Welcome to the 2018 Summer Reading List for students entering Class VII in September!
This summer, you are required to read a total of five books. Read the required book for Class VII, Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate, plus four other books of your choice from the summer reading list. Of course, we welcome and encourage you to read more than five, if you’d like!
Keep a record of what you read by writing down the title and author of each book to share with your teacher and your classmates in September.
Students are asked to avoid reading the following works, which are part of the Middle School English curriculum:
The Outsiders, The House on Mango Street, A Raisin in the Sun, Animal Farm, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, This Boy’s Life, The Crucible, Macbeth, and Annie John.
A printable version of this list is available on the Nightingale Library page.
In Africa, Kek lived with his mother, father, and brother. But only he and his mother have survived, and now she's missing. Kek is on his own. Slowly, he makes friends: a girl who is in foster care; an old woman who owns a rundown farm, and a cow whose name means "family" in Kek's native language. As Kek awaits word of his mother's fate, he weathers the tough Minnesota winter by finding warmth in his new friendships, strength in his memories, and belief in his new country.
Classics
This story follows a warren of Berkshire rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a land developer. As they search for a safe haven, skirting danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band and its compelling culture and mythos. But the story is more than pages upon pages of talking rabbits. This book is as much about freedom, ethics, and human nature as it is about a bunch of bunnies looking for a warm hidey-hole and some mates. Don’t let the rabbits throw you off. If you give this a try, you won’t regret it.
The four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—are at the center of this classic story of friendship, love, and growing up. ”Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. It's so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress. I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all,” added little Amy, with an injured sniff. “We've got Father and Mother, and each other,” said Beth contentedly from her corner.
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.
Young Billy works two long, hard years to earn the money to realize his dream—to own a pair of dogs for hunting raccoons. A loving threesome, they ranged the dark hills and river bottoms of Cherokee country. Old Dan had the brawn, Little Ann had the brains and Billy had the will to train them to be the finest hunting team in the valley. This is an exciting tale of love and adventure you'll never forget. Make sure you have plenty of tissues at the ready.
Romeo and Juliet tells the story of two star-crossed lovers and the unhappy fate that befell them as a result of a long and bitter feud between their families. The play contains some of Shakespeare's most beautiful and lyrical love poetry and is perhaps the finest celebration of the joys of young love ever written.
Fiction
Year eleven at an exclusive prep school in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, would be tough enough, but it is further complicated for Amal when she decides to wear the hijab, the Muslim head scarf, fulltime as a badge of her faith—without losing her identity or sense of style.
A contemporary immigration story told through the alternating viewpoints of two young people in Vermont. After 11-year-old Tyler's father is injured in a tractor accident, the family is in danger of losing their dairy farm. Desperate for help, Tyler's family employs Mari's family, who are illegal migrant Mexican workers. Mari writes heartrending letters and diary entries, especially about Mamá, who has disappeared during a trip to Mexico to visit Mari's dying abuelita. Is Mamá in the hands of the border-crossing coyotes? Have they hurt her? Will Homeland Security (la migra) raid the farm?
Sixteen-year-old Ellie Morgan's life would be almost perfect if she could just get her potentially prize-winning pumpkin, Max, to put on about two hundred more pounds. Then she could become a locally famous personality and squash that obnoxious Cyril Pool. Ellie’s determination to show up Cyril is awesome and downright funny. Grow pumpkin, grow!
It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School. Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners—and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine's, young ladies learn to finish...everything.
For as long as she can remember, Katarina has been a part of the family business-thieving. When Kat tries to leave "the life" for a normal life, her old friend Hale conspires to bring her back into the fold. Why? A mobster's art collection has been stolen, and Kat's father is the only suspect. Caught between Interpol and a far more deadly enemy, Kat's dad needs her help. The only solution is to find the paintings and steal them back. Kat's got two weeks, a teenage crew, and hopefully enough talent to pull off the biggest heist in her family's history and, with any luck, steal her life back along the way.
Mitty, a New York City teenager, discovers a century-old sample of smallpox scabs. At first he has no idea of what danger he and everyone he comes in contact with is in. He just wants to impress a girl. As he does his homework, he becomes horrified at the scope of the danger. Is the virus still active? Can he find a way to prevent an epidemic if it is? Should he tell the authorities, and look like a total dork if it isn't? Can he just forget it and hope nothing happens?
Does Jerry Renault dare to disturb the universe? You wouldn't think that his refusal to sell chocolates during his school's fundraiser would create such a stir, but it does; it's as if the whole school comes apart at the seams. To some, Jerry is a hero, but to others, he becomes a scapegoat—a target for their pent-up hatred. And Jerry? He's just trying to stand up for what he believes, but perhaps there is no way for him to escape becoming a pawn in this game of control; students are pitted against other students, fighting for honor—or are they fighting for their lives?
Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory; she can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. She is smarter than most of the adults who try to diagnose her, and smarter than her classmates in her integrated classroom—the very same classmates who dismiss her as mentally challenged because she cannot tell them otherwise. But Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy. And she's determined to let everyone know it...somehow.
Easygoing, thoughtless, and direct, Tex at fifteen likes everyone and everything, especially his horse, Negrito, and Johnny Collins's blue-eyed sister, Jamie. He thinks life with his seventeen-year-old brother, Mason, in their ramshackle house would be just about perfect if only Mace would stop complaining about Pop. Pop hasn't been home in five months. Mace wants to get out of Oklahoma. Tex just seems to attract trouble and danger. Suddenly everything's falling apart. Can Tex keep it all together?
Venus was a German shepherd destined for greatness until a broken leg took her out of contention and into the arms of a boy named Willie. Reminded of the landlord's no-pet policy, the heartbroken boy answers a newspaper ad and Venus, now "Cracker," is accepted into a military canine unit to help soldiers sniff out booby traps in Vietnam. She and her handler, Rick Hanski, quickly bond and head to the front lines.
Alone in the world, sixteen-year-old Hattie is driven to try and homestead her late uncle’s claim but she has just one year to meet the conditions. If she fails, she loses what would be her only real home. She’s never had a real home. For years, she’s been shuttled between relatives. Tired of being Hattie Here-and-There, she courageously leaves Iowa for Vida, Montana. With a stubborn stick-to-itiveness, Hattie faces frost, drought and blizzards. Despite many hardships, Hattie forges ahead, sharing her adventures with her friends--especially Charlie, fighting in France--through letters and articles for her hometown paper. Her backbreaking quest for a home is lightened by her neighbors, the Muellers. But she feels threatened by pressure to be a "Loyal" American, forbidding friendships with folks of German descent.
The day after Liyana got her first real kiss, her life changed forever. Not because of the kiss, but because it was the day her father announced that the family was moving from St. Louis all the way to Palestine. Though her father grew up there, Liyana knows very little about her family's Arab heritage. Her grandmother and the rest of her relatives who live in the West Bank are strangers, and speak a language she can't understand. It isn't until she meets Omer that her homesickness fades. But Omer is Jewish, and their friendship is silently forbidden in this land. How can they make their families understand? And how can Liyana ever learn to call this place home?
Violet Paz, growing up in suburban Chicago, barely knows Spanish, and her dad refuses to talk about his Cuban roots, so it's a real surprise when Abuela insists that Violet have a grand quinceanera, the traditional Latina fifteenth-year coming-of-age ceremony.
Louise has had enough of her twin sister. Caroline is beautiful. Caroline is talented. Caroline is better. Growing up on the small island of Rass in Chesapeake Bay, Caroline seems to do nothing but take from Louise: their parents' love, Louise's chances for an education, her dreams for the future and Louise’s fishing buddy for her fiancée. They have spent their lives entwined, sleeping in the same room, eating at the same table, learning in the same classroom and yet somehow nothing can bring them together. Louise's only hope lies in seeking a place for herself beyond the stretch of Rass's shores and her sister's shadow. What will it take for her to break free?
Sixth-grader Grayson Sender quietly doodles princesses and castles with glitter pens during class and dreams of wearing twirly skirts and long, shiny gowns instead of his limp, lifeless track pants. Those aren't problems, but the fact that he has to repress himself is a problem-a big one. Despite knowing that he is a girl deep down inside, Grayson has learned to look and act like the boy he is not; his family would be furious and his classmates would bully him if they found out. But now, cast as Persephone in the spring play, he finds acceptance among the cast members. But not everyone is happy.
Joan runs away from home at age 14 to become a hired girl in 1911. Life with her unpleasant father and brothers on their farm in Pennsylvania is rough. Knowing she is not loved, she sees escape when she learns that the going rate for a hired girl in the city is $6 a week. She lands in Baltimore over her head and is rescued by the Rosenbachs. A large young woman, Joan presents herself as Janet, 18, impressing Mrs. Rosenbach with her love of reading, quickly making herself indispensable to the aging housekeeper, and landing a job as a hired girl and "Shabbos goy." Joan is smart, hardworking, and naïve, and Catholic in a Jewish household. She is also a romantic. The Rosenbachs' flirty son David seems to love her both for her mind and—as an aspiring artist—her looks. "Tall and robust and wholesome looking. You're like one of Michelangelo's Sibyls—a grand, bareheaded creature." Trouble ensues. Will there be a happy ending?
From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, the hallways hum with the murmur of “Stargirl, Stargirl.” She captures Leo Borlock’s heart with just one smile. She sparks a school-spirit revolution with just one cheer. The students of Mica High are enchanted. Then, they turn on her. Stargirl is suddenly shunned for everything that makes her different, and Leo, panicked and desperate with love, urges her to become the very thing that can destroy her: normal.
This story portrays the life of a girl growing up among camel-dealing nomads in modern Pakistan. Eleven-year-old Shabanu knows the way her people have always lived: a daughter abides by her father's decisions; a wife obeys her husband's wishes. Yet Shabanu is strong-willed and independent, and her mother warns, "Shabanu, you are wild as the wind. You must learn to obey. Otherwise . . . I am afraid for you." As the arranged marriage of Shabanu's sister Phulan approaches, and with her own wedding planned for the following year, Shabanu confronts her fear and apprehension. What if she does not obey? Before the ceremonies take place, however, disaster strikes. Shabanu and Phulan, out alone and threatened by a powerful local landowner, escape but humiliate him. In revenge, he kills Phulan's husband-to-be and threatens to cut off the family's water supply. As one condition for restoring peace, Shabanu must marry the landlord's older brother.
Loneliness, a bad crowd, and a downward spiral led 14-year-old Wren to this: while on a midnight bender, she's dragged to the airport and shipped off. Wren's parents, concerned for both Wren's health and safety and their own, have sent her to a wilderness therapy camp. Angry and resistant, Wren has no intention of learning how to find water or build a fire, until it becomes apparent that, out here, those skills are essential.
Little Man throws the meanest fastball in town. But talking is a whole different ball game. He can barely say a word without stuttering—not even his own name. So when he takes over his best friend’s paper route for the month of July, he’s not exactly looking forward to interacting with the customers. But it’s the neighborhood junkman, a bully and thief, who stirs up real trouble in Little Man’s life.
Eleven-year-old Annabelle McBride was hungering for change. She felt as if excitement waited for her "like an uncut cake." But now, everything's a terrible mess, and she wishes the blue-eyed, blonde-haired bully Betty Glengarry had never moved to Wolf Hollow that fateful fall of 1943.
Historical Fiction
“'Srulik, there’s no time. I want you to remember what I’m going to tell you. You have to stay alive. You have to! Get someone to teach you how to act like a Christian, how to cross yourself and pray. . . . The most important thing, Srulik,' he said, talking fast, 'is to forget your name. Wipe it from your memory. . . But even if you forget everything—even if you forget me and Mama—never forget that you’re a Jew.'" And so, at only eight years old, Srulik Frydman says goodbye to his father for the last time and becomes Jurek Staniak, an orphan on the run in the Polish countryside at the height of the Holocaust.
Ida Mae Jones dreams of flight. Her daddy was a pilot and being black didn't stop him from fulfilling his dreams. But her daddy's gone now, and being a woman, and being black, are two strikes against her. When America enters the war with Germany and Japan, the Army creates the WASP, the Women's Airforce Service Pilots—and Ida suddenly sees a way to fly as well as do something significant to help her brother stationed in the Pacific. But even the WASP won't accept her as a black woman, forcing Ida Mae to make a difficult choice of 'passing,' of pretending to be white to be accepted into the program.
Hannah, 12, is tired of remembering the Holocaust, and is embarrassed by her grandfather, who rants and raves at the mention of the Nazis. Her mother's explanations of how her grandparents and great-aunt lost all family and friends during that time have little effect. Then, during a Passover Seder, Hannah is chosen to open the door to welcome the prophet Elijah. As she does so, she is transported to a village in Poland in the 1940s, where everyone thinks that she is Chaya, who has just recovered from a serious illness. She is captured by the Nazis and taken to a death camp, where she is befriended by a young girl named Rivka, who teaches her how to fight the dehumanizing processes of the camp and hold onto her identity.
Fantasy
&
Science Fiction
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, "Ender" Wiggin is drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders.
Michael's father disappeared three years ago without a trace. Lately, Michael's been experiencing lightheadedness and shortness of breath, which the doctors diagnose as asthma. Even more strangely, Michael begins to notice after these episodes is that his reality has changed—his sister, who never played the instrument before, is a violinist, and an au pair is suddenly part of the family but his mother and sister act as if she's always been there. Baffled, Michael soon meets Amadeus Klimt, the leading member of a covert organization called UNICORNE. Klimt tells Michael that his father may still be alive, but in order to find out for sure, Michael must agree to take on an assignment for the secret agency.
In the good old days, magic was indispensable. But now magic is fading: Drain cleaner is cheaper than a spell, and magic carpets are used for pizza delivery. Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs Kazam, an employment agency for magicians—but it’s hard to stay in business when magic is drying up. And then the visions start, predicting the death of the world’s last dragon at the hands of an unnamed Dragonslayer. If the visions are true, everything will change for Kazam—and for Jennifer.
While playing around with hypnotism at a party, Kira remembers fleeing a war-torn country with her mother, speaking a language she can't identify. A few days later her mother disappears, and a woman who calls herself Kira's Aunt Memory takes Kira to Crythe, a country that doesn't officially exist, in order to rescue her—or so she says.
How far would you go to save the world? When Maisie Danger Brown nabbed a spot at a NASA-like summer boot camp, she never expected to uncover a conspiracy that would change her life forever. And she definitely didn't plan to fall in love. But now there's no going back—Maisie's the only thing standing between the Earth and annihilation. She must become the hero the world needs. The only problem is: how does a regular girl from Salt Lake City do that, exactly? It's not as though there's a handbook for this sort of thing. It's up to Maisie to come up with a plan—and find the courage to carry it out—before she loses her heart . . . and her life.
The first volume in this thrilling trilogy opens on the barren plains of Below, where Hokk and his fox sidekick, Nym, live in exile amid the remnants of our modern age. Overhead, on the floating islands of Above, Elia is trapped in a life of endless toil and drudgery as a laundress for the Mirrored Palace. To Elia, the islands' edges are borders that no one dares cross until the ancient ritual that delivers the dead to Below. But a series of natural disasters rumbling through Above sends Elia's world crashing into Hokk's--and she falls Below. Their journey together will propel them across endless plains and through shattered cities in a centuries-old battle for the very earth and sky around them . . .
This is a very cool rewriting of Cinderella as a kickass mechanic in a plague-ridden future. Long after World War IV, with a plague called letumosis ravaging all six Earthen countries, teenage Cinder spends her days in New Beijing doing mechanical repairs to earn money for her selfish adoptive mother. Her two sisters will attend Prince Kai's ball wearing elegant gowns; Cinder, hated because she's a cyborg, won't be going. But then the heart-thumpingly cute prince approaches Cinder's business booth as a customer, starting a chain of events that links her inextricably with the prince and with a palace doctor who's researching letumosis vaccines. This doctor drafts cyborgs as expendable test subjects; none survive.
Sixteen-year-old twins Harry and Barry stumble across a gateway to another universe, where a distortion in time and space causes a dramatic change in their competitive relationship.
Graphic Novel
Once upon a time, there was a prince who felt fabulous only in exquisite gowns. Prince Sebastian's parents, like fleets of fairy-tale progenitors before, are myopically focused on getting their kid hitched. Rendezvous with potential brides rattle Sebastian, and not just because he's only 16 and averse to icky matrimony. It's because he dresses in couture gowns and is petrified of facing what a reveal would mean to his parents and potential wife. Weary of donning his mother's duds, he hires Frances, a seamstress with an avant-garde flair. Their friendship quickly evolves as she harnesses her talent and he becomes empowered to make public appearances as his alter ego, Lady Crystallia. When Lady Crystallia becomes a fashion plate du jour--and secrecy verges on revelation--Sebastian and Frances are at a crossroads: can they remain true to themselves, each other, and the world?
Seventeen-year-old Hunter Braque's job is finding trendsetters for the retail market. He looks for what is as cool as he is. But when a big-money client disappears, Hunter must use all his cool hunting talents to find her. Along the way he's drawn into a web of brand-name intrigue—a missing cargo of the coolest shoes he's ever seen, ads for products that don't exist, and a shadowy group dedicated to the downfall of consumerism as we know it. Cool, cool, and way cool.
Tally is faced with a difficult choice when her new friend Shay decides to risk life on the outside rather than submit to the forced operation that turns sixteen-year-old girls into gorgeous beauties, and realizes that there is a whole new side to the pretty world that she doesn't like.
Is it possible to grow up while getting younger? Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. It's quiet and peaceful. You can't get sick or any older. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere's museums. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe's psychiatric practice. Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driver's license. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. And now that she's dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn't want with a grandmother she has only just met. And it is not going well. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?
Mystery
& Adventure
Hildy Biddle, high school reporter for The Core, has her hands full following the story of a ghost haunting the old Ludlow place. Life in her sleepy apple-valley town is upset like the proverbial apple cart when a dead body turns up in the Ludlow orchard and enigmatic warnings are scrawled on the door—"YOU DIDN'T THINK IT WAS SAFE, DID YOU?"
It's 1895 and after the mysterious death of her mother, sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from India to a boarding school in England. Lonely and prone to visions of the future, Gemma is now being followed by a mysterious young Indian man who's been sent to watch her. But why?
There’s a serial killer on the loose, working his way through the alphabet. The whole country is in a state of panic. A is for Mrs. Ascher in Andover, B is for Betty Barnard in Bexhill, C is for Sir Carmichael Clarke in Churston. With each murder, the killer is getting more confident—but leaving a trail of deliberate clues to taunt the proud Hercule Poirot might just prove to be the first, and fatal, mistake.
Four seekers look for haunting evidence at the abandoned old mansion called Hill House. Their stay begins as a spooky encounter, but the house is gathering its powers and will choose one of them to make its own.
In the town of Placid, Wisconsin, in 1871, Georgie Burkhardt is known for two things: her uncanny aim with a rifle and her habit of speaking her mind plainly. But when Georgie blurts out something she shouldn't, her older sister Agatha flees, running off with a pack of "pigeoners" trailing the passenger pigeon migration. And when the sheriff returns to town with an unidentifiable body—wearing Agatha's blue-green ball gown—everyone assumes the worst. Except Georgie. Refusing to believe the facts that are laid down (and coffined) before her, Georgie sets out on a journey to find her sister. She will track every last clue and shred of evidence to bring Agatha home
Two years after his father's mysterious disappearance, Jim Hawkins is coping—barely. Underneath, he's frozen in uncertainty and grief. What did happen to his father? Is he dead or just gone? Then Jim meets Ruth Rose. Moody, provocative, she's the bad-girl stepdaughter of Father Fisher, Jim's father's childhood friend and the town pastor, and she shocks Jim out of his stupor when she tells him her stepfather is a murderer. "Don't you want to know who he murdered?" she asks. Jim doesn't. Ruth Rose is clearly crazy -- a sixteen-year-old misfit. Yet something about her fierce conviction pierces Jim's shell. He begins to burn with a desire for the truth, until it becomes clear that it may be more unsettling than he can bear
Biography
&
Memoir
A pen-pal correspondence between an American girl and a Zimbabwean boy blossoms into a lifelong friendship. In alternating chapters, the authors relate their story, which begins in 1997 when 12-year-old Caitlin chooses a boy in Zimbabwe for a pen-pal assignment. Caitlin's privileged life in Pennsylvania differs tremendously from Martin's hardscrabble life in millworkers' housing, where his family shares one room with another one. The top student in his class, Martin dreams of studying at an American university, but even just continuing high school in Zimbabwe seems like a long shot. Caitlin, not recognizing the extent of Martin's poverty, sends some of her babysitting money with her letters, and Martin's family uses it for food.
At the turn of the twentieth century, typhoid could swiftly kill thousands, and the public health department would go to great lengths to stave off an epidemic. Once investigators identified Mallon as an unwitting spreader of the disease, she was quarantined and tested against her will, but her imprisonment raised questions. Can the health department go too far when protecting the public? Why was Mallon locked up but not scores of other healthy carriers who infected far more people? While addressing these questions, Bartoletti also explains the prejudice that led Mallon-a single, lower-class, immigrant woman-to be treated differently, the extent to which yellow journalism had a hand in Mallon's infamy, and the generalized suspicion of science and medicine
This story of Thomas Jefferson's children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, tells a darker piece of America's history from an often unseen perspective-that of three of Jefferson's slaves-including two of his own children. As each child grows up and tells his story, the contradiction between slavery and freedom becomes starker, calling into question the real meaning of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This poignant story sheds light on what life was like as one of Jefferson's invisible offspring.
We meet the young James Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. From caring for his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.
This, the only memoir published by a former Schindler’s list child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezjon) was only ten years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and his family was forced to relocate to the Krakow ghetto. With incredible luck, perseverance, and grit, Leyson was able to survive the sadism of the Nazis, including that of the demonic Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow, the concentration camp outside Krakow.
This account of Lincoln's assassination and the 12-day search for his killer reads like a historical thriller but it is not. It is true. It is a totally absorbing account of the chase and capture of Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. There is a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia. You will forget that you are not reading a novel.
Poetry
This is an excellent rendition of T.S. Eliot's poetic classic, written for his godchildren and friends in the 1930s, which inspired the Broadway musical, Cats.
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The poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death in 1967 and represent work from his entire career, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Still Here," "Song for a Dark Girl," "Montage of a Dream Deferred," and "Refugee in America."