Students Entering Grade 9: Recommended/Required Summer Reading List

Required Reading:
Incoming Ninth Grade Honors Students

  • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 
    An incredible young adult novel about how a young girl’s love of books helps a community survive World War II and the Holocaust.

Ninth Grade Honors students: Please click here for the Reading Comprehension Notes worksheet that you should use when reading The Book Thief to prepare for class discussions in the fall. Please click here for The Book Thief test study guide.

Click here for a summer reading comprehension notes summer reading worksheet.

Recommended Reading: 
All Ninth Grade Students

  • A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Caletti
    Followed by Grandpa Ed in his RV and backed by her brother and friends, Annabelle, 18, runs from Seattle to Washington, D.C>, becoming a reluctant activist as people connect her journey to her recent trauma.
     
  • A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
    Beah describes his experiences after he was driven from his home by war in Sierra Leone and picked up by the government army at the age of 13, serving as a soldier for three years before being removed from fighting by UNICEF and eventually moving to the United States.
     
  • American Street by Ibi Zoboi
    Fabiola Toussaint, a young Haitian immigrant to the United States, must navigate her life, school, and relationships, while dealing with her loud cousins after her mother is detained by the United Stated immigration department.
     
  • How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr 
    Told from their own viewpoints, 17-year-old Jill, in grief over the loss of her father, and Mandy, nearly 19, are thrown together when Jill's mother agrees to adopt Mandy's unborn child. But nothing turns out as they had anticipated.
     
  • The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
    Natasha is a girl who believe in science and facts. Daniel has always been a good son and good student. But when he sees Natasha he forgets all that and believes there is something extraordinary in store for both of them.
     
  • Scythe by Neal Shusterman
    In a world where disease has been eliminated, the only way to die is to be randomly killed ('gleaned') by professional reapers ('scythes'). Two teens must compete with each other to become a scythe--a position neither of them wants. The one who becomes a scythe must kill the one who doesn't. 

 

If you are having difficulty finding and acquiring a text for summer reading, please click here to email Lori Jolley in the Curriculum Department.