We will soon start our Book Clubs and each student will be placed in a book, which will be on their reading level, yet challenging, based upon their test scores.
Every week, they will have an assignment based upon their novel. Please assist as needed. All work will be graded and is designed to push them to the next level and to increase their reading fluency and comprehension. Please take a peak into the books we will be reading this quarter. |
Book OneThe Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Award-winning classic about a boy who decides to hit the road to find his father—from Christopher Paul Curtis, author of The Watsons Go To Birmingham—1963, a Newbery and Coretta Scott King Honoree.
It’s 1936, in Flint Michigan. Times may be hard, and ten-year-old Bud may be a motherless boy on the run, but Bud’s got a few things going for him: 1. He has his own suitcase full of special things. 2. He’s the author of Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself. 3. His momma never told him who his father was, but she left a clue: flyers advertising Herman E. Calloway and his famous band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!! Bud’s got an idea that those flyers will lead him to his father. Once he decides to hit the road to find this mystery man, nothing can stop him—not hunger, not fear, not vampires, not even Herman E. Calloway himself. |
Book Two
The Tiger Rising is the tale of 12-year-old Rob Horton who finds a caged tiger in the woods behind the Kentucky Star Motel where he lives with his dad. The tiger is so incongruous in this setting that Rob views the apparition as some sort of magic trick. Indeed, the tiger triggers all sorts of magic in Rob's life — for one thing, it takes his mind off his recently deceased mother and the itchy red blisters on his legs that the wise motel housekeeper, Willie May, says is a manifestation of the sadness that Rob keeps "down low." Something else for Rob to think about is Sistine (as in the chapel), a new city girl with fierce black eyes who challenges him to be honest with her and himself. Spurred by the tiger, events collide to break Rob out of his silent introspection, to form a new friendship with Sistine, to develop a new understanding of his father, and most important, to lighten his heart. This novel is about cages — the consequences of escape as well as imprisonment. The story and symbolism are clear as a bell, and the emotions ring true.
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Book Three
Number the Stars is a story about courage. In 1943, Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, has been occupied by Hitler's Third Reich. Soldiers stand on every street corner, and life is changed irrevocably for ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen. Wartime food shortages and the psychological terror of the Nazi takeover have made life difficult for Danish citizens; now the Nazis have decided to relocate all of Copenhagen's Jewish families, and Ellen is Jewish.
Lowry shows that Jews and non-Jews alike among Denmark's population suffer terribly at the hands of the Nazis. The Johansen family lost its eldest daughter, Lise, just two weeks before her wedding day. When Nazis raided a Resistance meeting attended by Inge, she was intentionally run down and killed by a military car. Later in the novel, Annemarie follows her sister's example, risks her own life for the cause of the Resistance, and saves Ellen's family. Annemarie's quick thinking and selflessness make her a heroine, but she is but one among many ordinary Danish citizens who stand against the Nazis. Number the Stars depicts the courage and the integrity of the Danish people, who proved that even during times of terror, human decency can prevail. |