DHS Summer Reading Selections - 10th Grade
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Summary: When high school student Clay Jenkins receives a box in the mail containing
thirteen cassette tapes recorded by his classmate Hannah, who committed suicide, he
spends a bewildering and heartbreaking night crisscrossing their town, listening to
Hannah's voice recounting the events leading up to her death.
PRICE: $13.00 Hardback
Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter
Summary: Traces the author's painful childhood in a series of foster homes, her
deteriorating relationship with her emotionally unstable mother, abuse at the hands of a
foster family, and her subsequent efforts to advocate for an improved foster care
system.
PRICE: $8.00 Paperback
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1
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 10th Grade
Homeboyz by Alan Lawrence Sitomer
Summary: When his attempt to exact revenge on his little sister's killer places him under
house arrest, Teddy Anderson is forced by his probation officer to tutor a twelve-year-
old orphan--a community service assignment that changes his life.
PRICE: $7.00 Paperback
Never Cry Werewolf by Heather Davis
Summary: Forced to attend a camp for teens with behavior problems, sixteen-year-old
Shelby Locke's attempts to follow the rules go astray when she meets a handsome
British werewolf.
PRICE: $13.00 Hardback
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2
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 10th Grade
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Summary: Scout's father defends a black man accused of raping a white woman in a
small Alabama town during the 1930s.
PRICE: $6.00 Paperback
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Summary: In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control
through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the
twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test
when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.
PRICE: $14.00 Hardback
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3
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 11th Grade
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
Summary: "In Sterling, New Hampshire, 17-year-old high school student Peter
Houghton has endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of classmates.
His best friend, Josie Cormier, succumbed to peer pressure and now hangs out with the
popular crowd that often instigates the harassment. One final incident of bullying sends
Peter over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes
the lives of Sterling's residents. Even those who were not inside the school that morning
find their lives in an upheaval, including Alex Cormier. The superior court judge
assigned to the Houghton case, Alex - whose daughter, Josie, witnessed the events
that unfolded - must decide whether or not to step down. She's torn between presiding
over the biggest case of her career and knowing that doing so will cause an even wider
chasm in her relationship with her emotionally fragile daughter. Josie, meanwhile,
claims she can't remember what happened in the last fatal minutes of Peter's rampage.
Or can she? And Peter's parents, Lacy and Lewis Houghton, ceaselessly examine the
past to see what they might have said or done to compel their son to such extremes.
Rich with psychological and social insight, Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, poignant, and
thought-provoking novel that has at its center a haunting question. Do we ever really
know someone?"
PRICE: $12.00 Paperback
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1
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 11th Grade
Liar by Justine Larbalestier
Summary: Compulsive liar Micah promises to tell the truth after revealing that her
boyfriend has been murdered.
PRICE: $13.00 Hardback
Jack Tumor by Anthony McGowan
Summary: Fourteen-year-old Hector, suffering from severe headaches, is diagnosed
with a brain tumor which speaks in his head, calling itself Jack Tumor and making an
effort to improve Hector's home life, increase his popularity, and win him a girlfriend
before the operation that will mean the end of one or both of them.
PRICE: $14.00 Hardback
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2
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 11th Grade
Makes Me Wanna Holler by Nathan McCall
Summary: Passing his time reading books and hanging out with fellow locals in his
ramshackle Atlanta community, forty-something African-American Barlowe witnesses
tensions between his neighbors and white newcomers who are promoting
redevelopment efforts.
PRICE: $12.00 Paperback
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Summary: Remarkable, poetic, and very frank autobiography of a black girl who tells
about growing up in Arkansas, St. Louis, and San Francisco.
PRICE: $6.00 Paperback
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3
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 11th Grade
Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick
Summary: While recuperating in a Baghdad hospital from a traumatic brain injury
sustained during the Iraq War, eighteen-year-old soldier Matt Duffy struggles to recall
what happened to him and how it relates to his ten-year-old friend, Ali.
PRICE: $13.00 Hardback
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4
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 12th Grade
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Summary: Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story
of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help
sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.
PRICE: $9.00 Paperback
The Pact: A Love Story by Jodi Picoult
Summary: The budding romance between two teenaged children of two families who
have been lifelong friends and neighbors culminates tragically in an abortive suicide
pact, leading to a gripping courtroom drama.
PRICE: $6.00 Paperback
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1
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 12th Grade
Lucky by Alice Sebold
Summary: Enormously visceral, emotionally gripping, and imbued with the belief that
justice is possible even after the most horrific of crimes, Alice Sebold's compelling
memoir of her rape at the age of eighteen is a story that takes hold of you and won't let
go. Sebold fulfills a promise that she made to herself in the very tunnel where she was
raped: someday she would write a book about her experience. With Lucky she delivers
on that promise with mordant wit and an eye for life's absurdities, as she describes what
she was like both as a young girl before the rape and how that rape changed but did not
sink the woman she later became. It is Alice's indomitable spirit that we come to know in
these pages. The same young woman who sets her sights on becoming an Ethel
Merman-style diva one day (despite her braces, bad complexion, and extra weight)
encounters what is still thought of today as the crime from which no woman can ever
really recover. In an account that is at once heartrending and hilarious, we see Alice's
spirit prevail as she struggles to have a normal college experience in the aftermath of
this harrowing, life-changing event. No less gripping is the almost unbelievable role that
coincidence plays in the unfolding of Sebold's narrative. Her case, placed in the inactive
file, is miraculously opened again six months later when she sees her rapist on the
street. This begins the long road to what dominates these pages: the struggle for
triumph and understanding -- in the courtroom and outside in the world. Lucky is, quite
simply, a real-life thriller. In its literary style and narrative tension we never lose sight of
why this life story is worth reading. At the end we are left standing in the wake of
devastating violence, and, like the writer, we have come to know what it means to
survive.
PRICE: $10.00 Paperback
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2
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 12th Grade
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
Summary: One day in 1993, high up in the world's most inhospitable mountains, Greg
Mortenson wandered lost and alone, broken in body and spirit, after a failed attempt to
climb K2, the world's deadliest peak. When the people of an impoverished village in
Pakistan's Karakoram Himalaya took him in and nursed him back to health, Mortenson
made an impulsive promise: He would return one day and build them a school. Although
he was a homeless "climbing bum" living out of his aging Buick in Berkeley, California,
Mortenson sold what few possessions he had to launch one of the most remarkable
humanitarian campaigns of our time." "Three Cups of Tea traces Mortenson's decade-
long odyssey to build schools, especially for girls, throughout the region that gave birth
to the Taliban and sanctuary to Al Qaeda. While he wages war with the root causes of
terrorism - poverty and ignorance - by providing both girls and boys with a balanced,
nonextremist education. Mortenson must survive a kidnapping, fatwas issued by
enraged mullahs, death threats from Americans who consider him a traitor, and
wrenching separations from his family." Today, as the director of the Central Asia
Institute, Mortenson has built fifty-five schools serving Pakistan and Afghanistan's
poorest communities. And as this real-life Indiana Jones from Montana crisscrosses the
Himalaya and the Hindu Kush fighting to keep these schools functioning, he provides
not only hope to tens of thousands of children, but living proof that one passionately
dedicated person truly can change the world.
PRICE: $12.00 Paperback
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3
DHS Summer Reading Selections - 12th Grade
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
Summary: Reflections of a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor who lectured
on "Really achieving your childhood dreams," shortly after having been diagnosed with
terminal cancer. His advice concerned seizing the moment while living, rather than
dying.
PRICE: $17.00 Hardback
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Summary: A series of letters to an unknown correspondent reveals the coming-of-age
trials of a high-schooler named Charlie.
PRICE: $11.00 Paperback
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