Ms. Malia Wildman

mwildman@jajags.com 

Book List

The reading curriculum for this course will include works selected from the following list of titles. All of these texts have been vetted by the English department and deemed grade-level appropriate. If you have questions about any of these books, please reach out to the teacher. 

Whole Class Reading Options:

• Solito, by Javier Zamora

• The Giver, by Lois Lowry

• A Long Walk to Water, Linda Sue Park

• Salt to the Sea, Ruta Sepetys

• Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson

Ms. Lisanne Larsen

llarsen@jajags.com 

Book List

The reading curriculum for this course will include works selected from the following list of titles. All of these texts have been vetted by the English department and deemed grade-level appropriate. If you have questions about any of these books, please reach out to the teacher. 

Whole Class Reading Options:

• Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals

• As Long as the Lemon Tree Grows by Zoulfa Katouh

• A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi

• Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Honors Only:

• The Pearl by John Steinbeck  

• Anthem by Ayn Rand

• Matched by Ally Condie

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Mr. Sean Purcell

spurcell@jajags.com 

Book List

Students in this course will select their own books from the following lists of approved titles. Please note that for the memoir unit, students must obtain their own copies of the book they select. You may choose to purchase a new or used copy, or you can check one out from your local library. For the novel unit, a book will be provided to your student.

Novel Unit / Lit Circles

Students: You will be asked to select up to six of the following books that you would most like to read during the course, but you will only end up reading one of them with a small group of your classmates.
 * books marked with an asterisk are for English 11 only
† books marked with a dagger are for English 11 Honors only

• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005), by Jonathan Safran Foer

• Station Eleven (2014), by Emily St. John Mandel

• Americanah (2014), by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie†

• Challenger Deep (2016), by Neal Shusterman*

• Kindred (1979), by Octavia Butler

• The God of Small Things (1997), by Arundhati Roy†

• 1984 (1949), by George Orwell

• Frankenstein (1831 edition), by Mary Shelley 

• Crime and Punishment (1866), by Fyodor Dostoevsky

• The Things They Carried (1990), by Tim O’Brien

• Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut

• Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017), by Jesmyn Ward

• Homegoing (2017), by Yaa Gyasi

• Calling for a Blanket Dance (2022), by Oscar Hokeah

• There There (2019), by Tommy Orange†

• Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro

• The Sun is Also a Star (2016), by Nicola Yoon*

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), by Junot Diaz†

• Island of Missing Trees (2021), by Elif Shafak

• In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), by Julia Alvarez

• One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Memoir Unit / Independent Reading

Students: choose ONE of the following texts to read on your own. You must purchase this book on your own or check it out from a library. If you wish to read the book over the summer, that is fine, but you will likely need to reread it during the semester as you work to complete the assignments that go along with it. (This list is subject to change until August 14, 2024. However, it is highly unlikely that any of these titles will be removed.)

• Educated (2018), by Tara Westhover

• Solito (2022), by Javier Zamora

• Born a Crime (2016), by Trevor Noah

• Fun Home (2006), by Alison Bechdel

• Gender Queer (2019), by Maia Kobabe

• Stay True (2022), by Hua Hsu

• Know My Name (2019), by Chanel Miller

• The Glass Castle (2005), by Jeanette Walls

• A Place for Us (2018), by Fatima Farheen Mirza

• It Was Me All Along (2018), by Andie Mitchell

• The Beauty in Breaking (2020), by Michele Harper

• The Beautiful Struggle (2021), by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Between the World and Me (2015), by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Notes of a Native Son (1955), by James Baldwin

• You Don’t Have to Say you Love Me (2017), by Sherman Alexie

• Truth and Beauty (2004), by Ann Patchett

• Funny in Farsi (2004), by Firoozeh Dumas

• How We Fight for Our Lives (2019), by Saeed Jones

• Heavy: An American Memoir (2018), by Kiese Laymon

• In Order to Live (2015), by Yeonmi Park

• Boy Erased (2016), by Gerrard Conley

• House of Sticks (2021), by Ly Tran

• Crying in H Mart (2021), by Michelle Zauner

• Desert Solitaire (1968), by Edward Abbey

• Jesus Land (2005), by Julia Scheeres

• Without a Map (2007), by Meredith Hall

• The Best We Could Do (2017), by Thi Bui

• The Body Papers (2019), by Grace Talusan

• My Side of the River (2024), by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

• What You Have Heard Is True (2019), by Carolyn Forché

• Miseducated (2021), by Brandon P. Fleming

• Easy Beauty (2022), by Chloé Cooper Jones

• My Broken Language (2021), by Quiara Alegría Hudes

• Son of Elsewhere (2019), by Elamin Abdelmahmoud

• Uncultured (2022), by Daniella Mestyanek Young

• An American Childhood (1987), by Annie Dillard

• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), by Annie Dillard

• An Unquiet Mind (1995), by Kay Redfield Jamison

• A Man of Two Faces (2023), by Viet Thanh Nguyen

• Sink (2023), by Joseph Earl Thomas

• H is for Hawk (2014), by Helen Macdonald

• Birdgirl (2002), by Mya Rose Craig

• Lab Girl (2016), by Hope Jahren

• Wild by Nature (2014), by Sarah Marquis

• Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (1991), by Terry Tempest Williams

• Braiding Sweetgrass (2013), by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• The Wild Places (2008), by Robert Macfarlane

• The Wild Silence (2021), by Raynor Winn

• The Snow Leopard (1978), by Peter Matthiessen

Students must obtain a copy of one of these memoirs by the following deadline:

• October 1 for Fall Semester

• March 1 for Spring Semester

If there is a memoir you are interested in reading that is not on this list, please contact Mr. Purcell as soon as possible to discuss it. As a general rule, books written by politicians and celebrities (including celebrity athletes and performers) are not allowed.

Ms. Kristin DeFiore

kdefiore@jajags.com 

The focus of intervention is to help students improve their English Language Arts skills by providing targeted instruction and support. Intervention takes place in small groups and one-on-one settings through class instruction and a push-in model.