Palo Alto High School

English Reading List

Exploratory Thinking I and Critical Thinking I

Grade 9

District Core Work

• All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque
• Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare

Extended Core Work

• Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck

Optional Reading

• The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
• The Bean Trees, Kingsolver
• Julius Caesar, Shakespeare
• The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas
• Eighth Moon, Lord
• Oliver Twist, Dickens
• Greek Myths and Legends, traditional
• The Little Prince, Saint-Exupery
• The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway
• The Last Unicorn, Beagle
• The White Deer, Thurber
• When the Legends Die, Borland
• Kindred, Butler
• In Country, Mason
• Having Our Say, Delany
• Animal Farm, Orwell
• A Lesson Before Dying, Gaines
• Assignment Rescue, Fry
• A Thousand Pieces of Gold, McCunn
• Pigman, Zindell
• Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury
• Responding to Literature, McDougall, Littell
• Dove, Graham
• The Crystal Cave, Lord

Exploratory Thinking II and Critical Thinking II

Grade 10

District Core Work

• Lord of the Flies, Golding
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou
• or Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston

Extended Core Work

• Macbeth, Shakespeare
• A Separate Peace, Knowles
• or The Chosen, Potok

Optional Reading

• Brave New World, Huxley
• Cannery Row, Steinbeck
• Cry the Beloved Country, Paton
• Black Boy, Wright
• Les Miserables, Hugo
• A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens
• Dandelion Wine, Bradbury
• Hiroshima, Hersey
• Inherit the Wind, Lawrence and Lee
• Walkabout, Marshall
• Stories, Jennings and Calitri
• Responding to Literature, McDougall, Littell

American Literature 11 and American Classics 11H

Grade 11

District Core Work

• The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
• The Joy Luck Club, Tan

Extended Core Work

• Death of a Salesman, Miller
• or Raisin in the Sun

Optional Reading

• My Antonia, Cather
• The Glass Menagerie, Williams
• Song of Solomon, Morrison
• Slaughter House Five, Vonnegut
• Farewell to Manzanar, Houston
• The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
• The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
• The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
• A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey
• Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut
• Catch 22, Heller
• All the King's Men, Penn Warren
• Animal Dreams, Kingsolver
• Snow Falling on Cedars, Gutheson
• Eight Men, Wright
• East of Eden, Steinbeck
• Moby Dick, Melville
• Ethan Frome, Wharton
• Walden, Thoreau
• Billy Budd, Melville
• Roughing It, Twain
• The Crucible, Miller
• Native Son, Wright
• Go Tell It On the Mountain, Baldwin
• Nine Stories, Salinger
• Franny and Zooey, Salinger
• Huck Finn, Twain
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers
• The Bell Jar, Plath
• Adventures in American Literature, Hodkins and Silverman
• Eight Great American Short Stories: Hawthorne, Melville, Bierce, Hemingway, Steinbeck, O'Connor
• Responding to Literature, McDougall, Littell

Humanities

Grade 11 and 12

Extended Core Works

• “Art and the Intellect”, Taylor
• "The Courage to Create," May
• "Quality and Non Quality," Tuchman
• "The Allegory of the Den," Plato
• "The Apology," Plato
• "The Bear," Faulkner
• "The Franklin's Tale," Chaucer
• Galileo, Brecht
• A Man for All Seasons, Bolt
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde
• Siddhartha, Hesse
• The Great Divorce, Lewis
• Zorba the Greek, Kazantzakis
• The Tempest, Shakespeare

Optional Reading

• The Baghavad Gita, Traditional
• Philosophy and Literature, Thompson
• Sound and Sense, Perrine
• Civilization, Clark
• Responding to Literature, McDougall, Littell

World Literature 11 and World Classics 11H

Grade 12

District Core Work

• Cyrano de Bergerac, Rostand

Extended Core Work

• Hamlet, Shakespeare
• Oedipus the King, Sophocles
• The Stranger, Camus

Optional Reading

• Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Hardy
• Pride and Prejudice, Austen
• Things Fall Apart, Achebe
• Twelfth Night, Shakespeare
• Master Harold and the Boys, Fugard
• Ibsen Plays (Hedda, A Doll's House)
• The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
• Lord Jim, Conrad
• The Horses Mouth, Cary
• Candide, Voltaire
• The Admirable Crichton, Barrie
• Luther, Osborne
• The Baghavad Gita, Traditional
• Barrabas, Lagerkvist
• Literature of Religions, Houston
• Nectar in a Seive, Markandaya
• Moll Flanders, Defoe
• The Power of One, Courtenay
• In the Penal Colony, Kafka
• A Doll's House, Ibsen
• Candide, Voltaire
• Night, Wiesel
• Responding to Literature, McDougall, Littell

World Classics 12H

Grade 12

Extended Core Works

• Antigone, Sophocles

Optional Reading

• Hedda, Ibsen
• Return of the Native, Hardy
• Jane Eyre, Bronte
• Wuthering Heights, Bronte
• Heart of Darkness, Conrad
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Stoppard
• She Stoops to Conquer, Goldsmith
• Madame Bovary, Flaubert
• Othello, Shakespeare
• The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles
• The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde
• The Dubliners, Joyce
• St. Joan, Shaw
• Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
• The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles
• Responding to Literature, McDougall, Littell

College English A.P.

Grade 12

District Core Work

• Cyrano de Bergerac, Rostand

Extended Core Work

• Hamlet, Shakespeare
• The Oedipus Cycle, Sophocles
• Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky

Optional Reading

• Heart of Darkness, Conrad
• Hard Times, Dickens
• House of the Spirits, Allende
• The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
• Things Fall Apart, Achebe
• Beloved, Morrison
• Passage to India, Forster
• Antigone, Sophocles
• Invisible Man, Ellison
• Major Barbara, Shaw
• Candide, Voltaire
• The Poetics, Aristotle
• She Stoops to Conquer, Goldsmith
• Ibsen Plays
• Othello, Shakespeare
• The Horses Mouth, Cary
• The Admirable Crichton, Barrie
• Pride and Prejudice, Austen
• The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles
• Wuthering Heights, Bronte
• Barrabas, Lagerkvist
• Luther, Osborne
• Return of the Native, Hardy
• Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
• Lord Jim, Conrad
• The Fountainhead, Rand
• The Short Story, Stone, Packer, Hoops, eds.

Film Composition and Literature

Grade 11 and 12

Extended Core Works

• October Sky, Hickam, Jr.
• Flashback, A Brief History of Film, Giannetti and Eyman
• A Critical Eye, Kasdan, Saxton & Tavernetti

Optional Reading

• Rebecca, DuMaurier
• Bridge on the River Kwai, Boulle
• Ordinary People, Guest
• Gone with the Wind, Mitchell
• How Green was My Valley, Llewellyn
• In the Heat of the Night, Bal
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey
• African Queen, C.S. Forester
• Lost Horizon, Hilton
• Girl with the Pearl Earring, Chevalier
• Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Vreeland
• My Name is Asher Lev, Potak.

Women Writers

Grades 11 and 12

Extended Core Works

• The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood
• The Awakening, Chopin
• Sula, Morrison
• Herland, Perkins Gilman
• “Blood Child”, Butler
• Women and Economics, Gilman
• “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman
• “Mama”, Dorothy Allison
• The Beauty Myth, Wolf
• The Feminine Mystique, Freidan

American Writers of Color

Grades 11 and 12

Extended Core Works:

• The Woman Warrior, Kingston
• Ceremony, Silko
• And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, Rivera

Optional Works:

• Quicksand/Passing, Larsen
• A Lesson Before Dying, Gaines
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston
• Black Boy, Wright
• Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya
• Invisible Man, Ellison
• House Made of Dawn, Momaday
• So Far from God, Castillo
• Go Tell It On the Mountain, Baldwin
• Native Son, Wright
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist fight in Heaven

The Literature of Sport

Grades 11 and 12

Extended Core Works

• The Natural, Malamud
• Friday Night Lights, Bassinger
• The Jackie Robinson Reader, Kahn
• Bang the Drum Slowly, Harris
• A Kind of Grace, Joyner-Kerse
• A Treasure of Sportwriting by Women
• Seabiscuit, Hillenbrand
• Motion: American Sports Poems, Wideman

Optional Reading

• Boys of Summer, Kahn
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Sillitoe
• 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball, Barber
• Eight men Out, Asinof
• 24 Seconds to Shoot, Koppett
• The City Game, Axthelm
• A League of their Own, Gilbert
• Endzone, Delillo
• Babe: The Legend Comes to Life, Creamer
• Fathers Playing Catch With Sons, Hall
• For Love of the Game, Shaara
• Heaven is a Playground, Telander
• In These Girls Hope is a Muscle, Blais
• King of the World: Muhammad Ali & the Rise of an American Hero, Remnick
• A Whole Other Ballgame: Women's Literature on Women's Sport,Sandoz

Analysis of the Writer’s Craft

Grade 11 and 12

Extended Core Work

• Short Shorts, Howe and Howe
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Albee
• Writing Down the Bones, Goldberg

Optional Reading

• The Bell Jar, Plath
• Growing Up, Baker
• A Moveable Feast, Hemingway
• This Boy’s Life, Wolff
• This House of Sky, Doig
• The Triggering Town, Hugo
• The Art of Writing, Ferrera
• A Pocketful of Poems, Madden
• A Pocketbook of Modern American Short Stories, Stern
• Welcome to the Monkey-House, Vonnegut
• Sudden Fiction, Shapiro and Thomas
• “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and Other Stories, O’Conner
• Micro Fiction, Stern

Shakespeare and Chaucer

Grade 11 and 12

Extended Core Work

• “Prologue” to Canterbury Tales
• “The Wife of Bath” Tale
• “The Nun’s Priest” Tale
• Anthony and Cleopatra
• King Lear
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Henry IV, Part I

Optional Reading

• As You Like It
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• The Taming of the Shrew
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Othello
• All’s Well That Ends Well
• Henry IV, Part II
• Measure for Measure
• Richard the Third
• Sonnets