Language Arts 9-11 Approved Instructional Materials

Ninth Grade Introduction to Literature and Composition

This course is the students’ “launching pad” to high school. The core and core choice texts should reflect the themes of identity and self-discovery. Works will also be chosen that lend themselves to an analysis of the elements of literature. Classical and contemporary college-bound works will be included, and the core choice list should reflect a variety of reading levels and cultures, as well as a variety of themes.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie

Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison

Before We Were Free, Julia Alvarez

Black Boy, Richard Wright

Bride Price, Buchi Emecheta

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon

Dreams of Trespass, Fatima Mernissi

Ellen Foster, Kay Gibbons

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

Feed, M. T. Anderson

Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

Luna, Julie Anne Peters

Night, Elie Wiesel

The Odyssey, Homer

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry

Ramayana, R.K. Narayan

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff

When Elephants Dance, Tess Uriza Holthe

Tenth Grade: World Literature and Composition

Tenth grade selections will reflect a mostly non-Western, geographical emphasis. Classical and contemporary college-bound works will be included, and the core choice list should reflect a variety of reading levels and cultures, as well as a variety of themes.

Animal Farm, George Orwell

Antigone, Sophocles

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Color of Water, James McBride

The Dark Child, Camara Laye

Fountain and Tomb, Naguib Mahfouz

Haroun and Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie

In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel

Lord of the Flies, William Golding

Master Harold and the Boys, Athol Fugard

Maus, Art Spiegelman

Mother to Mother, Sindiwe Magona

Nectar in a Sieve, Kamala Markandaya

Othello, William Shakespeare

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

Siddhartha, Herman Hesse

The Sound of Waves, Yukio Mishima

The Tempest, William Shakespeare

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe

Eleventh Grade American Literature and Composition

Eleventh grade core and core choice texts should reflect a variety of multicultural perspectives. Some ties to historical chronology/historical context should be possible. Major themes for this grade level are the different interpretations of the American experience and the American dream. Classical and contemporary college-bound works will be included, and the core choice list should reflect a variety of reading levels and cultures, as well as a variety of themes.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

Bone, Fae Myenne Ng

Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

The Color Purple, Alice Walker

The Crucible, Arthur Miller

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez

Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer

Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee

Kindred, Octavia E. Butler

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie

Love Medicine, Lousie Erdrich

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass

Native Son, Richard Wright

The Piano Lesson, August Wilson

The Rain God, Arturo Islas

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

Walden, Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau

When the Emperor Was Divine, Julie Otsuka

Twelfth Grade: Comparative Literature and Composition

Note: 12th grade is not a graduation requirement. The list of suggested titles below have been reviewed and recommended by the Language Arts Materials Adoption should Language Arts 12 become a graduation requirement.

These texts should be chosen for a high level of complexity. The texts should lend themselves to comparative analysis, across genres or themes or within genres or themes. Classical and contemporary college-bound works will be included, and the core choice list should reflect a variety of reading levels and cultures, as well as a variety of themes.

1984, George Orwell

As You Like It, William Shakespeare

The Awakening, Kate Chopin

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation)

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fences, August Wilson

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Conner

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

Native Speaker, Chang-Rae Lee

Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

The Stranger, Albert Camus

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

White Teeth, Zadie Smith

Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys