What do you think of this list for 9th grade US Lit?

[Guest Dulcimeramy]

If all goes well, this will actually be my son's 8th grade literature list. If something changes and he needs to graduate earlier, I want to be able to count this year as 9th grade. He'll be studying physical science and algebra I, and I know his English course will be 9th-grade worthy, so all is covered except for literature.

 

Background on us:

 

This is for a very quick reader who excels at discussing literature and remembering the significance of what he reads. He's advanced in those ways, but a little on the immature side emotionally, so I allowed for that by choosing kinder, gentler options. I hope he'll have American History again as a senior, at which point we'll tackle the tougher stuff.

 

These choices are all works with which I am very familiar and comfortable teaching and discussing. If he studies a higher level of American lit later, I'll need to buy study guides or a curriculum.

 

The list:

 

from The History of Plymouth Plantation by Bradford

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "The Beauty of the World" by Jonathan Edwards

Selected poems by Anne Bradstreet

from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Selected poems by Phillis Wheatley

Thanatopsis

The Devil and Tom Walker by Irving

The Minister's Black Veil by Hawthorne

Poe: Annabelle Lee, The Raven, Bells, Fall of the House of Usher, and Tell Tale Heart

"Evangeline" and "Hiawatha" by Longfellow"

"Snowbound" by Whittier

Selected poems by Emily Dickinson

"Self-Reliance" by Emerson

From Walden by Thoreau

Bartleby by Melville

Little Women, part 1 by Alcott

Song of Years by Bess Streeter Aldrich

The Gettysburg Address

"O Captain, My Captain," and "I Hear America Singing" by Whitman

From a Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

"Ain't I a Woman?" by Sojourner Truth

The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Harte

The Revolt of Mother by Mary Wilkins

A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett

A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich

Quincy Adams Sawyer, a Story of New England Home Life

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

Belles on Their Toes by Gilbreth

The Homecoming by Earl Hamner, Jr.

The Old Man and the Sea OR The Pearl by Hemingway

video: The Glass Menagerie

video: A Raisin in the Sun

Selections from Langston Hughes, Dubois, Hurston

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

video: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

"I Have a Dream" by Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

What do you think? Is it enough?

[beachnut]

Our sons sound similar -- strong in language arts, a good reader, good memory for story details, etc. Your list is somewhat similar to mine, although I think you've got more poetry than I do. Here are a few that I plan to add to my son's American lit. reading list (some of which he'll read on his own, some of which we'll discuss & some of which he'll do some kind of project with -- writing, art, etc.):

 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

The Legend of Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving

O Pioneers!, Willa Cather

Our Town, Thornton Wilder

The Red Badge of Courag, Stephen Crane

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Sea-Wolf, Jack London

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, James Thurber

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

The Story of My Life, Helen Keller

Uncle Tom’s Cabi, Harriet Beecher Stowe

Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington

[Chris in VA]

I think it's fine, esp if you are going to add in some GB's at the Sr. Hi level.

It also depends what sorts of assignments you will be giving.

[Georgia On My Mind]

I like your list. We just finished 9th grade with my DGD and we did BU US History and American Literature from my bookshelf and my favorites. I taught middle and high school for 25 years so I have more books than I need. We did about the same short stories as you did. My DGD loved Poe so we may have done a few more than you did. She loves Short Stories and we found many we enjoyed. I added the following:

 

The Last of the Mohicans and watched the movie together

Huckleberry Finn

Scarlett Letter

Red Badge of Courage

My Antonia

In His Steps (a neat perspective on that time period)

A Truman Capote Short Story about his childhood in the AL with his Aunt Suke - the movie stars Patty Duke and is very quaint. The two of them make fruit cakes for everyone in their town and send them to the President and Mrs. Roosevelt. Truman Capote was Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird and a great friend and mentor to Harper Lee. We made that connection and loved the short story and movie and plan to visit a museum in the town they grew up in in AL.

She's a girl so we read all of Little Women

We also read Old Man and the Sea and loved it.

We read some from a reproduction of Christopher Columbus ship's log

We read selected passages from Gone With the Wind and watched the movie

 

My DGD is a very good independent reader and we used study guides I had from teaching on some books and read most short stories together. She did biographical sketches on the authors and we always made a connection with the time period we were studying in history. We only made it to WWII and the post war erra in history so no current books were read this year. We will do the remainder of our American History next year. She loves making a timeline and plotting events, invention, scientific discoveries, art, music and drama on the timeline and we always connect it with our history. It is ongoing and she works on it all year.

 

I could go on and on. Your list is well thought out and I can't believe how many things you read that we also read. Our list is almost the same. We read continually from summer throughout the school year together and had great discussions about so many topics that came up in the books. The Willa Cather was one of our favorites.

 

Have a great year.

Edited July 6, 2010 by Georgia On My Mind

[Guest Dulcimeramy]

Our sons sound similar -- strong in language arts, a good reader, good memory for story details, etc. Your list is somewhat similar to mine, although I think you've got more poetry than I do. Here are a few that I plan to add to my son's American lit. reading list (some of which he'll read on his own, some of which we'll discuss & some of which he'll do some kind of project with -- writing, art, etc.):

 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

The Legend of Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving

O Pioneers!, Willa Cather

Our Town, Thornton Wilder

The Red Badge of Courag, Stephen Crane

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Sea-Wolf, Jack London

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, James Thurber

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

The Story of My Life, Helen Keller

Uncle Tom’s Cabi, Harriet Beecher Stowe

Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington

 

Oh, I'm glad to see this! Many of these are on my later list, and you have some good ones I hadn't considered.

 

He's read Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Alhambra tales, and Rip van Winkle.

 

I wanted something similar to Willa Cather but with a homier, easier-to-read style, so I went with Bess Streeter Aldrich. Cather later, maybe.

 

I wanted something about the Our Town era without so much emotional pain, so I chose Quincy Adams Sawyer.

 

Faulkner, The Scarlet Letter, and Uncle Tom's Cabin are on my later list. DS loves Hawthorne's classical tales for young people (or whatever it was called) and the House of the Seven Gables, so I hoped The Minister's Black Veil will be a good transition to the heavy Scarlet Letter.

 

I hadn't even thought of Walter Mitty!!! He'll love that! I also remembered the Harlem Renaissance and Frederick Douglass but forgot Booker T. Washington.

 

You are right, my list might be a little poetry-heavy.

 

Thank you so much for your reply!

[Guest Dulcimeramy]

I think it's fine, esp if you are going to add in some GB's at the Sr. Hi level.

It also depends what sorts of assignments you will be giving.

 

Thank you! I'm hoping the assignments will make it hs-worthy.

 

I'm intending plenty of lit analysis lectures and discussions, comparison essays, vocabulary work, etc. I'm trying to choose specific lit analysis elements for each work so I don't overwhelm him. For instance, "connotation" for Phillis Wheatley, "symbolism" for The Minister's Black Veil, "themes" for The Devil and Tom Walker, "mood" for Poe..

 

For the poetry, I intend to branch out to learn more with similar works. For example, when we study Thanatopsis we'll also hark back to Gray's Elegy...Courtyard and Tennyson's Crossing the Bar to find similarities in poems about meeting death peacefully/confidently. For Anne Bradstreet, we'll learn about iambic pentameter but also about why she could write as she did but Anne Winthrop got locked up.

 

Spinning off from lessons about Poe could keep one busy for years...LOL We're going to tackle The Fall of the House of Usher in depth, focusing on mood and imagery, and supernatural themes.

 

I'm going to try to make some of it lighter, though. For instance, we're going to read and discuss Bradford's Plymouth Plantation, but the only assignment will be to write a descriptive classified ad seeking a governor.

[Guest Dulcimeramy]

I like your list. We just finished 9th grade with my DGD and we did BU US History and American Literature from my bookshelf and my favorites. I taught middle and high school for 25 years so I have more books than I need. We did about the same short stories as you did. My DGD loved Poe so we may have done a few more than you did. She loves Short Stories and we found many we enjoyed. I added the following:

 

The Last of the Mohicans and watched the movie together

Huckleberry Finn

Scarlett Letter

Red Badge of Courage

My Antonia

In His Steps (a neat perspective on that time period)

A Truman Capote Short Story about his childhood in the AL with his Aunt Suke - the movie stars Patty Duke and is very quaint. The two of them make fruit cakes for everyone in their town and send them to the President and Mrs. Roosevelt. Truman Capote was Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird and a great friend and mentor to Harper Lee. We made that connection and loved the short story and movie and plan to visit a museum in the town they grew up in in AL.

She's a girl so we read all of Little Women

We also read Old Man and the Sea and loved it.

We read some from a reproduction of Christopher Columbus ship's log

We read selected passages from Gone With the Wind and watched the movie

 

My DGD is a very good independent reader and we used study guides I had from teaching on some books and read most short stories together. She did biographical sketches on the authors and we always made a connection with the time period we were studying in history. We only made it to WWII and the post war erra in history so no current books were read this year. We will do the remainder of our American History next year. She loves making a timeline and plotting events, invention, scientific discoveries, art, music and drama on the timeline and we always connect it with our history. It is ongoing and she works on it all year.

 

I could go on and on. Your list is well thought out and I can't believe how many things you read that we also read. Our list is almost the same. We read continually from summer throughout the school year together and had great discussions about so many topics that came up in the books. The Willa Cather was one of our favorites.

 

Have a great year.

 

Thank you!!! I remember that Truman Capote story from high school!!! I loved it, but I'd forgotten all about it until now. (I'm remembering Patty Duke, so maybe I saw the movie but never read the story...will investigate!)

 

I need to get over my anti-Cather bias. I prefer Aldrich because, although the setting is the same, land is a sub-theme for her pioneers. The greater themes are family, humor, endurance, and love. Cather's characters are deeper and richer, but always leave me wishing I didn't know so much about them. Under the surface of loving family lies a greater love of gain...yes, I can see that Cather is a better author. LOL

 

I am on your wavelength about extra studies. I have a binder set up for Nathaniel so that he can easily add dates, biographical information, map work, The Constitution/major laws/Supreme Court decisions, etc. as he comes across these in literature and history.

 

The binder divisions are:

 

"When in the Course of Human Events..." (timeline)

"From Sea to Shining Sea" (maps)

"A Government of the People" (laws)

"Our Sacred Honor" (studies of primary source material)

"I Was Born an American" (biographical notes)

"There is No Frigate Like a Book" (literary essays)