English II, Honors, Regular, & Special Ed. Purchase your books through booksXYZ.com, the Nonprofit bookstore, and part of your purchase will be given back to the school of your choice (LHS) - http://booksxyz.com/-LAF01LA Need help with your reading - background information or guides to understanding?  Try the EBSCO data bank LITERARY REFERENCE CENTER.   This is provided free of charge for you by the Laf. Parish School System.  Link - http://search.ebscohost.com/    User ID = student   Password = ebsco   Recommended for Regular & Special Ed. Students in Regular or Special Ed. classes may read ANY books they choose (see Choice page for more information).   For extra credit & recognition in the fall, students must complete a Reading Log (see Reading Log page) for each book read.   The books below are especially recommended for students in reg. & spec. ed. classes, but not required.  Required Reading Options for students enrolled in Honors Eng. II Keep a HANDWRITTEN journal of the characters and content of each novel as you read - suggestion: a journal entry after each chapter.   You may use these journals as a guide when you take your summer reading test(s) and the journals must be turned after the test(s) and will be part of the summer reading grade. Option 1 - Read 1 book - The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak OR Option 2 - Read 2 books  - Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson  and Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher More information about these books is below. See more information to guide you in your reading below or try the EBSCO databank. Note:  Many English II students will be studying The Lord of the Flies during  the 5th 6 weeks.  Some students may want to get a “jumpstart” during the summer by reading the novel     Because our goal is for each student to read 6 books or more during the summer, we encourage you to continue reading books of choice (see Choice for All page) after you've fulfilled the requirement for Honors Eng. II. - rewards & extra credit will await you next school year along with better performance in your classes an on standardized tests like the GEE or the ACT.

Option 1 The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak Winner of the 2007 BookBrowse Ruby Award. Book Review: The Book Thief    Posted by John Crowther on Sparknotes.com  'Once upon a time, an odd little man decided to part his hair on the opposite side of his head from everybody else, grow a weird little mustache, and take over the world. And he did it—the taking over the world part—by writing a story. That, at least, is the explanation for Nazi Germany given by Max Vandenburg, a character in Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief, a profoundly engaging novel about the importance of stories.   Max is a Jew hiding in a basement in a small German town located between Munich and Dachau concentration camp. He writes—and illustrates—his musings about Hitler on the pages of a used copy of Mein Kampf that he’s carefully whitewashed using house paint from cans in the basement. The stories he writes on those pages are some of the high points of this novel. Yet this image of Max in the basement, writing his own story on top of Hitler’s story, the story that drove Max underground in the first place, neatly encapsulates the point of this book: Stories matter, and what everything means depends on who’s telling the story and how well they tell it.   The story in The Book Thief is compelling, but not easy to summarize. It’s about Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old girl who arrives in the town of Molching in 1939 to meet her new foster parents. Her real father is a political prisoner, her mother is too sick and poor to care for her, and her six-year-old brother dies while on the train to Molching with her. Her foster parents are poor and near the bottom of the social hierarchy in Molching, but they are generous and good-hearted.   One of the remarkable things about The Book Thief is that it somehow manages to stay suspenseful without your ever knowing where the plot is headed or even what kind of plot you’re reading. Essentially it’s a coming of age story. As Liesel learns to read, to steal books, to fit in with her peers in Hitler Youth meetings and petty crime sprees, and to help her foster parents in their struggle to subsist, she develops an awareness of the world around her and, influenced by her foster father’s humane outlook on life, becomes a secret Fuhrer hater. When Max comes to hide in their basement, about halfway through the book, Fuhrer-hating becomes a life-and-death matter for her and her whole family. But the book isn’t really about her struggle to keep Max a secret, or the family’s struggle to survive, or any other obvious kind of struggle. The real story creeps up on you unexpectedly in the daily interactions that Liesel has with her friends and the various townspeople of Molching.   The person telling the story of The Book Thief—the narrator—is neither Max nor Hitler nor Liesel, but Death, who is quite the wry and insightful storyteller. Death doesn’t tell the story’s ending entirely—you don’t know who lives and who dies. But Death does make it clear from the outset that the story ends in 1943 with bombs dropping on Molching—not the family’s midnight march across the Alps to safety. So while you read, from time to time you ask yourself, if this book ends in bombs and death, what’s it all about? What makes these characters’ daily lives special and worthy of a long book? The answer to that question is something that the characters—first Max and then Liesel—find out for themselves. It’s there—they ultimately come to tell their stories in their own words and pictures. And when they do, you see that the journey has been more than worthwhile. The Book Thief will haunt you long after you put it down. "

Option 2   1)  Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson      Since the beginning of the school year, high school freshman Melinda has found that it's been getting harder and harder for her to speak out loud: "My throat is always sore, my lips raw.... Every time I try to talk to my parents or a teacher, I sputter or freeze.... It's like I have some kind of spastic laryngitis." What could have caused Melinda to suddenly fall mute? Could it be due to the fact that no one at school is speaking to her because she called the cops and got everyone busted at the seniors' big end-of-summer party? Or maybe it's because her parents' only form of communication is Post-It notes written on their way out the door to their nine-to-whenever jobs. While Melinda is bothered by these things, deep down she knows the real reason why she's been struck mute...                  Laurie Halse Anderson's first novel is a stunning and sympathetic tribute to the teenage outcast. The triumphant ending, in which Melinda finds her voice, is cause for cheering (while many readers might also shed a tear or two). After reading Speak, it will be hard for any teen to look at the class scapegoat again without a measure of compassion and understanding for that person--who may be screaming beneath the silence. Paperback: 208 pages   Publisher: Puffin; Reprint edition (April 1, 2001)    ISBN-10: 014131088X   ISBN-13: 978-0141310886 Read a review on Teenread.com              http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/0374371520.asp Speak – lesson plans to guide your reading: http://www.viterbo.edu/personalpages/faculty/GSmith/LessonPlanforSpeak.htm  Lesson Plans & Guide for Speak http://www.viterbo.edu/personalpages/faculty/GSmith/LessonPlanforSpeak.htm    7)  Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher   T. J. Jones is black, Japanese, and white; his given name is The Tao (honest!), and he's the son of a woman who abandoned him when she got heavily into crack and crank. As a child he was full of rage, but now as a senior in high school he's pretty much overcome all that. With the help of a good therapist and his decent, loving, ex-hippie adoptive parents, he's not only fairly even-keeled, he has turned out to be smart and funny. Injustice, however, still fills him with fury. So when big-deal football star Mike Barbour bullies brain-damaged Chris Coughlin for wearing his dead brother's letter jacket, T.J. hatches a scheme for revenge. He assembles a swim team (in a school with no pool) made up of the most outrageous outsiders and misfits he can find and extracts a conditional promise of those sacred letter jackets from the coach. After weeks of dedicated practice at the All Night Fitness pool, the seven mermen get good enough not to embarrass themselves in competition. The really important thing, though, turns out to be the long bus rides to meets, a safe place to share the hurts that have made them who they are. Meanwhile, T.J.'s father, who has taken in a battered little girl to ease his lifelong guilt over his role in the accidental death of a baby, tangles with another bully--her stepfather--and his growing murderous rage. Chris Crutcher, therapist and author of seven prize-winning young adult books, here gives his many fans another wise and compassionate story full of the intensity of athletic competition and hair-raising incidents of child abuse. Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages   Publisher: Laurel Leaf; Reprint edition (December 10, 2002)  ISBN-10: 0440229383   ISBN-13: 978-0440229384 Read a review on Teenreads. com                         http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/0688180191.asp American Association of School Librarians Book Reading guide  http://www.ala.org/ala/aaslbucket/pittsburgh/WhaleTalk.pdf American Association of School Librarian - discussion guide for Whale Talk - great guide http://www.ala.org/ala/aaslbucket/pittsburgh/WhaleTalk.pdf Great site for guide to reading Whale Talk http://www.multcolib.org/talk/guides-whale.html Whale Talk discussed on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_Talk Extra - Lord of the Flies  - “William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, "the boy with fair hair," and Piggy, Ralph's chubby, wisdom-dispensing sidekick whose thick spectacles come in handy for lighting fires. Although Ralph tries to impose order and delegate responsibility, there are many in their number who would rather swim, play, or hunt the island's wild pig population. Soon Ralph's rules are being ignored or challenged outright. His fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: "He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet." Golding's gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition.” --Jennifer Hubert   More information - http://www.seymour.k12.wi.us/shs/teachers/brogley/10/units/lof/lofhome.htm