2026-2027: Shakespeare Summer Reading: 

Students should read and annotate Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt for discussion upon returning to school in August.

AP Language and Composition - SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENT:

Summer Reading Text:

Justice, by Michael Sandel (ISBN-13: 978-0374532505)

Summer Reading Instructions:
Read and annotate Justice, by Michael Sandel, considering the author’s purpose and how it is
developed throughout the text. As you annotate, focus on identifying and tracing the major themes,
central ideas, and arguments the author develops.

Annotate for style, rhetoric, and structure. How would you describe the author’s writing style (his
word choice, sentence structure, voice, use of figurative language, incorporation of evidence, etc.)?
Which stylistic mode best describes the book (e.g. argumentative, narrative, expository, or
descriptive–see here)? How would you describe the author’s rhetoric (e.g. his tone; use of rhetorical
devices, meta-discourse, reasoning)? How does the author treat his subjects? How is Justice
structured? In other words, how is the book pieced together or organized for maximum effect (in
terms of entertainment, persuasion, accessibility, etc.)?

Lastly, select three (3) quotations from the text that you find to be important, striking, shocking,
profound, thematically significant, and/or memorable. Bring those into class on the due date.
DUE: Friday, August 28th

Writing Style Descriptions--Click Here

Grade 11 CP Summer Packet

Summer Reading List for Junior CP English

Pick ONE from the four options listed below to read this summer. Please read and annotate your selected book with the concept of identity vs. culture in mind.

Memoirs

Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom

Lexile Score: 830

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher or a colleague? Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, and gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it? For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live. Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Lexile Score: 780

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.
 

Fiction

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Lexile Score: 850

Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver. Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn’t simply about going fast. Using the techniques needed on the race track, one can successfully navigate all of life’s ordeals. A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life…as only a dog could tell it.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Lexile Score: 590

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

All incoming 10th graders will read Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (ISBN-13: 978-1400078776)

Never Let Me Go is a novel about innocence, knowledge, and loss from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life, and for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is a modern classic.

For your summer reading, you will annotate for the following information while you read:

• Allegory: An allegory is a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. Annotate the novel Never Let Me Go for its allegorical significance. 
  • While annotating, consider the following: What comment is this book making about our society? What is the moral message or central unifying truth found in the story? What is the author’s comment on human existence or human nature? How does the author use allegory to convey hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey?  
• Character development - If a character changes in a significant way, how do they change? Why do they change? What is the purpose of the change for the story?

• Imagery - How does the author use imagery? How does the imagery add to the text? Does the imagery change throughout the text?
• Symbols - Do you see any symbols? What big idea does the object represent? Does it change through the course of the novel (some do, some do not)?

DO NOT SIMPLY SUMMARIZE THE ACTION

Summary can help comprehension, but it is NOT the purpose of annotating…annotating is for deeper thinking…

UPON RETURNING TO SCHOOL BE PREPARED TO:

• Engage in discussions about the novel
• Complete assignments/assessments concerning the novel
• Write a formal essay about the novel

All incoming 9th graders will read the following book:

• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah (ISBN-13: 978-0374531263)

**Please be advised that this is the true story of a child soldier. There are some disturbing images and content about the civil war in Sierra Leone. We encourage you to acknowledge and consider the role that violence (often beyond an individual’s control) can play in a person’s life, but we hope that you will not lose sight of the incredible fortitude and spirit demonstrated by Mr. Beah throughout his journey and recovery.

A Long Way Gone is a true story of a young man who was forced to become a child soldier. In the early 1990s, Ishmael Beah’s home of Sierra Leone broke into civil war. As he journeyed through his war-torn homeland, looking for his family and seeking safety, Beah was conscripted into the government’s army and committed numerous acts of violence. In his journey to reconcile and rekindle his spirit, Beah must confront his ability to commit horrific acts as well as to uncover his ability to forgive and thrive despite unthinkable hardship.

Memoir: 

A memoir is a form of narrative writing in which the writer explores a particular part of his/her life. It is a collection of memories that someone writes about his or her own life. While the memories can be public or private—and are often a mix of the two if the memoirist is a famous person—a memoir is understood to be as factual as memory permits.

A memoir describes the events and then shows, either directly or indirectly, why they are significant.  Subjects of a memoir may include events, people, places, success and failures, but memoirs are also focused in time and don’t cover an entire life—that's an autobiography (or biography if written by someone other than the subject).

During your summer reading journey: 

1. Make some critical annotations about the protagonist’s identity as it changes in response to difficulties he encounters.
2. Note the problems the protagonist is confronted with and, most importantly, how he reacts to or deals with those problems.
3. Note any major themes and symbols you find within the text and their overall meaning to the memoir.

Upon your return to school in August, your teacher will collect your annotations for a grade. For the first few weeks of school, you will be writing an essay based on the above ideas, as well as being quizzed on the text.

Some notes about annotating: 

1. Annotate without adding significant time to your reading or interfering with your enjoyment of the reading! Good annotation can be achieved quickly with a few extra seconds to underline/highlight and write a brief (1-4 word) notation in the margin about why you underlined/highlighted.
2. Don’t summarize the plot (we all read the book so we all know the plot).

Click Here to Download the One-Pager, Summer Reading Packet

Summer Reading Grade 8 2026-2027

 All American Boys by Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely

Rising 8th graders are required to read the novel All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. Students should be prepared to discuss and write about this text during the first few weeks of school by annotating as they read for examples of complicity and complacency.

Annotating:   Write in your book or on sticky notes in your book.

We will examine the roles of complicity and complacency in our society and in the context of All American Boys:

Complicity: Helping with or being part of a wrongdoing. You are actively involved in the "crime," even if you aren't the leader.

Example: Your friend decides to spray-paint a school wall, and you agree to stand at the end of the hall to keep watch for teachers. Because you helped them break the rules, you are complicit.

Complacency: Doing nothing about a problem because it doesn't affect you or you feel too comfortable to care. You aren't causing the problem, but your silence allows it to continue.

Example: You see a classmate getting picked on in the cafeteria. You don't say anything or tell a teacher because you aren't the one being bullied and you don't want to make things awkward. By staying silent, you let the bullying happen and are complacent.

HOW TO ANNOTATE

Annotation is a way to show your thinking while you read. Mark ideas in your book.

While you read: 

Mark passages that connect to the ideas of complicity and complacency.

For each passage you mark, add a thought:

• A reaction to what is happening.
• A theory about why a character chose a particular action.
• A prediction about the consequences of that action.
• A text-to-text, text-to-self, or text-to-world connection.

A thought about why the author chose particular words or told the story in a certain way.

Complete the one-pager assignment before the first day of school.

Click Here to Download the One-Pager, Summer Reading Packet

Grade 7 Summer Packet--One Pager--Click Here to Download

Rising 7^th graders are required to read two novels:

  A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness

The monster in Conor’s backyard is not the one he’s been expecting — the one from the nightmare he’s had every night since his mother started her treatments. This monster is ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous.

It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd — whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself — Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.

AND

  Restart, Gordon Korman

Chase doesn't remember falling off the roof. He doesn't remember hitting his head. He doesn't, in fact, remember anything. He wakes up in a hospital room and suddenly has to learn his whole life all over again... starting with his own name.

He knows he's Chase. But who is Chase? When he gets back to school, he sees that different kids have very different reactions to his return.

Some kids treat him like a hero. Some kids are clearly afraid of him.

Pretty soon, it's not only a question of who Chase is -- it's a question of who he was... and who he's going to be.
 

Summer Reading Assignment:

   Read both novels.

   As you read, annotate one novel for the following ideas:

❏ character traits and development

❏ key themes

❏ symbolism

❏ setting

Complete a one-pager for both novels.  Grade 7 Summer Packet--One Pager--Click Here to Download

How to Annotate

Annotation is a way to show your thinking while you read. To do this, you can mark ideas in your book directly, or on sticky notes that you then attach to your pages.

1. While you read, mark passages that connect to the ideas listed.
   1. Character traits and development - quotes that describe our characters physically, demonstrate their traits, show growth or change
   2. Key themes - think about the big messages or ideas in the novel, and pick out quotes or passages that point to them
   3. Symbolism - items or ideas that mean something more, or represent something bigger
   4. Setting - quotes that describe the place or time in which the story is taking place

2. For each passage you mark, add a thought:

• A reaction to what is happening.
• A theory about why a character chose a particular action.
• A prediction about the consequences of that action.
• A text-to-text, text-to-self, or text-to-world connection.
• A thought about why the author chose some particular language or told the story in a certain way.

Grade 6 Summer Reading Packet

AMSA Summer Reading - Incoming 6th Graders

Dear incoming 6th graders,

Welcome to AMSA! We are very excited to read, write and discuss literature with you this year. Here are the summer reading assignments we will collect from you during the first week of school. These assignments will be your first English grades here at AMSA.

“The Landlady” by Roald Dahl with Summary and Character Map

1. Read “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl. Enjoy this creepy short story by the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. Please reference the vocabulary sheet if you do not understand the bolded words. Click here for "The Landlady" by Roald Dahl
2. Write a summary of the story (see directions).
3. Fill out a character map for either Billy Weaver or the landlady (see template).

Choice Book and One-Pager Click here for the "One-Pager"

1. Read a book of your choice at your reading level.
2. Complete the One-Pager assignment based on your choice book (see directions).

All assignments are due in class on Wednesday, September 9th, 2026.

Happy reading! We look forward to meeting you! Sincerely,

Your 6^th grade English teachers