Very soon, I will be setting up new blogs for each of my courses this year: AP Literature and Composition, and British and Western English. However, today I'm using the site that is linked directly to the IHS teacher web pages to communicate with the AP Lit students concerning summer reading. If you will be in one of my British and Western classes, the following information does not pertain to you. I hope you've been reading something of your own choice, however, and I look forward to meeting you soon!
Having reached RSVP week (check the district eNews if this does not resonate with you!), you may be realizing that there's very little time to complete your summer reading for AP Literature and Composition. Yes, you have a date with Charles Dickens' Great Expectations--preferably, the Barnes and Noble Classics edition. If you've read it already, terrific; if you have not, there's time enough to do so, but you will have to exert some self-discipline to be finished by the time school starts.
I'll be quite forthcoming in saying that GE is a departure for me; my summer reading choices have always been modern or contemporary works which have been popular with the general reading public [i.e., a "good read" that seniors should be able to handle without a teacher!] but which offer good writing (rich text suitable for AP "passage analysis"), a comprehensive range of literary devices (elements beyond plot which deepen understanding and enrich the reading experience), and multiple thematic strands (layers of meaning which happen to coincide--at least in part--with significant thematic ideas found in other books we study). Great Expectations fits all of these parameters except the first; published serially in 1860-1861, it is hardly modern.
Your job is to read the book--not summaries of the book, not ABOUT the book, but the book: Dickens' language, and Dickens' leisurely (and deliberately suspenseful) approach to specific plot revelations. If you read the whole plot first, you've spoiled the experience: plain and simple. Your loss, not mine, but you will find that not reading the book leads to some inevitable consequences in AP Lit that do affect you in ways other than the absence of reading pleasure that an author originally intended.
That said, I will agree that Dickens' language is not easy for some of you to follow; one of my first questions to you will be WHY? (followed immediately, of course, by "Show us some examples"). But I will also say that this book is considered to be one of Charles Dickens' "easiest" books , and has historically been taught in grades 8-10. So you can do this.
Mostly, I will want you to be thinking about the ways in which GE merits consideration as one of the respected literary masterpieces, using the rest of the second paragraph (beyond the "modern" part) as a guide. Such questions could be a guide to annotations, though obviously you are free to question, comment, observe, connect, etc., in whatever ways you see fit. I cannot speak for Ms. McGinnis, but I do not expect annotations for a book as long as Great Expectations to look like what I'd anticipate for a short story. I will say that the more you have marked up your book in meaningful ways, the easier it will be to find sections/passages which will help you perform various tasks that will be asked of you once school starts.
Normally, we have provided you with a list of texts to be obtaining over the summer, starting with the main textbook that both Ms. McGinnis and I use from the very beginning of school. But as of this year, the school district will supply the main textbook, which contains abundant short stories, poetry, and drama. Students will be responsible for several other texts each semester (6-8 for the year); you will be given a list by each teacher during the first week of school. There will be some overlap, but to avoid confusion and/or wrong purchases, it will be simply better to wait until you know for sure which teacher you have. (Yes, I know--you have a schedule. But the reality is that there are sometimes some first-week changes that affect which section of AP lit you have.)
Enjoy the rest of August, read Great Expectations, and I look forward to meeting you soon.
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