Dear future AP English Literature and Composition student,

You have signed up for AP English Literature and Composition for the 2019-2020 school
year. Your summer assignment for AP English Literature and Composition consists of two
parts.

1. Select a novel from the list below, read it, and then complete the reading journal
(directions below) to be turned in (via Google Docs, email, or in person) on the first day of
school, August 26th, regardless of which semester you end up taking the course.

To facilitate your understanding of the work you are reading this summer, you will write a
reading response journal. For the novel you select, write an entry of at least 800 words.

Your journal is not a formal essay. We will do plenty of those during our course. Use your
journal as a tool for thinking about literature. It may meander, changing topics frequently
as you write. Do not outline or worry about a thesis statement. Rather, in your entries,
focus on your reaction to the work, your interpretation and evaluation of what you have
just read, what scholar Kathleen Andrasick calls “the results of the generative tensions
between text and reader.” Avoid plot summary. What do you think about what is happening
in the story? Perhaps you may write about a personal connection to the text. Perhaps you
will use your entry to contemplate symbols or literary technique. Maybe you will analyze
the language and literary techniques the author uses to achieve his purpose in a passage.
Possibly you will talk about what you do not understand—a very valuable exercise for
serious readers of complicated works; the recognition of incoherence generates true
critical inquiry. Pinpoint the most important sentence on a page/in a chapter/in the novel:
how did the author produce that sentence? What is its effect? Connect the work with other
texts (print or nonprint); of what does this book/setting/character remind you?

Choose one of the following novels: Format for the journal:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Typed
Kindred by Octavia Butler Times New Roman
1984 by George Orwell Size 12
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Double Spaced
Lord of the Flies by William Golding

2. The first text we will officially read is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The novel
must be read by August 26th or by the first day of class in January, if you are enrolled
in AP English Literature for second semester. I strongly recommend purchasing your
own copy of the texts we will be reading throughout the course. Purchasing your own texts
will give you the ability to annotate in the text itself, which will lead to greater success in
class discussions, on tests, and essays.
If you have any questions please email me at Mira.Prater@dpsnc.net.