Hello, incoming  10th-grade students!

First read the summer reading welcome letter, and then check out some of the recommendations below. 

 

Titles connected to 10th grade themes

 

The Rent Collector, Camron Wright *

Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a secret about the bad-tempered rent collector who comes demanding money--a secret that sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone it sweeps past. 

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Sarah's Key, Tatiana de Rosnay **

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

 

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini ***

A moving story about two women set in Afghanistan. The book's story illustrates both the second class, serf-like treatment of two women and their subjection to physical and emotional brutality that was allowed, enabled and endorsed. We also get to see the bravery, kindness and self-resilience of these same two women.

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In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, Nathaniel Philbrick ***

In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whale ship Essex—an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours,and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick.

 

The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri**

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. With penetrating insight, Lahiri reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.

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* easier                                               **moderate                                    ***challenging