Monty Tech Summer Reading 2008

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Reading List

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent. A coming of age story for 4 girls exiled from the Dominican Republic in New York. (F)
Anonymous. Go Ask Alice. a painful diary of a young girl when she falls into the drug scene. (NF)
Avi. The Fighting Ground. the compelling story of a young boy's first encounter with war and how it changes him. (F)
Avi. Midnight Magic. A ghost is haunting the princess and only the magician's servant can solve the mystery. (F)
Avi. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. A 13-year-old girl must extricate herself from a perilous position during an 1832 transatlantic voyage. (F)
Bachman, Richard. Long Walk. Of 100 boys in a marathon walk, 99 will die, and 1 will survive. (F)
Bauer, Joan. Rules of the Road. A 17 year old heads to Texas to prevent a company takeover. (F)
Bechard, Margaret. Hanging on to Max. Sam learns how to be a teen parent while going to high school. (F)
Bell, William. Forbidden City: A novel of Modern China. A Canadian boy gets mixed up in a Chinese massacre. (F)
Block, Francesca Lia. Weetzie Bat. Punk teens search for love in a modern fairytale. (F)
Bloor, Edward. Tangerine. Paul just wants to play soccer at his new high school in Florida, despite his parents' indifference and his evil brother. (F)
Boas, Jacob. We are Witnesses: The Diaries of Five Teenagers Who Die in the Holocaust. The diaries of five teenagers in the Holocaust and their tragic, courageous stories. (NF)
Brashares, Ann. The Second Summer of Sisterhood. A sequel to the original pants. (F)
Brooks, Polly Schoyer. Beyond the Myth: The Story of Joan of Arc. A young girl in France is condemned as a witch and leads her countrymen against the English. (NF)
Brown, Dan. Angels and Demons. A centuries-old organization launches a vendetta against the Catholic Church. (F)
Brown, Dan. Deception Point. Uncovering evidence of scientific trickery, a dangerous deception. (F)
Brown, Dan. Digital Fortress. Mathematician must break a code for the National Security Agency. (F)
Caldwell, Ian. Rule of Four. Two people work to unlock a Renaissance text against a ticking clock. (F)
Card, Orson, Scott. Ender's Game. Ender may be the military genius Earth needs in its war against an alien enemy. (F)
Cormier, Robert. Fade. One boy in each generation inherits the power, and curse, of invisibility. (F)
Cormier, Robert. I am the Cheese. Adam searches through haunting memories that must not be revealed if he is to survive. (F)
Cox, Lynne. Swimming to Antarctica. The world's most extraordinary distance swimmer writes about her emotional and spiritual need to swim and the almost mystical act of swimming itself. (NF)
Crutcher, Chris. Chinese Handcuffs. A winning triathlete's need to understand his older brother's suicide is complicated by his memories. (F)
Crutcher, Chris. Running Loose. A boy's senior year of high school is interrupted by dirty football, love, and death. (F)
Crutcher, Chris. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. Only Sarah's best friend can help her come to terms with life when her past is revealed. (F)
Damon, Johnny. Idiot: Beating "The Curse" and Enjoying the Game of Life. Johnny Damon on what it takes to make it in the majors, and what it's like once you get there. (NF)
Deuker, Carl. On the Devil's Court. Is one perfect basketball season worth selling your soul to the devil? (F)
Dickinson, Peter. Eva. After a violent auto accident, 13 year old Eva wakes up in a hospital to find she must learn how to live as a chimpanzee. (F)
Donnelly, Jennifer. A Northern Light. Mattie's writing ability holds the key to unraveling a story of a girl's death and her beau's mysterious disappearance. (F)
Duncan, Lois. Don't Look Behind You. How can April give up everything she's ever known? (F)
Edelman, Bernard. Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. Soldiers reveal their daily lives in "Nam". (F)
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. The story of a black man's experience in a white world. (F)
Farmer, Nancy. The Ear, the Eye, the Arm. In2194 the only detective team that can so the job are mutant partners, the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. (F)
Fleischman, Paul. Whirligig. A boy must build Whirligigs in memory of a girl he killed in a car crash. (F)
Funke, Cornelia. Inkheart. Meggie's father discovered he could read characters out of books, but he accidentally reads her mother in, and now has to break her out. (F)
Garden, Nancy. Annie on my Mind. Two girls fall in love despite society's opinion. (F)
Greenlaw, Linda. The Hungry Ocean. An account of a swordfishing trip which proves that ever successful voyage is a study in narrowly averted disaster.
Griffin, John Howard. Black Like Me. A sociological experiment of a white man who transforms his skin to experience 1950's Southern America. (NF)
Grogan, John. Marley & Me. An account of a much loved, naughty canine. (NF)
Hobbs, Will. Downriver. A gang of teens find themselves stranded in the whitewaters of the West. (F)
Hopkins, Ellen. Crank. A girls life is turned upside down when she gets turned on to the drug "crank" and becomes addicted. (F)
Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns. A story of the unconquerable spirit of a people and individuals seen through the eyes of two indomitable women. (NF)
Jankeczko, Paul B. Place my Words are Looking For: What Poets Say About and Through their Work. Writers share insight into their crafts and lives of poetry. (NF)
Jenkins, A.M. Out of Order. a baseball star learns what's important in school and life. (NF)
Johnson, Angela. The First Part Last. Bobby must learn to raise a child of his own. (F)
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. Cross-Country quest for self-knowledge. (F)
Kindl, Patrice. Owl in Love. A girl deals with issues of changing into an owl every night
King, Stephen. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. A child gets separated from her family in the woods and the moon's affects. (F)
Klass, David. You Don't Know Me. A teenage boy fights off abuse from his mother's boyfriend. (F)
Klause, Annette Curtis. The Silver Kiss. Zoe is put under a vampire's spell until he avenges a death. (F)
Koertge, Ron. The Arizona Kid. A sophomore matures one summer at the racetrack. (F)
Kurson, Robert. Shadow Divers. The true adventure of two Americans who risked everything to solve one of the last mysteries of world war II. (NF)
Larson, Erik. Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the fair that Changed the World. A serial killer masquerades as a doctor in the Chicago's World's Fair. (NF)
Lowry, Lois. Number the Stars. A Jewish family fights to hide from the Nazis and find freedom. (F)
Magorian, Michelle. Good Night, Mr. Tom. A battered & frightened young boy is evacuated from London during WWII. (F)
Maguire, Gregory. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Everyone knows about Cinderella; this is the story from the sister's point of view. (F)

Maguire, Gregory. Wicked. The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West. (F)
Marsden, John. Tomorrow, When the War Began. Australia has been invaded and Ellie must accept her new way of life. (F)
Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Redemptive story of a boy and a 450 lb. tiger.
McCaffrey, Anne. Dragonsinger. Fire lizards help a young woman with prejudice on the planet Pern. (F)
McCall, Nathan. Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America. An American dream journey from working class, to prison, to the Washington Post. (NF)
McCourt, Frank. Tis: A Memoir. The riveting sequel to Angela's Ashes. (NF)
McDonald, Joyce. Swallowing Stones. Desperation, guilt, and fear plague Michael's dreams after a stray bullet from his rifle kills a man. (F)
Myers, Walter Dean. Fallen Angels. A young man learns about friendship as his comrades die in Vietnam. (F)
Myers, Walter Dean. Hoops. The Harlem ghetto basketball team learn the fine art of playing. (F)
Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran. The story of Iran's revolution from the unusual vantage point of an Iranian-born, American-schooled instructor of English literature, in the revolutionary year of 1979. (NF)
Naylor, Clare and Mimi Hare. The Second Assistant. A boisterous tale of a girl working up from the bottom of the Hollywood ladder. (F)
Nix, Garth. Sabriel. A girl makes a desperate guest through the Gates of Death to free her father from the spirits of the dead. (F)
Nolan, Han. If I Should Die Before I Wake. A New-Nazi in a coma is brought back to WWII into the life of a Jewish teenager. (F)
Nowlin, Bill and Dan Desrochers, ed. The 1967 Impossible Dream Red Sox. How the 1967 Boston Red Sox overcame 100 to 1 odds to go from 9th place to winning the Pennant. (NF)
O'Brien, Robert C. Z for Zachariah. Two survivors are brought together in an atomic holocaust. (F)
O'Brien, Tim. Things they Carried. A collection of short stories based on O'Brien's Vietnam experiences. (F)
Paulsen, Gary. Brian's Hunt. Brian fights for survival in the Canadian wilderness. (F)
Paulsen, Gary. Woodsong. Paulsen depicts his adventures in the Minnesota wilderness. (F)
Peck, Richard. The River Between Us. A Northern family learns what staying together means when slavery hits home. (F)
Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A philosophical journey through values as a father and his son travel cross country. (NF)
Plath, Silvia. The Bell Jar. Esther is aware of her descent into madness in one odd, sultry summer. (F)
Pullman, Phillip. The Ruby in the Smoke. An orphan must find her way through a maze of 19th century villains to claim her independence. (F)
Rilke, Ranier Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Ten letters written to a young man about to enter the German military. (NF)
Roach, Mary. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. A graphic examination of how dead bodies have been used throughout history. (NF)
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. The 6th book in the series. (F)
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The last book in the series. (F)
Sebold, Alice. Lucky. Sebold tells the story of her rape at age 18 and the aftermath. (NF)
Sedaris, David. Me Talk Pretty One Day. Sedaris is as determined as ever to be nobody's hero--he never triumphs, he never conquers-- and somehow, with each failure, he inadvertently becomes everybody's favorite underdog. (NF)
Sittenfield, Curtis. Prep. A country girl enters the world of a Boston Prep school. (F)
Sleator, William. House of Stairs. Five Orphans find themselves in an experimental nightmare. (F)
Sparks, Nicholas. The Guardian. A young widow is ready to love again. (F)
Stoll, Cliff. The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through a Maze of Computer Espionage. A detective tracks the trail of a computer hacker. (NF)
Twain, Mark. Autobiography of Mark Twain. Assorted tales from his past to ruminate on more profound aspects of life. (NF)
Voigt, Cynthia. Dicey's Song. The sequel to Homecoming, Dicey learns her own place. (F)
Voigt, Cynthia. A Solitary Blue. The 3rd book in the Tillerman series. (F)
Voigt, Cynthia. Runner. Compromise is necessary if an athlete is going to be the best. (F)
Walker, Rebecca. Black, White and Jewish. The story of a child's unique struggle for identity and home when nothing in her world told her who she was or where she belonged. (NF)
White, Robb. Deathwatch. A hunting expedition becomes a deathwatch in the desert. (F)
Wolfe, Tom. Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. The story of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters as they drive across the country reaching what they considered to be personal and collective revelations through the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs. (NF)
Wolfe, Virginia Euwer. Make Lemonade. A highschooler matures in her process of babysitting for an unwed, teenage mother of two children.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy. the story of a troubled youth and race relations in the South. (NF)
Yolen, Jane. Briar Rose. A blend of the tale "Sleeping Beauty" with a young girl's experiences in the Holocaust. (F)
X, Malcom. Autobiography of Malcom X. The blistering honesty with which he recounts his transformation from a bitter, self-destructive petty criminal into an articulate political activities.