Summer Reading List

Incoming Seventh Graders

Before school starts in August, every incoming seventh grader will have read three books. Two everyone will read: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank. Both may be on your family bookshelves, they are available from the library, or they would make lovely additions to your paperback library. I am not concerned about which edition you read—the story will be the same.

Everyone will come prepared to discuss To Kill a Mockingbird in the first week of class. We will discuss the Diary of Anne Frank later in first quarter. You will also read one other book from the list included in this handout. For each book you read, please

q       Send me a postcard that includes your name and the name of the book you have read. Please send only one book title per card. Mail your card to my home address:

Ms. Judith Galas

1609 Hillcrest Road

Lawrence, KS 66044

q       Each postcard should include a two-sentence description of the book.

q       A parent must sign each postcard.

q       All three postcards must be to me by the week of August 10.

We will use the information from these books in several ways in class, so I encourage you to keep simple notes on the books you read. You will need to remember the main characters and what they were like, the story’s major problem, the setting, and perhaps the scenes that most captured your imagination or that taught you something.

Here’s how your readings might be included in your studies:

q       Your first writing assignments will involve one or more of your books

q       You may be asked to make a class presentation on your book

q       Class discussions

NOTE: If you didn’t know you were coming to Seabury until late in the summer, read To Kill a Mockingbird first. You can then read The Diary of Anne Frank and then complete your third book later in the quarter.

Select one book from this list:

1.   Animal Farm by George Orwell

2.      Call of the Wild  by Jack London             

3.      Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

4.      The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

5.      The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum

6.      Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

7.      Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

8.      Watership Down by Richard Adams

9.      The Borrowers by Mary Norton

10.  Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

11.  Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

12.  The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

           e-mail:   jgalas@sunflower.com