English Summer Reading
Changes to English Language and Literature exams mean that independent reading is increasingly important. We know that parents are keen to encourage their children to read more. With this in mind, the English Faculty have set a homework task for pupils to complete during the Summer holiday:
Read at least one book from the list their teacher has given them.
Write a review of this book – use ideas from the plan provided.
The drop down lists below include some of the recommended books from our English Faculty, plus suggestions from the Maths Faculty.
Bronze Award
- Scorpia - Anthony Horowitz
- Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters - Rick Riordan
- Set in Stone - Linda Newberry
- There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom - Louis Sachar
- Devil You Know - Linda Macail
- The Eagle Trail - Robert Rigby
- Hagurosan - Darren Shan
- The Dead are Rising - Jeff Norton
- Call of the Deep - Beverly Naidoo
- Harold Hardnut - Tony Bradman
- Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
- Shadow of the Minotaur - Andy Gibbons
- Hatchet - Gary Paulson
- Martyn Pig - Kevin Brooks
- The Great Cycle Challenge - Chris Hoy
- House of Robots - Chris Patterson
- Danger is Still Everywhere - David O’Doherty
- Shadow Warriors - Chris Bradford
- Aquila - Andrew Norriss
- The Girl with the Sunshine Smile - Karen McCombie
- Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy – A.F. Harrold
- Mad Iris - Jeremy Strong
- Tom Gates - Liz Pichon
- Fox Friend - Michael Morpurgo
- Young Bond: Silverfin - Charlie Higson
- The Iron Man - Ted Hughes
- The Demon Headmaster - Gillian Cross
- Carrie’s War – Nina Bawden
- Two Weeks with the Queen - Morris Gleitzman
- Charlotte’s Web - E.B White
- Brock - Anthony McGowan
- Timepiece series - Anne Perry
- Deadline - John Townsend
- Mathmagicians - Johnny Ball
- Story of Maths - Anne Rooney
- Murderous Maths of Everything - Kiartan Poskitt
- Awesome Arithmetricks - Kiartin Poskitt
Silver Award
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
- Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
- How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff
- I am David - Anne Holm
- Maggot Moon - Sally Gardner
- Stone Cold - Robert Swindells
- Refugee Boy - Benjamin Zephaniah
- The Tulip Touch - Anne Fine
- Gamer - Chris Bradford
- The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
- Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
- The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd
- Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
- Silverfin - Charlie Higson
- The Alex Rider series - Anthony Horowitz
- The Outsiders - S.E Hinton
- The Coral Island - R.M Ballantyne
- Coram Boy - Jamila Gavin
- The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
- Flambards - K.M Peyton
- Goggle Eyes - Anne Fine
- Small Steps - Louis Sachar
- Holes - Louis Sachar
- Journey to the River Sea - Eva Ibbotson
- Wolf Brother from the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
- Dragon Rider - Cornelia Funke
- Vampire Blood Trilogy - Darren Shan
- The Scarecrows - Robert Westall
- Shadow of the Minotaur - Alan Gibbons
- Hatchet - Gary Paulsen
- (Un)Arranged Marriage - Bali Rai
- Gatty’s Tale - Kevin Crossley Holland
- At the Sign of the Sugared Plum - Mary Hooper
- Apache: Girl Warrior - Tanya Landman
- A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
- The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
- Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
- The Chronicles of Narnia Charles - C.S. Lewis
- Treasure Island - R. L. Stevenson
- Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
- Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein
- Watership Down - Richard Adams
- Goodnight Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian
- 50 Mathematical Ideas You Really Need To Know - Tony Crilly
- How long is a piece of string? - Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham
- How many socks make a pair? - Rob Eastaway
- The secret lives of numbers - Michael Millar
Gold Award
- Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
- Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
- Jackdaw Summer - David Almond
- The Star of Kazan - Eva Ibbotson
- Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
- Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman
- Gulliver’s Travels - John Swift
- The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
- Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett
- Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
- The History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
- Life of Pi - Yan Martel
- Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkein
- The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
- Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
- The Railway Children - E. Nesbit
- The Secret Garden - F.N Burnett
- Dracula - Bram Stoker
- Where I Belong - Gillian Cross
- Fortunately the Milk - Neil Gaiman
- Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy - Andy Briggs
- We Can Be Heroes - Catherine Bruton
- The Girl Who Walks On Air - Emma Carroll
- Anthem for Jackson Dawes - Celia Bryce
- Mortal Chaos - Matt Dickinson
- Swim the Fly - Don Calame
- Monkey and Me - David Gilman
- Searching for Sky - Jillian Cantor
- Paper Towns - John Green
- Inside my Head - Jim Carrington
- Sky Hawk - Gill Lewis
- The Boy on the Porch - Sharon Creech
- The Accidental Time Traveller - Janice Mackay
- The Weight of Water - Sarah Crossan
- Shadowmancer - G.P. Taylor
- Buried Thunder - Tim Bowler
- Finding Jennifer Jones - Anne Cassidy
- Tyme’s End - B.R. Collins
- Say Her Name - James Dawson
- Twelve Minutes to Midnight - Christopher Edge
- After You’ve Gone - Joan Lingard
- The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
- The Call of the Wild - Jack London
- The History of Tom - Jones Henry Fielding
- The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
- The Apothecary - Maile Meloy
- Whisper - Chrissie Keighery
- The River Singers -Tom Moorhouse
- The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
- The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak
- Chinese Cinderella - Adeline Yen Mah
- I am David - Anne Holm
- 1984 - George Orwell
- Great Mathematical Problems - Ian Stewart
- Why do buses always come in threes? - Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham
- Professor Stewart’s cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities - Ian Stewart
- Professor Stewart’s hoard of Mathematical Treasures - Ian Stewart
Key Stage 4 Reading List
- Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
- 1984 – George Orwell
- All Quiet on the Western Front – E M Remarque
- Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown
- Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
- Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
- Chavs – Owen Jones
- Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
- For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemmingway
- Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
- Freakonomics – S D Levitt & S J Dubner
- Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
- Into the Wild – Jan Krakauer
- Tell me No Lies – John Pilger
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
- The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
- Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
- The Regeneration Trilogy – Pat Barker
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
- Catcher in the Rye – J. D Salinger
- The Crucible – Arthur Miller
- A Doll’s House – Henrik Ibsen
- The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
- Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
- Atonement – Ian McEwan
- Dracula – Bram Stoker
- Room – Emma Donaghue
- A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
- 30. The Girl with a Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
- 31. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
- 32. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
- 33. Go Set a Watchmen – Harper Lee
- 34. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stephenson
- 35. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
- 36. The War of the Worlds – H G Wells
- 37. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
- 38. Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury
- 39. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
- 40. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
- 41. Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- 42. Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- 43. The Colour Purple – Alice Walker
- 44. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
- 45. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
- 46. The Martian – Andy Werr
- 47. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
- 48. The Time Machine – H G Wells
- 49. The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
- 50. Small Island – Andrea Levy
- 51. The Collector – John Fowles
- 52. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
- 53. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
- 54. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
- 55. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
- 56. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
I really enjoyed reading with pupils in Year 7 this year. It is always good to talk about books. Reading fiction can transport us to new places and different worlds, we can share in, empathise with and learn from the characters’ experiences and we can reflect on a range of themes and issues, engage in debate and extend our vocabulary. This summer I am reading two books about modern Britain: ‘Unimagined: Muhammad, Jesus and James Bond’ by Imran Ahmad and ‘The Year of Runaways’ by Sunjeev Sahota. I have just finished reading ‘The Land of Decoration’ by Grace McCleen and I plan to read ‘The Improbability of Love’ by Hannah Rothschild. One of my best reads this year was ‘We are all completely besides ourselves’ by Karen Joy Fowler.
Chiquita Henson, Headteacher
Among the books that our English Faculty are planning on reading this Summer are:
- If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
- Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
- Room by Emma Donoghue
- The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
-
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia by Peter Pomerantsev
Do share pieces of descriptive narrative that you read with your children or items you think will interest them. Happy Summer reading!