Summer Learning Experience 2010 - Book Choices
Bishop Feehan 2010 Summer Learning Experience - UNITY
Book Selection – read at least one of the seven (7) listed below
(these books may be found at your Local Public Library)
Parents are advised that some of the books contain mature language and themes;
whenever possible, parents and children should read and discuss the contents of the books together.
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Ask me no questions, by Marina Tamar Budhos |
Ask me no questions book trailer from YouTube user IluSoph |
from the inside jacket of Ask me no questions: "Nadira and her family are illegal aliens, fleeing to the Canadian border--running from the country they thoguht was their home...After 9/11, being Muslim means being dangerous, a suspected terrorist...and nothing is the same. Critically acclaimed author Marina Budhos has given us a searing portrait of contemporary America...and a moving and important story about something most people take for granted--citizenship and acceptance in their country." Read the first two chapters online Learn more about the Marina Budhos at her website |
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Return to sender, by Julia Alvarez |
from the inside cover of Return to sender:
"After Tyler's father is injured in a tractor accident, his family is forced to hire migrant Mexican workers to help save their Vermont farm from foreclosure. Tyler isn’t sure what to make of these workers. Are they undocumented? And what about the three daughters, particularly Mari, the oldest, who is proud of her Mexican heritage but also increasingly connected her American life. Her family lives in constant fear of being discovered by the authorities and sent back to the poverty they left behind in Mexico. Can Tyler and Mari find a way to be friends despite their differences? Learn more about "La Golondrina" or migrant workers in Vermont |
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Watership Down, by Richard Adams |
YouTube Book Trailer by Suzanne Walker for Mooresville Public Library |
"Watership Down is about this community of rabbits (yes, you read that right, rabbits) who are forced to leave their warren when it is bulldozed over to make a construction site. So starts their adventurous search for a new home.... Adams manages to make these rabbits the most human animals you ever met, without them losing a bit a their rabb-ability. They love, fight, and tell stories about their own folk heroes, but they never speak English, stand on their hind feet, or in short, act like anything but rabbits. It’s just the most amazing book, and I recommend it to everybody. Don’t be put off by the length–you’ll be completely absorbed until the last page." ~Jennifer Hubert Swan of Reading Rants |
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Twelve angry men, by Reginald Rose |
"Reginald Rose's landmark American drama was a critically acclaimed teleplay, and went on to become a cinematic masterpiece in 1957 starring Henry Fonda, for which Rose wrote the adaptation. A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic belief in the U.S. legal system. One Holdout juror sets his sights not on proving the other jurors wrong but rather on getting them to look at the situation in a clear-eyed way not affected by their personal biases. Rose deliberately and carefully peels away the layers of artifice from the men and allows a fuller picture of America, at its best and worst, to form." ~from Powell's Books |
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Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston |
from the cover of Farewell to Manzanar: "Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp--with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular song except the nation's #1 hit: 'Don't Fence Me In.' "Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention . . . and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States." |
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The US Constitution: A graphic adaptation, written by Jonathan Hennessey with art by Aaron McConnell |
Book trailer was created by sawhorsewithnoname |
What people have said about The United States Constitution: a graphic adaptation:
“The coolest thing since Schoolhouse Rock.” ~Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show
“Avoiding the didactic, the book succeeds in being both consistently entertaining and illuminating . . . A fine introduction to U.S. legal history.” ~Publishers Weekly
“A sweet, quick, thoroughgoing history of the U.S. Constitution . . . You’d be hard-pressed to find a better primer for bringing the kids, foreigners and forgetful in your life up to speed.” ~Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
“We the people can now appreciate our nation’s founding document unpacked into easy-to-follow explanations enriched with stick-in-your-mind visuals . . . A surprising and effective accomplishment; highly recommended for all collections.” ~Martha Cornog, School Library Journal (starred review)
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The boys of winter: the untold story of a coach, a dream, and the 1980 US Olympic hockey team, by Wayne R. Coffey |
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"A masterfully told narrative of the team's gold medal victory at Lake Placid, NY. The author's skilled depiction of personalities, breathtaking rendering of action on the ice, talent for capturing colorful regional hotbeds of hockey, and seamless segues between past and present are handled without loss of forward momentum in the story line. The saga of how coach Herb Brooks motivated a roster of 20 amateur, mostly college-age young men to orchestrate victory over an established Soviet team of seasoned, professionally trained skaters offers suspense, heroism, and a dizzying sense of the "full competitive combustion" that is a hallmark of this sport. Bottom line: the sports action is superb, the players' character enhancement and values are deftly related to coaching lessons learned, and the decade perspective is sketched with a fine hand." ~Lynn Nutwell, School Library Journal |
Like writing, READING is a recursive activity. Students make progress unevenly. Students may read several paragraphs and/or chapters with insight and understanding and then they come to a tougher section where they might decode words without understanding or without their having any insight about what it is they have read.
REMEMBER:
- Good readers pause occasionally to take stock of (summarize, paraphrase) what it is they have read.
- Good readers create pictures and images in their heads about what it is they have read.
- Good readers enter the text by asking question: Who? Why? What? How? When? Where? Etc.
- Good readers cite specific details from the text to support their ideas about the text.
- Good readers (and reflectors) make reasonable predictions and inferences based upon what they have read.
- Good readers link ideas, themes and characters from one text with ideas, themes and characters from another text or another media form (e.g. art, film, drama, etc).
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SLE Reflection Pack in Word format or .pdf
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