BOOK REPORT REQUIREMENTS:
1st TERM 2017-18
BOOK CHOICE:
Choose any book from the list below that you have not previously read (do some research, and be careful of your choice; I don't know your ethics or what content you or your parents find acceptable or offensive in a work of literature):
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain,
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, "The Bear" by William Faulkner, Billy Budd by Herman Melville, Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, The Diviners by Margaret Laurence, Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Fences by August Wilson, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, |
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan,
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot, My Antonia by Willa Cather, No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, Our Town by Thornton Wilder, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee, Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor, or The Zoo Story by Edward Albee |
WRITING REQUIREMENTS:
Your report must be typed in MLA format, in active, academic voice, and include the following:
- The title, author (and a justification of why that author should be considered American), and first publication date
- A two-paragraph summary of the work.
- A one-paragraph explanation of the main theme or argument of the work.
- A one-sentence statement of the theme or argument (like a thesis statement). Please make sure you are not just listing a subject or a topic. The theme should be an argument about what the work is saying about that subject or topic.
- Five "golden passages" quotes from the work that contain rhetorical devices or figurative language that supports the theme. Each quote should be accompanied by a paragraph explanation of the rhetorical device and how it is used to support the work's argument.
- A well-structured, three-paragraph essay analyzing the overall meaning of the work and comparing how the work creates that meaning differently or similarly to one work we covered in class.
- A completed reading record for the work.
YOUR BOOK REPORT IS DUE BY 2:30 PM ON 10/5.
THEY WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED LATE FOR ANY REASON.
THEY WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED LATE FOR ANY REASON.