Summer Reading 2017: All Students

This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.

Bill Bryson's bestselling biography of William Shakespeare takes the reader on an enthralling tour through Elizabethan England and the eccentricities of Shakespearean scholarship.

A grumpy yet lovable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.

In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters.

A high school junior and his cousin suffer the ramifications of joining what seems to be a "reputable" school club.

Told through real-life journals, collages, lists, and drawings, this coming-of-age story illustrates the transformation of an 18-year-old girl from a small-town teenager into an independent city-dwelling college student.

In her acclaimed 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt called WWII historian David Irving "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." Irving filed a libel lawsuit in the United Kingdom -- where the burden of proof lies on the defendant, not on the plaintiff. At stake were not only the reputations of two historians but the record of history itself.

In this must-read book for anyone striving to succeed, pioneering psychologist Angela Duckworth shows parents, students, educators, athletes, and business people both seasoned and new that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls grit.

The story of MacArthur genius award-winning physics teacher Amir Abo-Shaeer from Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California, who envisioned a robust academy for high I.Q. students who wanted to put their technical know-how to work.

When fourteen-year-old Itchingham "Itch" Lofte discovers a new radioactive element, he must use all of his wits and scientific knowledge to stop a top-secret government agency, his greedy teacher, and an evil corporation from getting hold of it.

The bestselling landmark account of the first emergence of the Ebola virus. A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus.

Abbott's delightful mathematical fantasy about life in a two-dimensional world. All existence is limited to length and breadth in Flatland, its inhabitants unable even to imagine a third dimension. Abbott's amiable narrator provides an overview of this fantastic world--its physics and metaphysics, its history, customs, and religious beliefs. But when a strange visitor mysteriously appears and transports the incredulous Flatlander to the Land of Three Dimensions, his worldview is forever shattered.

What is math? How exactly does it work? And what do three siblings trying to share a cake have to do with it? In How to Bake Pi, math professor Eugenia Cheng provides an accessible introduction to the logic and beauty of mathematics, powered, unexpectedly, by insights from the kitchen.

Annoyed with his math teacher who assigns word problems and won't let him use a calculator, twelve-year-old Robert finds help from the number devil in his dreams.

On September 4, 1967, Father Vincent Robert Capodanno was killed in battle while ministering to a dying Marine trapped in enemy fire during a fierce battle where American troops were pinned down with little hope for relief. Surviving a forced helicopter landing at the outset, Fr. Capodanno had been severely wounded already twice that day, but he continued to scramble from man to man through heavy fire. Most troops, even the ones who knew him only by reputation, can recall the very moment when news of the beloved padre's death spread from one mud-caked radio to another.

Rabbi Harold Kushner has found that the simple, beautiful verses of perhaps the most memorable and cherished chapter of the Bible--full of honesty and optimism--have an almost magical power to comfort and calm--and to change your life. The psalm does not pretend that life is ever easy, but it offers a masterful guide to living in the world with faith and courage.

Rooted in a scrupulously accurate reading of scripture, Joshua is a profoundly moving, deeply inspiring book. When Joshua moves to a small cabin on the edge of town, the local people are at first mystified, then confused by his presence. All who come in contact with him can't help but be transformed by his incredible warmth. Who is Joshua and just what is he up to? The answer to that question amazes them almost as much discovery of that same transforming power in each of their own hearts.

Finley, an unnaturally quiet boy who is the only white player on his high school's varsity basketball team, lives in a dismal Pennsylvania town that is ruled by the Irish mob, and when his coach asks him to mentor a troubled African American student who has transferred there from an elite private school in California, he finds that they have a lot in common in spite of their apparent differences.

When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.

This book tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong, not to her run-down neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.

Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain.

An aviator whose plane is forced down in the Sahara Desert encounters a little prince from a small planet who relates his adventures in seeking the secret of what is important in life.

It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship. The martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human cost of political oppression.