• The Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
• The Bounty Trilogy (counts as three books), Nordhoff/Hall
• The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators, Gordon Grice
• A Book of Bees, Sue Hubbell
• Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
• Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis
   

Grade 10:
 

• Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs, Sue Hubbell
• A Stillness at Appomattox, Bruce Catton
• Landscape Turned Red, Stephen W. Sears
• The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
• The Roman Way, Edith Hamilton
• Watership Down, Richard Adams
• A Separate Peace, Jonathan Knowles
• Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, James McPherson
• Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, Alfred Lansing
• All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot
• The Old Man and the Boy, Robert Ruark 
• The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton
• All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
• Rabble in Arms, Kenneth Roberts
• Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder

Grade 11:
 

• Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb-Ox, G.K. Chesterton
• 1984, George Orwell
• Sailors to the End, Gregory Freeman
• Saint Francis, G.K. Chesterton
• Alone, Adm. Richard Byrd
• In the Heart of the Sea-The Tragedy of the Whale Ship Essex, Nathaniel Philbrick
• On Strategy, A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Harry G. Summers
• Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis
• The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton
• Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. 
• Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond, Gene Kranz
• With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, Eugene B. Sledge
• Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg, James McPherson
• With God in Russia, Walter J. Ciszek
• Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes Of the Civil War, Charles B. Dew
• The Kingdom of Infinite Number: A Field Guide, Bryan Bunch 
• Biohazard, Ken Alibek and Stephen Handelman
• Carry on, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
• Very Good, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
• Right, ho, Jeeves, P.G. Woehouse
• Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
• A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Grade 12:
 

• Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• The Great Terror, Robert Conquest
• Black Flag: Guerilla Warfare on the Western Border, 1861-1865, Thomas Goodrich
• The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis
• Wind, Sand, and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin, Tracy Lee Simmons 
• The Face of Battle, John Keegan
• Grendel, John Gardner
• Babbit, Sinclair Lewis
• Night, Elie Wiesel
• Plato’s Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, GMA Grube (trans.)
• Flags of Our Fathers, Ron Powers & James Bradley
• Nicholas and Alexandra, Robert K. Massie
• The Shadow of His Wings, Gereon Karl Goldman
• The Emperor’s Handbook: a New Translation of the Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, David Hicks & Scot Hicks (trans.)
• Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
• Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, Michael Behe (Ignatius Press)
• Darwin’s Black Box: the Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Michael Behe
• The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis
• Virus Hunters of the CDC, Joseph B McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch
• Another Sort of Learning, Fr. James Schall