This summer, every English class will have an assigned summer reading book to keep you sharp over the summer.  

“I think the books this year will be good since they will be more intellectually pleasing for students. It just depends on the student,”  junior Callie Taylor said.

Incoming freshmen

The summer reading assignment for rising freshmen will be Hundred Story Home by Kathy Izard. Written in 2018, this book is about a woman and her journey of feeding the homeless population in Charlotte, and feeling called by God to find a more permanent home for them. 

Rising sophomores

The rising 10th-graders will be reading Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. This story is a fictional one about a girl living on an island with a dystopian government beginning to ban letters of the alphabet. Published in 2001, this book is still relevant today. 

Rising juniors 

This year, the rising eleventh grades will have two different books, which depend on classes. 

For anyone who plans on taking CP or Honors English, the book being read is And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. This thriller, which is full of mystery, is set on an island off the coast of England and has many twists and turns. 

For anyone taking AP Language and Composition, the assigned reading is The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. This is a collection of essays all written by John Green, in which he assigns star ratings to many things as a joke towards the culture of rating things on websites such as Yelp. 

Rising seniors

For CP and Honors students, the assigned reading book will be Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Set in 1962 in Tallahassee, Fla., this book explores the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s effect on it. It follows a boy’s life living in this time and how the world around him shapes his thinking. 

For students taking AP Literature, the summer book is American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. It follows a mother and her 8-year-old son while they are forced to flee Mexico due to cartel violence. 

“We did summer reading two years ago, and it really helps in English classes to see where kids are earlier in the semester (and also) being able to assess their own independent reading comprehension and how they get through a text,” said English teacher J. Mike Blake.