Grade Nine HONORS
(Focus on Hawaiian, Pacific and World Literature)

Welcome to our English Department’s Summer Reading Lists for Grade 9! As a means by which to improve reading comprehension, the English department requires all Grade 9 students to read at least ONE book listed under the name of the class they have chosen for the 2008-09 school year. At the start of the school year, all students will be tested by their English teacher on their selection. Books listed may be borrowed from the state library system or purchased on-line or from local bookstores.

Please note that starred (*) books indicate a parental advisory due to occasional profanity, explicit language, and/or drug-use or sexual references.

Reading Lists may also be viewed on-line at the English Department website: http://kapalama.ksbe.edu/high/english/index.htm

The purpose of this reading list is to provide Honors HPWL students with an opportunity to read true stories by people who were born and raised outside of the United States. While some of the authors have since immigrated to the U.S., the events that they write about occur mainly in their countries of origin. All books are autobiographies that have been written within the last 25 years.
Because of the nature of the authors’ lives and stories, all of these books have occasional profanity, violence, or sexual incidents that authors refer to. Please note starred books below, as stars indicate explicit language that parents may want to review first. Parents are strongly encouraged to read these books and discuss the issues addressed with their children.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers; Loung Ung **
Until the age of five, Loung Ung lived in Phnom Penh, and was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights, and sassing her parents. When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung's family was forced to flee their home and hide their previous life of privilege. Eventually, they dispersed in order to survive. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans while her other siblings were sent to labor camps. Only after the Vietnamese destroyed the Khmer Rouge were Loung and her surviving siblings slowly reunited. Harrowing yet hopeful, insightful and compelling, this family's story is truly unforgettable.

Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to Freedom in America; Francis Bok
In this groundbreaking modern slave narrative, Francis Bok shares his remarkable story with grace, honesty, and a wisdom gained from surviving ten years in captivity. May, 1986: Selling his mother's eggs and peanuts near his village in southern Sudan, seven year old Francis Bok's life was shattered when Arab raiders on horseback, armed with rifles and long knives, burst into the quiet marketplace, murdering men and women and gathering the young children into a group. Strapped to horses and donkeys, Francis and others were taken north, into lives of slavery under wealthy Muslim farmers. Escape from Slavery is at once a riveting adventure, a story of desperation and triumph, and a window revealing a world that few have survived to tell.

In My Hands; Irene Gut Opdyke
When World War II began, Irene Gutowna was a 17-year-old Polish nursing student. Six years later, she writes in this inspiring memoir, "I felt a million years old." In the intervening time she was separated from her family, raped by Russian soldiers, and forced to work in a hotel serving German officers. Sickened by the suffering inflicted on the local Jews, Irene began leaving food under the walls of the ghetto. Soon she was scheming to protect the Jewish workers she supervised at the hotel, and then hiding them in the lavish villa where she served as housekeeper to a German major. The author presents her extraordinary heroism as the inevitable result of small steps taken over time, but her readers will not agree as they consume this thrilling adventure story, which also happens to be a drama of moral choice and courage.

The Translator ; Daoud Hari **
"Hari, a Zaghawa tribesman, grew up in a village in the Darfur region of Sudan. As a child he saw colorful weddings, raced his camels across the desert, and played games in the moonlight after his work was done. In 2003, this traditional life was shattered when helicopter gunships appeared over Darfur's villages. Ancient hatreds and greed for natural resources had collided, and the conflagration spread. The Translator tells a remarkable story of a man who came face to face with genocide--time and again risking his own life to fight injustice and save his people."

**Parental Advisory – occasional profanity and/or drug-use or sexual references.