Summer Reading

Incoming: Freshmen | Sophomores | Juniors | Seniors

DeSales High School
English Department

"Get Out of the Starting Gate with 11th Grade Summer Reading"

Dear Colt Parent,

Now that summer is beginning, we want to remind you how important it is for your son to include reading in his vacation activities. Studies have proven that reading improves writing skills, increases vocabulary, and creates better readers.

We have selected the following books for next year’s juniors to read before the beginning of school in August. Your son will be given an assessment on two books within the first full week of school. The assessment grade will count on his first report card.

You might find these books at local book stores, online at Amazon.com, or at the public library. Please encourage your son to read. You might want to read with him!

Required: Monster, by Walter Dean Myers

"Monster" is what the prosecutor called 16-year-old Steve Harmon for his supposed role in the fatal shooting of a convenience-store owner. But was Steve really the lookout who gave the "all clear" to the murderer, or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? In this innovative novel by Walter Dean Myers, the reader becomes both juror and witness during the trial of Steve's life. To calm his nerves as he sits in the courtroom, aspiring filmmaker Steve chronicles the proceedings in movie script format. –Amazon.com

Choose one of the following:

Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream, by H.G. Bissinger

H.G. Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, enters into the spirit of Odessa, Texas, a small town where the Permian High School Panthers have managed to compile the winningest record in state annals. This book chronicles a season in the life of Odessa and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires – and sometimes shatters—the teenagers who wear the Panthers’ uniforms. – Amazon.com

Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

A classic by the most famous of all mystery writers, Murder on the Orient Express is the story of a mysterious death on a train. All the passengers are suspects and the renowned detective Hercule Poirot must find the murderer.