11th Grade Advanced American Literature Summer Reading 2025
11th Grade Advanced American Literature Summer Reading 2025
11th Grade Advanced American Literature Summer Reading--Choose one book from the list to read for your Independent Reading Project (“IRP”). Novels may contain sensitive content, so please discuss options with parents or guardians before choosing an option. The IRP project will be an in-class assignment during the first week of school, so take plenty of HANDWRITTEN NOTES (on important quotes, literary techniques, etc.) as you read.
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
After Justyce is handcuffed when simply trying to help his girlfriend in a parking lot, he begins keeping a journal of sorts in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. When a needless shooting takes the life of someone close to him, Justyce questions whether Martin's visions of peace are possible.
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Miles Roby, called back from college to the small town of Empire Falls in Dexter County, Maine to take care of his ailing mother, falls into a rut that keeps him trapped until years later when a series of revelations and tragedies jolts him back into an awareness of his life.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Follows nine-year-old Oskar Schell as he encounters a number of interesting characters in his search for information about his father who died in the World Trade Center and tries to find the lock that fits the mysterious key his father had.
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.
Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner
Carver never imagined the text he sent would lead to a deadly accident. Reeling from the deaths of his three friends, Carver finds himself shunned at school and facing a possible criminal investigation. When the grandmother of one of the boys who died invites Carver to spend a “goodbye day" with her and other friends, sharing memories and engaging in an activity the boy loved, Carver finds a measure of peace.
Knights of the Hill Country by Tim Tharp
In his senior year, high school star linebacker Hampton Greene finally begins to think for himself and discovers that he might be interested in more than just football.
Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen
When she is abandoned by her alcoholic mother, high school senior Ruby winds up living with Cora, the sister she has not seen for ten years, and learns about Cora's new life, what makes a family, how to allow people to help her when she needs it, and that she too has something to offer others.
Love, Football, and Other Contact Sports by Alden R. Carter
A collection of stories about high school students from one end of the social spectrum to the other.
The Memory of Things by Gae Polisner
On the morning of September 11, 2001, sixteen-year-old Kyle Donohue watches the first Twin Tower come down from the window of Stuyvesant High School. Moments later, terrified and fleeing home to safety across the Brooklyn Bridge, he stumbles across a girl perched in the shadows, covered in ash, and wearing a pair of costume wings. With his mother and sister in California, and unable to reach his father, a New York City detective likely on his way to the disaster, Kyle makes the split-second decision to bring the girl home. What follows is their story, told in alternating points of view, as Kyle tries to unravel the mystery of the girl so he can return her to her family.
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
This richly evocative novel, narrated by an asthmatic 11-year-old named Reuben Land, is the story of Reuben's unusual family and their journey across the frozen Badlands of the Dakotas in search of his fugitive older brother. Charged with the murder of two locals who terrorized their family, Davy has fled, understanding that the scales of justice will not weigh in his favor. But Reuben, his father, Jeremiah—a man of faith so deep he has been known to produce miracles—and Reuben's little sister, Swede, follow closely behind the fleeing Davy.
Pinned by Alfred C. Martino
Dealing with family problems, girls, and their own competitive natures, high school seniors Ivan Korske and Bobby Zane face each other in the final match of the New Jersey State Wrestling Championship.
The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner
Dill has had to wrestle with vipers his whole life—at home, as the only son of a Pentecostal minister who urges him to handle poisonous rattlesnakes, and at school, where he faces down bullies who target him for his father’s extreme faith and very public fall from grace. The only antidote to all this venom is his friendship with fellow outcasts Travis and Lydia. But as they are starting their senior year, Dill feels the coils of his future tightening around him.
Turtles all the Way Down by John Green
Aza Holmes, a high school student with obsessive-compulsive disorder, becomes focused on searching for a fugitive billionaire.
Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
After finally getting noticed by someone other than school bullies and his ever-angry father, seventeen-year-old Tyler enjoys his tough new reputation and the attentions of a popular girl, but when life starts to go bad again, he must choose between transforming himself or giving in to his destructive thoughts.
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
The story follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid and follows the next thirty-five years of their lives.
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
Forced to leave England and struggling with illness in the wake of a family tragedy, Quaker Honor Bright is forced to rely on strangers in the harsh landscape of 1850 Ohio and is compelled to join the Underground Railroad network to help runaway slaves escape to freedom.
A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 6 Cora a slave on a cotton plantation and an outcast among her fellow African's, escapes her bondage in pursuit of freedom via the Underground Railroad alongside a fellow slave named Caesar. But the two are ferociously hunted after Cora kills a white boy who tries to capture her, and Cora runs from state to state, in a relentless fight for freedom.