9th+grade+SUMMER+READING+NOVELS

Inspired by Werner von Braun and his Cape Canaveral team, 14-year-old Homer Hickam decided in 1957 to build his own rockets. They were his ticket out of Coalwood, West Virginia, a mining town that everyone knew was dying--everyone except Sonny's father, the mine superintendent and a company man so dedicated that his family rarely saw him. Hickam's smart, iconoclastic mother wanted her son to become something more than a miner and, along with a female science teacher, encouraged the efforts of his grandiosely named Big Creek Missile Agency. He grew up to be a NASA engineer and his memoir of the bumpy ride toward a gold medal at the National Science Fair in 1960--an unprecedented honor for a miner's kid--is rich in humor as well as warm sentiment. Hickam vividly evokes a world of close communal ties in which a storekeeper who sold him saltpeter warned, "Listen, rocket boy. This stuff can blow you to kingdom come." Hickam is candid about the deep disagreements and tensions in his parents' marriage, even as he movingly depicts their quiet loyalty to each other. The portrait of his ultimately successful campaign to win his aloof father's respect is equally affecting. When his father killed another brave, Thomas Black Bull and his parents sought refuge in the wilderness. There they took up life as it had been in the old days, hunting and fishing, battling for survival. But an accident claimed the father's life and the grieving mother died shortly afterward. Left alone, the young Indian boy vowed never to retum to the white man's world, to the alien laws that had condemned his father. A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life, two ways of love. All brought together in a mighty saga of a time and place aflame with conflict, passion, ambition, lust and the struggle for power. A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, //The Things They Carried// marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir [|//If I Die in a Combat Zone//] and the fictional [|//Going After Cacciato//], and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas //Going After Cacciato// played with reality, //The Things They Carried// plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in //The Things They Carried// speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. It's 1911, and China is slowly beginning to accept modern ideas--but the changes may not happen fast enough for young Ailin. Her grandmother has decided it's time she has her feet bound, to make her more attractive to a future husband. When Ailin sees the sad state of her sister's feet, she is stunned. "I stared at the pitiful stumps at the end of Second Sister's legs... her foot had been squeezed into a wedge: the big toe had been left undeformed, but the rest of the foot... had been forced down under the sole... like a piece of bread folded over." Luckily, Ailin's progressive father allows her to keep her feet unfettered, even though it means breaking off her prearranged marriage into a more traditional family. He also sends her to a public school to learn English. But by the time Ailin is in her teens, her father has died, leaving her less tolerant Big Uncle to be the head of the family. Big Uncle forbids Ailin's schooling and gives her the choice of either being a nun or a peasant's wife--the only alternatives left for an unmarried Chinese woman with "big feet." Ailin refuses both options, and instead becomes a nanny for an American missionary couple. Due to their generosity, Ailin starts a new life in the United States. Powerfully told in flashback, //Ties that Bind, Ties that Break// is a thoughtful exploration of the ways cultural pressures can bend not only our personal values but even our physical appearance. And this gripping, lyrical story's theme may be most meaningful to those teens who feel the need to pierce and tattoo their bodies in order to fit into contemporary adolescent society. (Ages 11 to 14) Set in Chicago in the 1950s, this three-act play explores the struggles of ordinary people to achieve their desires. And African American family pursuing the American dream of owning a home encounters racism and must decide what is really important in life. This play reflects society before fair-housing and equal-employment laws were enforced, and before most African nations had gained independence from European rulers. One of the great mysteries is what happened to the dinosaurs, and it has taken great detective work to give us an answer. In //T. Rex and the Crater of Doom//, some brilliant, not to mention determined, scientists roam the world and seek out the clues. What they conclude is that the earth withstood a colossal impact with a meteor (or perhaps a comet) 65 million years ago. The resulting cataclysm destroyed half the life on the planet. Walter Alvarez, a geologist at the University of California at Berkeley, and one of the four scientists who present this theory on the mystery, tells the story in a clear narrative that contains a wealth of scientific material. The book does require an investment of attention, but the presentation is quite readable, and the story itself is fascinating. __The Outsiders__ by S.E. Hinton FICTION Reading Level 4.7 Interest Level 7-12 S.E. Hinton's 1967 classic, published when she was a freshman in college, is as appropriate and realistic today as it was then. Fourteen-year-old Ponyboy, his brothers, and his friends are poor outcasts--"greasers." They have little but always stick together. After they're victims of the town's "socs (socials)--kids with lots of money, tough cars, and chips on their shoulders--everyone comes to realize how deep and serious their divide is. Narrator Jim Fyfe presents Ponyboy and his group, along with the socs and their circle, with '60s' language appropriate to each socioeconomic group. No character is all good or all bad, and when the final violent confrontation erupts, listeners are sorrowful but not shocked. This moving story is excellent for all ages and perfect to illustrate both sides of bullying. This true story about the love between a spiritual mentor and his pupil has soared to the bestseller list for many reasons. For starters: it reminds us of the affection and gratitude that many of us still feel for the significant mentors of our past. It also plays out a fantasy many of us have entertained: what would it be like to look those people up again, tell them how much they meant to us, maybe even resume the mentorship? Plus, we meet Morrie Schwartz--a one of a kind professor, whom the author describes as looking like a cross between a biblical prophet and Christmas elf. And finally we are privy to intimate moments of Morrie's final days as he lies dying from a terminal illness. Even on his deathbed, this twinkling-eyed mensch manages to teach us all about living robustly and fully. Kudos to author and acclaimed sports columnist Mitch Albom for telling this universally touching story with such grace and humility. For sophomores John and Lorraine, the world feels meaningless; nothing is important. They //certainly// can never please their parents, and school is a chore. To pass the time, they play pranks on unsuspecting people. It's during one of these pranks that they meet the "Pigman"--a fat, balding old man with a zany smile plastered on his face. In spite of themselves, John and Lorraine soon find that they're caught up in Mr. Pignati's zest for life. In fact, they become so involved that they begin to destroy the only corner of the world that's ever mattered to them. Originally published in 1968, this novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Zindel still sings with sharp emotion as John and Lorraine come to realize that "Our life would be what we made of it--nothing more, nothing less." Girls who adore Lurlene McDaniel's four-hanky reads will be attracted, then challenged, by this wise and restrained story about a teenager suffering through her mother's death from a brain tumor. Joan Abelove, whose widely praised first teen novel, //[|Go and Come Back]//, dealt with a culture clash, here writes a very different kind of story. Like most 16-year-olds, Mindy judges and rejects her mother, fighting with her constantly--but always with a fond underlying remembrance of a time when they held hands and were close and comfortable. When her mother develops excruciating neck pain, Mindy is annoyed, convinced that her mom is just faking it for sympathy. With a cool detachment that hides her anxiety, Mindy goes about writing essays for her college applications while her mother undergoes tests in the hospital. Her oily and controlled father ("the man who had excused himself from my adolescence") tells her very little, so when surgery leaves her mother an empty shell, Mindy is taken unawares and left with all the unfinished business of mother/daughter conflict and love, her need to blame, and her anger at being left on her own. With penetrating insight, Abelove shows us a young woman working her way through a complex grief, in a book that will have all daughters (and their mothers) reaching for the Kleenex and resolving to express their love out loud. (Ages 12 and older)
 * __The Rocket Boys: A Memoir__ or __October Sky__ by Homer Hickman**
 * NON-FICTION**
 * Reading Level: 7** **Interest Level: 7-12**
 * __When the Legends Die__ by Hal Borland**
 * FICTION**
 * Reading Level: 5.2 Interest Level: 7-12**
 * __Shogun__ by James Clavell**
 * HISTORICAL FICTION**
 * Reading Level: 5.1 Interest Level: 9+**
 * __The Things They Carried__ by Tim O'Brien**
 * FICTION**
 * Reading Level: 9 Interest Level: 9-12**
 * __Ties That Bind, Ties That Break__ by Lensey Namioka**
 * FICTION**
 * Reading Level 6.3 Interest Level 6-12**
 * __A Raisin in the Sun__ by Lorraine Hansberry**
 * PLAY**
 * Interest Level 7 - Adult**
 * __T. Rex and the Crater of Doom__ by Walter Alvarez**
 * NON-FICTION**
 * Reading Level 9 Interest Level 9+**
 * __Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson__ by Mitch Albom**
 * FICTION**
 * Reading Level: 8 Interest LEvel: 8-12**
 * __The Pigman__ by Paul Zindel**
 * FICTION**
 * Reading Level: 5.5 Interest Level 9+**
 * __Saying It Out Loud__ by Joan Abelove**
 * FICTION**
 * Reading Level: 3.5 Interest Level: 7-12**