2012 Summer Reading Book Summaries - Jackson Memorial High ...

Jackson School District
HIGH SCHOOL
SUMMER READING PROGRAM 2012
GRADE 9 – Select One
THWONK by Joan Bauer (Fiction)
Synopsis: Imagine having a personal cupid‐ an actual winged being‐ pop into your life and offer to make your dreams
come true. The catch is he can help you in only one way: artistically, academically, or romantically. That’s what happens
to aspiring photographer Allison Jean (A.J.) McCreary. A.J. knows she should concentrate on getting into a top notch art
school. But she’s spent five torturous months obsessed with handsome hunk, Peter Terris. Just one shot from the cupid’s
bow and thwonk, A.J. will have the undying devotion of handsome Peter…forever.
LIFE AS WE KNEW IT by Beth Pfeffer (Fiction)
Synopsis: Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to the earth. How
should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the
continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their
mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water
in the warmth of a wood‐burning stove. In her journal, Miranda records the events of each desperate day, while she and
her family struggle to hold on to their most priceless resource—hope.
THE DARK GAME: True Spy Stories by Paul Janzecko (Non‐ Fiction)
Synopsis: From clothesline codes to surveillance satellites and cyber espionage, Paul B. Janeczko uncovers two centuries’
worth of true spy stories in U.S. history. Ever since George Washington used them to help topple the British, spies and
their networks have helped and hurt America at key moments in history. In this fascinating collection, Paul B. Janeczko
probes such stories as that of Elizabeth Van Lew, an aristocrat whose hatred of slavery drove her to be one of the most
successful spies in the Civil War; the "Choctaw code talkers," Native Americans who were instrumental in sending secret
messages during World War I; the staggering engineering behind a Cold War tunnel into East Berlin to tap Soviet phones
(only to be compromised by a Soviet mole); and many more famous and less‐known examples.
FORGE by Laurie Halse Anderson (Historical Fiction)
Synopsis: In this compelling sequel to Chains, a National Book Award Finalist and winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for
Historical Fiction, acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson brings to the page the tale of what it takes for runaway slaves
to forge their own paths in a world of obstacles—and in the midst of the American Revolution. The Patriot Army was
shaped and strengthened by the desperate circumstances of the Valley Forge winter. This is where Curzon the boy
becomes Curzon the young man. In addition to the hardships of soldiering, he lives with the fear of discovery, for he is
an escaped slave passing for free. And then there is Isabel, who is also at Valley Forge—against her will. She and Curzon
have to sort out the tangled threads of their friendship while figuring out what stands between the two of them and
true freedom.
WICKED GIRLS by Stephanie Hemphill (Historical Fiction)
Synopsis: What started out as girls' games became a witch hunt. Wicked Girls is a fictionalized account of the Salem
witch trials told from the perspectives of three of the real young women living in Salem in 1692.
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Jackson School District
HIGH SCHOOL
SUMMER READING PROGRAM 2012
GRADE 10 – Select One
GYM CANDY by Carl Deuker (Fiction)
Synopsis: Mick Johnson is determined not to make the same mistakes his father, a failed football hero, made. But after
being tackled in the end zone in a big game, Mick begins using the “gym candy,” or steroids. His performances become
record breaking, but the side effects are terrible: Mick suffer roid rage, depression and body acne. Gym Candy’s subject
matter is as hard hitting as its football scenes. You’ll find yourself unable to look away as Mick goes down a road that
even he knows is the wrong one to travel.
SLEEPING FRESHMEN NEVER LIE by David Lubar (Humor)
Synopsis: From the author of Dunk comes this sparkling new novel that covers a year in the life of high school freshman
Scott Hudson, who is sideswiped by the unexpected news that his mother is about to have another baby.In a hilarious
and touching journal addressed to the unborn intruder, Scott bares his soul as he copes with the trials and tribulations of
a life that is changing faster than he wants it to. Filled with Lubar’s trademark wit, enlivened by unexpected twists and
turns of plot, Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie is widely considered as one of the best YA novels of 2005.
STICK FIGURE: A Diary of My Former Self by Lori Gottlieb (Memoir)
Synopsis: “I wish to be the thinnest girl at school, or maybe even the thinnest eleven‐year‐old on the entire planet,”
confides Lori Gottlieb to her diary. “I mean, what are girls supposed to wish for, other than being thin?” For a girl
growing up in Beverly Hills in 1978, the motto “You can never be too rich or too thin” is writ large. Precocious Lori learns
her lessons well, so when she’s told that “real women don’t eat dessert” and “no one could ever like a girl who has
thunder thighs,” she decides to become a paragon of dieting. Soon Lori has become the “stick figure” she’s longed to
resemble. But then what? Stick Figure takes a reader on a gripping journey, as Lori struggles to reclaim both her body
and her spirit.
THE BOY WHO DARED by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Fictionalized Biography)
Synopsis: Just as the Nazis are rising to power, Helmuth Hübener, a German schoolboy, is caught up in all the
swashbuckling bravado of his time. The handsome stormtrooper uniforms, the shiny jackboots and armbands, the
rousing patriotism all serve to draw him into this bright new world full of promise and hope. In the beginning his
patriotism is unwavering. But every day the rights of people all over Germany are diminishing. Jews are threatened and
their businesses are being destroyed. The truth has been censored, and danger lurks everywhere. The world has turned
upside down: Patriotism means denouncing others, love means hate, and speaking out means treason. How much
longer can Helmuth keep silent? Told in flashback, Newbery Honor Book author Susan Campbell Bartoletti magnificently
explores the life of a heroic German youth who dared to stand up against the Nazi regime.
BULLYVILLE by Francine Prose (Fiction)
Synopsis: My father was killed on 9/11.Everybody in town knows we lost him forever when the North Tower collapsed.
What they don't know is that he was gone long before that day. What they don't know is that a scholarship to exclusive
Baileywell Academy only made my life worse. What they don't know is that my mentor at Baileywell is my own personal
terrorist. Everybody calls me Miracle Boy. What nobody knows is that it's a miracle I'm still here to tell you the real story
about the worst year of my life. From nationally acclaimed author Francine Prose comes an unforgettable novel about
disasters, both public and private, and the aftermath of tragedy.
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Jackson School District
HIGH SCHOOL
SUMMER READING PROGRAM 2012
GRADE 11 – Select One
CELL by Stephen King (Suspense)
Synopsis: Civilization doesn't end with a bang or a whimper. It ends with a call on your cell phone. What happens on the
afternoon of October 1 came to be known as the Pulse, a signal sent though every operating cell phone that turns its
user into something...well, something less than human. Savage, murderous, unthinking‐and on a wanton rampage.
Terrorist act? Cyber prank gone haywire? It really doesn't matter, not to the people who avoided the technological
attack. What matters to them is surviving the aftermath.
WHERE MEN WIN GLORY: THE ODYSSEY OF PAT TILLMAN by Jon Krakauer (Non‐Fiction)
Synopsis: The bestselling author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, and Under the Banner of Heaven delivers a stunning,
eloquent account of a remarkable young man’s haunting journey. Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told
in his previous bestsellers, Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman walked
away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army. He was deeply troubled by 9/11, and he felt
a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al‐Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate
hillside in southeastern Afghanistan.
THIS I BELIEVE: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women by Jay Allison (Inspiration)
Synopsis: An inspiring collection of the personal philosophies of a group of remarkable men and women. Based on the
National Public Radio series of the same name, This I Believe features eighty essayists‐from the famous to the unknown‐
completing the thought that begins the book's title. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have
arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others. Featuring a well‐known
list of contributors‐including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates,
and John Updike‐the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part‐time hospital clerk from Rehoboth,
Massachusetts; a woman who sells Yellow Pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on the state of
Rhode Island's parole board. The result is a stirring and provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of
people whose beliefs‐and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them‐reveal the American spirit at
its best.
DEAR BULLY (NOTE: Mature Language) by Meghan Kelley Hal and Carrie Jone, ed. (Essay/ Non‐ Fiction)
Synopsis: You are not alone. Discover how Lauren Kate transformed the feeling of that one mean girl getting under her
skin into her first novel, how Lauren Oliver learned to celebrate ambiguity in her classmates and in herself, and how R.L.
Stine turned being the "funny guy" into the best defense against the bullies in his class. Today's top authors for teens
come together to share their stories about bullying—as silent observers on the sidelines of high school, as victims, and
as perpetrators—in a collection at turns moving and self‐effacing, but always deeply personal.
MED HEAD by James Patterson (Non‐ Fiction/ Memoir)
Synopsis: Learn how it FEELS to have a body that won't stop moving, to be really different from everyone else, to be
made fun of every day, to be totally reckless, to never relax, to be shut out of everything, to break FREE and TAKE
CONTROL.
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Jackson School District
HIGH SCHOOL
SUMMER READING PROGRAM 2012
GHOST SOLDIERS by Hampton Sides (History)
Synopsis: A breathtaking chronicle of one of WW II’s most dramatic yet virtually forgotten events. On January 28, 1945, 121 hand‐
selected troops from the elite U. S. Army 6 th GRADE 12 – Select One
Ranger Battalion slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March
thirty miles in a daring attempt to rescue 513 American and British POW’s—the last survivors of the Bataan death march—who had
spent three years in a hellish camp near the city of Cabanatuan. In this thrilling minute‐by‐minute narration of the raid, author
Hampton Sides chronicles a battle saga of breathtaking proportions. From the resilience of the prisoners who survive through
unspeakable horrors to the soldiers who risked their lives to save their fellow Americans, this is a gripping depiction of men at war
and a compelling story of redemption.
THE ALCHEMIST by Paulo Coelho (Fiction)
Synopsis: Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist is such a
book. The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who travels in search of a worldly treasure. From
his home in Spain, he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist.
The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of
listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, above all, following our dreams.
ENRIQUE’S JOURNEY by Sonia Nazario (Non‐ Fiction)
Synopsis: In this astonishing true story, award‐winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran
boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States. When Enrique is five years old, his
mother, Lourdes, too poor to feed her children, leaves Honduras to work in the United States. The move allows her to send money
back home to Enrique so he can eat better and go to school past the third grade. Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly.
But she struggles in America. Years pass. After eleven years apart, he decides he will go find her. Enrique sets off alone from
Tegucigalpa, with little more than a slip of paper bearing his mother’s North Carolina telephone number. Without money, he will
make the dangerous and illegal trek up the length of Mexico the only way he can–clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains.
Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Gangsters control the
tops of the trains. Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the route are out to fleece and deport
them.
UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand (Non‐ Fiction/ Memoir)
Synopsis: On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a
spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant,
the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary
odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible
delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into
running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four‐minute mile. But
when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift
into the unknown.
THE CONFESSION by John Grisham (Fiction)
Synopsis: Nine years ago, Travis Boyette sat contented on the sidelines as an innocent man was condemned to die for the murder he
himself had committed. Now, after a mostly useless life, Travis himself is dying of an inoperable brain tumor and the man he
passively sent to death row is waiting for his own execution, only four days away. Struck suddenly by tardy conscience, Boyette
decides to confess to the homicide. But, with clocks ominously ticking, how can he convince officials that they have the wrong man?
Synopses from Barnes and Noble.com
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