What Are The Hatboro-Horsham Kids Reading This Summer?

Maybe you have a child in the Hatboro-Horsham School District, and you’re curious what the rest of the school is reading, and what your kid will read next year.

Maybe you used to go to school here, and wonder how things have changed.

Or maybe you just want a good book to read on the porch, by the pool, or on the beach this summer.

No matter what, there’s no doubt that high school reading lists have always held a certain fascination in our minds.

Bookstores like Barnes and Noble honor the scholastic canon with a separate table and, oftentimes, a “buy 2 get 1 free” sale.

Online, sites like Amazon, Alibris, and AbeBooks dedicate pages to high school summer reading.

Both are available year-round, long after and long before high school students would ever need to buy the books on the list.

There’s little doubt about it: our society has long held a fascination with high school summer reading. For those that dislike reading, it may be the only time they encounter these authors. For everyone else, it may be their formative first experience with life-changing art.

Regardless, these are the timeless works of fiction that we come back to, for one reason or another, again and again, made immortal by English departments everywhere.

Here’ is what Hatboro-Horsham students are reading this summer.

9TH GRADE

Honors - Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger

10TH GRADE

Honors - Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

11TH GRADE

Honors - A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

12TH GRADE

Honors - Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

AP Literature Required: read one from each selection:

1. World Literature selection: Choose Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe OR A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

2. Drama selection: Choose Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett OR Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

3. Fiction that makes a political statement: Choose Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift ORSlaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

4. Character study selection: Choose The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, OR Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

>>>SEE ALSO: The 100 Most Often Recommended Reads

AP Literature Suggested Titles:

The Awakening, Kate Chopin

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky OR One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez

Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller

A Doll House, Henrik Ibsen (Also called A Doll’s House)
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad OR Candide, Voltaire

King Lear, William Shakespeare

The Inferno, Dante Alighieri (Robert Pinsky translation)

Oedipus Rex or Antigone (Also sometimes entitled Oedipus the King)

AP Language and Composition: choose four of the following:

The Autistic Brain by Temple Grandin

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

No Easy Day by Mark Owen

One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

The Pixar Touch by David A. Price

Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol

Sliding on the Snow Stone by Andy Szpuk

Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis

Teacher Man by Frank McCourt

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

What did you read in high school, at Hatboro-Horsham or elsewhere? How has the curriculum changed since? Let us know in the comments.