2) G r a de L e ve l Bo ok 3) Books of Choice - Assignments & Options
Basic assignment: Basic Assignment:
You must select two characters in the novel to ana-
Timeline by Michael Crichton
This is the plight of the heroes of Timeline, Michael
lyze. As part of your character analysis, you must Crichton’s thriller. They’re historians in 1999 em-
Create your own graphic organizer address the following areas by providing a description
(Digital or Hand Made) ployed by a tech billionaire-genius with more
and at least one example for each of the following: than a few of Bill Gates’s most unlovable quirks.
Like the entrepreneur in Crichton’s Jurassic Park,
You must design the graphic organizer to -The character’s appearance Doniger plans a theme park featuring artifacts from a
include the following elements from your -The character’s thoughts/ideas lost world revived via cutting-edge science. When the
book: -The character’s words project’s chief historian sends a distress call to 1999
-The character’s actions from 1357, the boss man doesn’t tell the younger
Title, Author, Major Characters, Setting, -What others say about the character historians the risks they’ll face trying to save him.
Conflict, Pliot, Exposition, Rising Action,
Create your own table to organize this information.
Climax, Falling Action, Resolution, Theme
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
Challenge Yourself: Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but
You may create this by hand (using your Now do something fun! Imagine that the book you’ve
artistic skills) or you can create a digital once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless youth,
just read is being made into a film. What current ac- hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered
version using technology skills you possess. tors would you select to star as the main characters in with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow
challenge Yourself: your book? Create a movie poster (either by hand or upon the world. This is the tale of his
digitally with your computer) that features the actors testing, how he mastered the mighty
you’ve chosen and highlights the major themes in the words of power, tamed an ancient
Create a one-page newsletter showcas-
book. dragon, and crossed death’s threshold
ing the important or major events in your -----------------------------------------------------------------
novel. The newsletter should include both to restore the balance.
Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein
text and images and may be done by hand Jim Marlow and his strange-looking Martian friend
or digitally using your computer. Keep the Willis were allowed to travel only so far. But one day
above elements in mind as you create your Willis unwittingly tuned into a treacherous plot that The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman
newsletter. threatened all the colonists on Mars, Honor and her parents have been reassigned to live
9th grade: and it set Jim off on a terrfying on Island 365 in the Tranquil Sea. Life is peace-
Farenheit 451 adventure that could save--or destroy-- ful there—the color of the sky is regulated by Earth
them all! Mother, a corporation that controls New Weather and
by: Ray Bradbury
10th grade: it almost never rains. Everyone fits into their rightful
and predictable place except Honor. She doesn’t fit
Brave New World I am Legend by Richard Matheson in, but then she meets Helix, a boy
by: Aldous Huxley Robert Neville has witnessed the end of the world. with a big heart and a keen sense for
11th grade: The world’s population has been obliterated by a the world around them. Slowly, they
Slaughterhouse 5 vampire virus, though Neville has somehow survived. begin to uncover a terrible truth about
by: Kurt Vonnegut As he toils to make sense of it all and protect him- life on the island.
self against the hounding vampires who seek out his
12th grade:
life force, Neville embarks on a series of projects to
1984 discover the source of the plague and hopefully put an
by: George Orwell end to the vampires.
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Dir e ct ion s
2 0 0 9
Algernon is extra-clever thanks to an experimental brain
All IT Students must read three books for Summer operation so far tried only on animals. Charlie eagerly
Reading. These include the following: volunteers as the first human subject. After frustrating
1) School Wide Novel delays and agonies of concentration, the effects begin
to show and the reports steadily improve. But getting
2) Grade Level Book
3) One book of Choice smarter brings cruel shocks. Godby High School
All students should complete the Basic Assignment for The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein
the Grade Level Book and their Choice book. The Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fasci-
Challenge Yourself assignments are for extra credit.
Students are also required to complete the School-Wide
nated by science. While he was working on his Atomic
Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David’s obsessive
Academy of
book assignment.
1) School Wide Book
attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution
to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a
Information Technology
model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah The Hotzone by Richard Preston
The dramatic and chilling story of an Ebola virus out-
What is war like through the eyes break in a surburban Washington, D.C. laboratory, with
of a child soldier? How does one descriptions of frightening historical epidemics of rare
become a killer? How does one and lethal viruses. More hair-raising than anything
stop? Child soldiers have been Hollywood could think of, because it’s all true.
profiled by journalists, and
novelists have struggled to
imagine their lives. But until now,
there has not been a first-person account from some-
one who came through this hell and survived.
In A LONG WAY GONE, Ishmael Beah, now twenty-
six years old, tells a riveting story. At the age of
twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land
rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen,
he’d been picked up by the government army, and
Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable
of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army
and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he strug-
Summer
gled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world
of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion.
This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope. Reading
Instructions for School-wide Novel:
Write 10 diary entries that place you into the ten
most important scenes of the story. Write about
what you’d do, say and think about the situation.