AP Literature and Composition
Summer Reading for AP Literature and Composition Students
2023-2024
Summer Reading:
Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You
Available through booksellers and libraries everywhere: no specific edition required
Expectations:
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Please read this book by the first day of school.
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Annotations or notes are strongly recommended and will be helpful for assignments and assessments once school begins.
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You should be prepared to discuss and write about the book when class starts.
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We will be doing some assignments and assessments based on this book. Specifically:
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A short assessment within the first few days of school. You should be able to show you understand plot, conflicts, character development, and themes.
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Please do not try to rely on internet analyses of the book. Those are not as smart as you are, and they are a waste of your time. They will only give you simplistic answers and impede your own thinking.
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Varied written assignments as a baseline for close analysis and whole-novel thematic analysis.
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Why are we doing this book for summer reading?
This is a compelling book by a fantastic contemporary author that I think most of you will like. It is complex enough to reward discussion and analysis, and it is a page-turning read that won’t leave you bogged down in old-timey language or impenetrable symbolism. (I will save those books for the school year! Just kidding!)
AP Lit. is a class that moves quickly and for which you can earn college credit if you do well on the AP exam, so it’s important to get as much literature as we can into the course. We’ll need to start off with our work right away, and coming in with this book already read will allow us to do that. This book provides narrative and stylistic techniques and addresses themes that will be useful as we proceed through the rest of the curriculum. It can also be used, depending on the actual prompt, as a text for the third free response question on the AP exam.
Other Texts for AP Lit and Comp:
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No need to worry about any of this until the fall, but in case you are curious:
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We’ll use the textbook Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense. 11th ed. checked out from IHS.
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Other texts, usually 6-7 per year, need to be provided by the student.
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New books, used books, e-books, or library books are fine. I will let you know what edition I am using once I finalize the list so if you want to have the same page numbers, you can use the same one. If you cannot get the books, please let us know so I can help you out.
I hope you enjoy this book and that you have a fantastic summer. I’m looking forward to seeing you all in the fall!