WHS Summer Reading

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Wheeling High School Summer Reading Program

Books selected for Freshmen Summer Reading

Book Title	Author	Book Descriptions
Red Kayak	Cummings, Pricilla	click here
Alt Ed.	Atkins, Catherine	click here

Books selected for Sophomore/Junior/Senior Summer Reading

Book Title	Author	Book Descriptions
Ask Me No Questions	Budhos, Marina	click here
Book Thief	Zusak, Markus	click here
Brief History of the Dead	Brockmeier, Kevin	click here
Enrique's Journey	Nazario, Sonia	click here
Eva Underground	Mackall, Dandi	click here
Great and Terrible Beauty	Bray, Libba	click here
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	Rowling, J. K.	click here
Kitchen Boy	Alexander, Robert	click here
Marley and Me	Grogan, John	click here
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment	Patterson, James	click here
My Sister's Keeper	Picoult, Jodi	click here
Point Blank	Horowitz, Anthony	click here
Uglies	Westerfeld, Scott	click here
What Happened to Cass McBride?	Giles, Gail	click here

Alt Ed.

Book Description:
From School Library Journal
Susan Callaway is a painfully self-conscious sophomore at Wayne High. Constantly teased about her weight, she has no friends. Her longtime nemesis, Kale Krasner, is a slow-witted bully whom she suspects is behind the harassing phone calls she's been getting. When she meets openly gay Brendan Slater in the school library, she makes friends with this fellow outcast, and together they surreptitiously deface Kale's pickup truck. This act of vandalism lands them both in a new 12-week, after-school group led by the head guidance counselor and designed as an alternative to expulsion for six students with serious infractions. Meeting in a stuffy trailer, the Alt Ed group, bound by confidentiality, also includes a football player, a popular cheerleader, a tough girl, and Kale. In short chapters, these teens begin to talk, but honesty and trust come hard in a group divided by social status, homophobia, ugly rumors, sexism, and intolerance, and it is sometimes hard to differentiate personalities with so much heated dialogue. With Alt Ed discussions so frank, argumentative, and sometimes downright rude, Mr. Duffy gently tempers the tone, and the sharing of feelings gradually helps to build respect and understanding among members. When the group ends, all six teens are stronger-even Kale shows signs of rehabilitation.

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Ask Me No Questions

Book Description:
From Amazon.com
Nadira and her family are illegal aliens, fleeing to the Canadian border -- running from the country they thought was their home. For years since emigrating from Bangladesh, they have lived on expired visas in New York City, hoping they could someday realize their dream of becoming legal citizens of the United States. But after 9/11, everything changes. Suddenly, being Muslim means being dangerous, a suspected terrorist. And when Nadira's father is arrested and detained at the border, Nadira and her older sister, Aisha, are sent back to Queens and told to carry on, as if everything is the same.

But of course nothing is the same. Nadira and Aisha live in fear they'll have to return to a Bangladesh they hardly know. Aisha, always the responsible one, falls apart. It's up to Nadira to find a way to bring her family back together again.

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Book Thief

Book Description:
From School Library Journal
Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when she's roused by regular nightmares about her younger brother's death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents.

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Brief History of the Dead

Book Description:
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A deadly virus has spread rapidly across Earth, effectively cutting off wildlife specialist Laura Byrd at her crippled Antarctica research station from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the planet's dead populate "the city," located on a surreal Earth-like alternate plane, but their afterlives depend on the memories of the living, such as Laura, back on home turf. Forced to cross the frozen tundra, Laura free-associates to keep herself alert; her random memories work to sustain a plethora of people in the city, including her best friend from childhood, a blind man she'd met in the street, her former journalism professor and her parents. Brockmeier (The Truth About Celia) follows all of them with sympathy, from their initial, bewildered arrival in the city to their attempts to construct new lives. He meditates throughout on memory's power and resilience, and gives vivid shape to the city, a place where a giraffe's spots might detach and hover about a street conversation among denizens. He simultaneously keeps the stakes of Laura's struggle high: as she fights for survival, her parents find a second chance for love—but only if Laura can keep them afloat. Other subplots are equally convincing and reflect on relationships in a beautiful, delicate manner; the book seems to say that, in a way, the virus has already arrived.

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Enrique's Journey

Book Description:
From Amazon.com
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. He begs for his mother to come back. Without her, he becomes lonely and troubled. When she calls, Lourdes tells him to be patient. Enrique despairs of ever seeing her again. 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.
With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother’s side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. 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. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la Muerte–The Train of Death. Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope–and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States.

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Eva Underground

Book Description:
From School Library Journal
Place Eva Lott, high school senior from Chicago, behind the Iron Curtain in pre-Solidarity Poland circa 1978 with cute and brooding political activist Tomek and you have a combination of romance and socially conscious historical fiction. Following her mother's death, the teen's English professor father uproots her in order to participate in the underground movement. The border crossing is terrifying, the weather icy, and food and supplies are virtually nonexistent. She plots to sneak away to the airport and desperately longs for the friends and comforts of home. In time, she begins to understand the oppression that the Polish underground is fighting and the hope of freedom that they hold dear. Her father teaches the novice journalists who anticipate the arrival of the forbidden printing press that will enable them to disseminate the truth, if they can get it past a ruthless militia. Eva's trip to Tomek's home to harvest the family's plums before a devastating ice storm and her later dangerous journey to transport the illegal printing press create the expected transformation from spoiled American teen to enlightened supporter of the cause.

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Great and Terrible Beauty

Book Description:
from Amazon.com
Gemma, 16, has had an unconventional upbringing in India, until the day she foresees her mother’s death in a black, swirling vision that turns out to be true. Sent back to England, she is enrolled at Spence, a girls’ academy with a mysterious burned-out East Wing. There Gemma is snubbed by powerful Felicity, beautiful Pippa, and even her own dumpy roommate Ann, until she blackmails herself and Ann into the treacherous clique. Gemma is distressed to find that she has been followed from India by Kartik, a beautiful young man who warns her to fight off the visions. Nevertheless, they continue, and one night she is led by a child-spirit to find a diary that reveals the secrets of a mystical Order. The clique soon finds a way to accompany Gemma to the other-world realms of her visions "for a bit of fun" and to taste the power they will never have as Victorian wives, but they discover that the delights of the realms are overwhelmed by a menace they cannot control. Gemma is left with the knowledge that her role as the link between worlds leaves her with a mission to seek out the "others" and rebuild the Order.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Book Description:
From Amazon.com
The Final Chapter
It's official! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in J.K. Rowling's magical Harry Potter series, will be released on July 21, 2007. In the February 1 announcement from the book's publisher, Lisa Holton, President of Scholastic Children's Books, said, "We are thrilled to announce the publication date of the seventh installment in this remarkable series. We join J.K. Rowling's millions of readers--young and old, veterans and newcomers--in anticipating what lies ahead."

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Kitchen Boy

Book Description:
From Booklist
The final days of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, and his family are still a fascinating mystery. There is no one left to bear witness to what happened at the execution. Or is there? Alexander takes a very real, but forgotten and overlooked, potential witness, a young kitchen boy, and creates an amazing fictional account of what may have transpired. Leonka was working as a kitchen boy to the Romanov family when the Bolsheviks captured them, exiled them to Siberia, and imprisoned them in their house. Because of his lowly position in the household, Leonka was able to see and hear secret things. And he does keep them secret until decades later, knowing he is ready to die, he reveals all he knows about the imperial family and their horrific death.

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Marley and Me

Book Description:
From Booklist
"Oh my. I don't think I've ever seen anything so cute in my life." Thus author Grogan's wife sealed their fate when they "just went to look" at a litter of Labrador retriever puppies and ended up picking out Marley. Maybe their first clue should have been that the breeder had discounted the price on their puppy, or when they saw his father charging out of the woods covered in mud with a crazed but joyous look in his eye. Despite these portents, Marley entered their lives, and nothing was ever the same again. Between careening through screen doors and swallowing everything that would fit in his mouth, Marley also managed to comfort these two when they miscarried their first child. Although Marley got kicked out of obedience training after he dragged the instructor across the parking lot and terrorized his pet sitter, he also landed a minor role in a straight-to-video movie. Marley, incorrigible though he was, had inserted himself into the author's life in a way no normal dog could.

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Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

Book Description:
From teenreads.com
Get comfortable, grab a good, tight grip on this book, and prepare for an awesome adventure! At first glance Max might look like an average 14-year-old girl, but you'll quickly realize that she's anything but ordinary. Max has wings! And they aren't just for decoration either. Max can fly; she can soar high into the clear, blue sky like a bird! And Max can do this because she actually is part bird! Sounds pretty cool, eh? Well, not exactly.See, Max spends the first 10 years of her life locked in a tiny cage at a place called The School. There she suffers through test after horrid test from the scientists who created her by adding bird DNA to her own human DNA. While there, she meets five other winged kids, and with the help of a sympathetic scientist, the six of them manage to escape. This fantastic freedom becomes the happiest time in their lives, bonding Max, Fang, Iggy, the Gasman, Nudge and Angel into a family, the only family any of them has ever known.But then out of nowhere, their past catches up with them. The Erasers discover their hideout and snatch up six-year-old Angel! Another experiment of the school, Erasers are half-humans, half-wolves, and a whole lot of mean. Max and the others would rather die than have Angel back in the hands of the evil scientists, so they set out to rescue Angel, thus taking a flying leap into this fast-paced adventure that just doesn't stop, not even when the pages end. Along the way they uncover more and more questions that --- just maybe --- they don't really want to know the answers to, like the truth about their parents and the mysterious voice echoing instructions in Max's head.

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My Sister's Keeper

Book Description:
From School Library Journal
Anna was genetically engineered to be a perfect match for her cancer-ridden older sister. Since birth, the 13-year-old has donated platelets, blood, her umbilical cord, and bone marrow as part of her family's struggle to lengthen Kate's life. Anna is now being considered as a kidney donor in a last-ditch attempt to save her 16-year-old sister. As this compelling story opens, Anna has hired a lawyer to represent her in a medical emancipation suit to allow her to have control over her own body. Picoult skillfully relates the ensuing drama from the points of view of the parents; Anna; Cambell, the self-absorbed lawyer; Julia, the court-appointed guardian ad litem; and Jesse, the troubled oldest child in the family. Everyone's quandary is explicated and each of the characters is fully developed. There seems to be no easy answer, and readers are likely to be sympathetic to all sides of the case. This is a real page-turner and frighteningly thought-provoking. The story shows evidence of thorough research and the unexpected twist at the end will surprise almost everyone. The novel does not answer many questions, but it sure raises some and will have teens thinking about possible answers long after they have finished the book.

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Point Blank

Book Description:
From Publishers Weekly
When an investigation into a series of mysterious deaths leads agents to an elite prep school for rebellious kids, MI6 assigns Alex Rider to the case. Before he knows it, Alex is hanging out with the sons of the rich and powerful, and something feels wrong. These former juvenile delinquents have turned well-behaved, studious—and identical—overnight. It’s up to Alex to find out who is masterminding this nefarious plot, before they find him.

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Red Kayak

Book Description:
From Amazon.com
Brady loves life on the Chesapeake Bay with his friends J.T. and Digger. But developers and rich families are moving into the area, and while Brady befriends some of them, like the DiAngelos, his parents and friends are bitter about the changes. Tragedy strikes when the DiAngelos’ kayak overturns in the bay, and Brady wonders if it was more than an accident. Soon, Brady discovers the terrible truth behind the kayak’s sinking, and it will change the lives of those he loves forever. Priscilla Cummings deftly weaves a suspenseful tale of three teenagers caught in a wicked web of deception.

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Uglies

Book Description:
From School Library Journal
Tally Youngblood lives in a futuristic society that acculturates its citizens to believe that they are ugly until age 16 when they'll undergo an operation that will change them into pleasure-seeking "pretties." Anticipating this happy transformation, Tally meets Shay, another female ugly, who shares her enjoyment of hoverboarding and risky pranks. But Shay also disdains the false values and programmed conformity of the society and urges Tally to defect with her to the Smoke, a distant settlement of simple-living conscientious objectors. Tally declines, yet when Shay is found missing by the authorities, Tally is coerced by the cruel Dr. Cable to find her and her compatriots–or remain forever "ugly." Tally's adventuresome spirit helps her locate Shay and the Smoke. It also attracts the eye of David, the aptly named youthful rebel leader to whose attentions Tally warms. However, she knows she is living a lie, for she is a spy who wears an eye-activated locator pendant that threatens to blow the rebels' cover. Ethical concerns will provide a good source of discussion as honesty, justice, and free will are all oppressed in this well-conceived dystopia. Characterization, which flirts so openly with the importance of teen self-concept, is strong, and although lengthy, the novel is highly readable with a convincing plot that incorporates futuristic technologies and a disturbing commentary on our current public policies. Fortunately, the cliff-hanger ending promises a sequel.

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What Happened to Cass McBride?

Book Description:
From Amazon.com
Cass McBride is the girl who knows how to get what she wants. Her father, a salesman, has taught her the rules of the "Sale." She manipulates. And she rules the school. Kyle Kirby has a mother that taught him some rules too, rules of anger and hate. When these two collide, Cass McBride ends up buried alive. But that's not enough for Kyle. He gives her a source of air and a walkie talkie so he can torture her with words. But words are what Cass wants. They are her currency to get out of this box. Or can she? Kyle isn't exactly sane. Ben Gray and his detectives are looking for Cass but they can find no connection between Cass and Kyle. All they know is a boy named David commited suicide a few days before and Cass didn't even know him. Did she?

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