This document provides summaries for 15 books in 3 sentences or less per book. It includes a brief description of the plot for each book and often provides a link to additional resources about the book, such as the author's website. The books cover a variety of genres, including fiction, memoirs, and novels. The summaries are concise while capturing the essential information about each book.

2. To acquire content knowledge in all disciplines To perform better on standardized tests To become literate citizens To become intelligent consumers To learn about the world For enjoyment

3. 50 percent of American adults are unable to read an eighth grade level book. 46% of American adults cannot understand the label on their prescription medicine. Out-of-school reading habits of students has shown that even 15 minutes a day of independent reading can expose students to more than a million words of text in a year.

4. More than 8 million students in grades 4 – 12 are struggling readers (US DOE 2008). 40% of high school students cannot read well enough to benefit from their textbooks (NAEP). In 2004 – 2005 a significant number of 8 th (27 % ) and 10 th (36%) graders did not meet reading standards.

6. Help us build Hialeah Gardens High School’s own used book store! Bring your used books and a one page summary of each book to your English/Reading teacher or to Mrs. Concepcion in room 3119 and receive 4 hours of community service.

7. Generation Dead Gym Candy Homeboyz Life of Pi Little Brother Shark Girl Shift Suck It Up Suite Scarlett The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian The Botany of Desire The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks: a novel The Hunger Games The Last Exit to Normal The Market Three Little Words: a memoir Unwind

8. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks: a novel Homeboyz Suite Scarlett Three Little Words: a memoir Unwind The Hunger Games

9. In his nationally acclaimed, semi-autobiographical Young Adult debut, author Sherman Alexie tells the heartbreaking, hilarious, and beautifully written story of a young Native American teen as he attempts to break free from the life he was destined to live. Click here for summary & study guide

10. Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14: Debate Club. Her father's "bunny rabbit." A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school. Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston. Frankie Landau-Banks. No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer. Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society. Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places. Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them. When she knows Matthew's lying to her. And when there are so many, many pranks to be done. Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16: Possibly a criminal mastermind. This is the story of how she got that way. Click here for author’s blog

11. Phoebe is just your typical goth girl with a crush. He's strong and silent.and dead. All over the country, a strange phenomenon is happening. Some teenagers who die aren't staying dead. They are coming back to life, but they are no longer the same-they stutter, and their reactions to everything are slower. Termed "living impaired" or "differently biotic," they are doing their best to fit into a society that doesn't want them. Fitting in is hard enough when you don't have the look or attitude, but when almost everyone else is alive and you're not , it's close to impossible. The kids at Oakvale High don't want to take classes or eat in the cafeteria next to someone who isn't breathing. And there are no laws that exist to protect the differently biotic from the people who want them to disappear-for good. Click here for Karin’s Book Nook

12. It's true: After 17-year-old Ben’s father announces he’s gay and the family splits apart, Ben does everything he can to tick him off: skip school, skateboard nonstop, get arrested. But he never thinks he’ll end up yanked out of his city life and plunked down into a small Montana town with his dad and Edward, the Boyfriend. As if it’s not bad enough living in a hick town with spiked hair, a skateboard habit, and two dads, he soon realizes something’s not quite right with Billy, the boy next door. He’s hiding a secret about his family, and Ben is determined to uncover it and set things right. In an authentic, unaffected, and mordantly funny voice, Michael Harmon tells the compelling story of an uprooted and uncomfortable teenaged guy trying to fix the lives around him—while figuring out his own. Click here for summary and study guide

13. To some people, football is just a game. To Mick, football is a way of life. And it's a way of life in which he has to win... no matter the cost. Mick Johnson is determined not to make the same mistakes his father, a failed football hero, made. But after being tackled just short of the end zone in a big game, Mick begins using “gym candy,” or steroids. His performances become record-breaking, but the side effects are terrible: Mick suffers ’roid rage, depression, and body acne. Gym Candy’s subject matter is just as hard-hitting as its football scenes. You’ll find yourself unable to look away as Mick goes down a road that even he knows is the wrong one to travel. Click here for author’s official home page

14. Teddy "T-Bear" Anderson is a computer genius caught up in gangsta drama when his sister is shot because she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Teddy is not involved in gang activity, but he definitely wants to avenge his sister's death. Homeboyz is the successful conclusion of Sitomer's Anderson family trilogy featuring Hoopster and Hip-Hop High School. This book is fast-paced, and it highlights a very intelligent African-American male character in Teddy. Sitomer expertly weaves a plot that lets the reader see who Teddy Anderson really is, while suffering with him as he is labeled a gangster. Click here for review, discussion & book club

15. Sixteen-year-old Katniss is smart, athletic, and fast. She can take down a rabbit with a bow and arrow, hitting it straight through the eye. Will these skills be enough to survive the Hunger Games? In a nation called Panem, which occupies the landmass that is the present United States, a parasitical fascist Capitol dominates 12 conquered districts. There was a thirteenth district but it was obliterated during a rebellion. The totalitarian government keeps the subjected populations in line by threatened devastation, starvation, and brutality. Click here for book homepage

16. An entertaining thriller and a thoughtful polemic on Internet-era civil rights, “Little Brother” is also a practical handbook of digital self-defense. Marcus’s guided tour through RFID cloners, cryptography and Bayesian math is one of the book’s principal delights. He spreads his message through a secure network engineered out of Xbox gaming consoles, to a tech-savvy youth underground (we are now post-nerd, I learned — hipsters and social networking experts have replaced the unwashed coders of yore). This is territory the author knows well. Cory Doctorow is an ardent copyright activist, speaker, teacher, columnist, prolific writer of novels and short stories. His grasp of the implications of present-day information technology is authoritative, and his prose features up-to-the-hour Internet-speak. Click here to download book for free

17. Kate discovers her value in the Millbank Social Stock Market. This underground market allows insiders to buy and sell investments in each girl of the senior class. Kate teams up with some close friends to come up with a Hollywood business plan to raise her value on the market, thus cashing in on rewards. But the greed of the market may stand in the way of Kate's success. Click here for Karin’s Book Nook

18. Jane is an award-winning, 15-year-old artist who joins her mother and brother on a routine trip to the beach one summer afternoon. A few hours later, she's attacked by a shark while swimming only four yards from the shore. Her right arm is amputated above the elbow, and her life is changed forever. Jane is acutely aware of boys and how they'll respond to her with an artificial arm back at school. People reach out to her though, including a "popular senior boy" that stirs some school gossip and tension with a girl friend. Volunteering at the hospital and helps her on her slow journey of self-discovery and acceptance. Click here for author’s homepage

19. In The Botany of Desire , Michael Pollan argues that the answer lies at the heart of the intimately reciprocal relationship between people and plants. In telling the stories of four familiar plant species that are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives, Pollan illustrates how they evolved to satisfy humankinds's most basic yearnings -- and by doing so made themselves indispensable. For, just as we've benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand co-evolutionary scheme that Pollan evokes so brilliantly, have done well by us. Click here for YouTube Trailer

20. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Sometimes, life takes a detour. Shortly after graduating from high school, Chris and his best friend Win set out on their bicycles, determined to travel across the country before college. Like all good road trip, this trek is bumpy, memorable, and metaphoric. Towards the end of their journey, Win unexpectedly takes off by himself. Feeling abandoned and upset, Chris finishes the trip alone. When Chris comes home without Win, he has to answer to his parents, Win's parents, and the police. Where did his best friend go? Why? What really happened between Point A and B? Click here for author’s homepage

21. Morning McCobb is graduating from the International Vampire League Academy, where students are schooled to be vampires who live peacefully though secretly among mortals and subsist on animal blood instead of those who follow the old ways. A forever-16-year-old misfit among his perfect classmates Morning is a blood flub up; he accidentally received the "virus" while being bled dry. He's also a vegan who drinks only a soy blood substitute. When he's offered the opportunity to be the first Leaguer to come out of the closet to the world and show mortals that vampires are just another special-needs minority, he jumps at the chance to end his outcast status and perhaps fulfill his one-time dream of becoming a firefighter. Things are going well until he becomes attracted to Portia, and begins to experience true bloodlust for the first time. Click here for author’s home page

22. Scarlett is the third of four children in the Martin family. The Martins live in and manage a shabby hotel in NYC that dates back to the 1920s. When Scarlett turns 15, she is put in charge of one of the hotel's 27 rooms- the Empire Suite. Into this room moves Mrs. Amberson, a failed 1970s starlet who has returned to New York to write her memoirs. Soon, Scarlett is taking dictation, running around town with Mrs. Amberson, and getting caught up in her Auntie Mame-meets-Bianca Jagger adventures. In the midst of all this, Scarlett falls in love - or so she thinks - and it takes Mrs. Amberson to help her see the light. Click here for author’s blog

23. Ashley Rhodes-Courter spent nine years of her life in fourteen different foster homes. As her mother spirals out of control, Ashley is left clinging to an unpredictable, dissolving relationship, all the while getting pulled deeper and deeper into the foster care system. Painful memories of being taken away from her home quickly become consumed by real-life horrors, where Ashley is juggled between caseworkers, shuffled from school to school, and forced to endure manipulative, humiliating treatment from a very abusive foster family. In this inspiring, unforgettable memoir, Ashley finds the courage to succeed - and in doing so, discovers the power of her own voice. Click here for author’s homepage

24. In a society where unwanted teens are salvaged for their body parts, three runaways fight the system that would "unwind" them. Connor's parents want to be rid of him because he's a troublemaker. Risa has no parents and is being unwound to cut orphanage costs. Lev's unwinding has been planned since his birth, as part of his family's strict religion. Brought together by chance, and kept together by desperation, these three unlikely companions make a harrowing cross-country journey, knowing their lives hang in the balance. If they can survive until their eighteenth birthday, they can't be harmed — but when every piece of them, from their hands to their hearts, are wanted by a world gone mad, eighteen seems far, far away. Click here for author’s homepage

25. The son of a zookeeper, Pi Patel has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America, along with their zoo animals. The ship sinks. Pi’s only companions are a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth.“ Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional--but is it more true? Click here for YouTube Trailer

26. Generation Dead Gym Candy Homeboyz Life of Pi Little Brother Shark Girl Shift Suck It Up Suite Scarlett The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian The Botany of Desire The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks: a novel The Hunger Games The Last Exit to Normal The Market Three Little Words: a memoir Unwind

27. Road-Map Book Report Newsletter Book Report Job Application Re-writing a Book Create an additional final chapter for the novel Create a speech as a character from the novel Concentration game Resume Writing Brochure Top Ten Websites

28. Read two or more books from our Summer Reading List Complete a creative book report on each book Turn it in to your English teachers at the end of second week of school [email_address] http://mrscreadingstrategies.blogspot.com/