Summer Reading 2018
Summer break is here! Finally, time to relax, enjoy family and friends-and read! The Salem High School required summer reading program is designed to keep our learning community engaged in meaningful and enjoyable reading throughout the summer. Requirements are organized by grade level below. (Print a copy of this year's summer reading list in English or Spanish.) If you have Mr. Fonseca, Ms. Somes, or Ms. Valle as your ESL teacher, review your summer reading list here!
Looking for help locating a copy of a particular title? Completed your required summer reading and looking for more great reads? Visit us at the SHS Library! Browse our collection-in person or online-and take advantage of some great online tools for discovering new books. Still have questions? Please contact Mrs. O'Keefe (phone: 978.740.1128 email: jo'keefe@salemk12.org). Enjoy your summer break, and happy reading! :-)
Looking for help locating a copy of a particular title? Completed your required summer reading and looking for more great reads? Visit us at the SHS Library! Browse our collection-in person or online-and take advantage of some great online tools for discovering new books. Still have questions? Please contact Mrs. O'Keefe (phone: 978.740.1128 email: jo'keefe@salemk12.org). Enjoy your summer break, and happy reading! :-)
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Visit us! SHS Library Summer Hours Mon. 7/16 - Thurs. 8/23 Monday & Wednesday 9am - 1pm Tuesday & Thursday noon-4pm Wednesday Evening 4-8pm |
Browse online!
(Check out SHS, Salem Public Library & North Shore-area public library catalogs.) 
Use Destiny, our district-wide online catalog, to locate books & magazines at SHS and other Salem schools.
Find books at Salem and 16 other North Shore-area public libraries, Salem State University, and more.
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Discover
great new books! 
Browse by a favorite (or new!) genre, or subject of interest, find read-alikes for favorite books and authors, and more! To log in, use your Salem Public Library card.
Find reviews, ratings,and read-alikes, create virtual bookshelves, and keep track of books you have read, rated, and want to read in this terrific social network for readers.
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Grade 9
- All students entering grade 9 must read one book from the choices below.
- All students taking honors English must read two books from the choices below.
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The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller
"Surviving a pandemic disease that has killed everyone he knows, a pilot establishes a shelter in an abandoned airport hangar before hearing a random radio transmission that compels him to risk his life as he seeks out other survivors." -- from NoveList Plus |
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Feed, by M. T. Anderson
In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble. |
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Sold, by Patricia McCormick
Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid, only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape. |
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Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell
"Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits-smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try." -- provided by the publisher |
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The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander
Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health. |
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The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel -- a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors. |
Grade 10
- All students entering grade 10 must read one book from the choices below.
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Persepolis: the Story of a Childhood,
by Marjane Satrapi "A moving account of growing up as a spirited young girl in revolutionary and wartime Iran-a graphic novel showing the human spirit can fight oppression and death." -- from OCLC WorldCat |
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The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas
"After witnessing her friend's death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter's life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died." -- from NoveList Plus |
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic, fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. |
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Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess and soon finds herself in love with her employer, who has a terrible secret. |
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Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Sixteen-year-old Miles's first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash. |
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- In addition to one book from the choices above, all students taking honors English will also read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie.
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Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
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Grade 11
- All students entering grade 11 must read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.
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In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity.
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- In addition, all students taking honors English must read one book from these choices:
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The Handmaid's Tale,
by Margaret Atwood "In a future world where the birth rate has declined, fertile women are rounded up, indoctrinated as 'handmaids', and forced to bear children to prominent men." -- from NoveList Plus |
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,
by Philip K. Dick In January 2021, years after World War Terminus has destroyed the planet, bounty hunter Rick Deckard remains on the Earth pursuing his vocation of hunting down and killing rogue androids. |
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"I am Legend, by Richard Matheson
Robert Neville, the last living man on an Earth in which every other man, woman, and child has become a vampire, struggles to survive, scavenging for food and supplies and desperately searching for other survivors and trying to avoid the evil that lurks in the shadows. |
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The Girl With All the Gifts, by M. R. Carey
Not every gift is a blessing. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite. But they don't laugh. Melanie is a very special girl. |
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Grade 12
- All students must select one book from the list below.
- All students taking honors English must read two books from the list below.
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A Long Way Home, by Saroo Brierley
(This book is also published under the title Lion.) "An account of the author's inspirational effort to find his India birthplace describes how he was accidentally separated from his family in the mid-1980s, his survival on the streets of Calcutta, his adoption by an Australian family, and his headline-making Google Earth search." -- from NoveList Plus |
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In the Time of the Butterflies,
by Julia Alvarez A fictionalized account of the Mirabal sisters in the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of General Trujillo. |
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Enrique's Journey: the Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His
Mother, by Sonia Nazario The author addresses issues of family and illegal immigration through the story of a young boy's dangerous journey from Honduras to the U.S. in search of his mother, who left him and his sibling behind to try and build a better life for her family. |
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All Souls: a Family Story from Southie,
by Michael Patrick MacDonald Michael Patrick MacDonald describes how his family survived the daily violence they encountered while living in South Boston. |
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The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
Fourteen-year-old Lily and her companion, Rosaleen, an African-American woman who has cared for Lily since her mother's death ten years earlier, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist police officers, and find a safe haven in Tiburon, South Carolina, at the home of three beekeeping sisters, May, June, and August. |