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