The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery
Williams Bianco
Margery Williams' famous story
tells of a young boy and his
treasured favorite toy, a splendid
"fat and bunchy" rabbit, whose
ears are lined with pink sateen.
He carries it everywhere, talks to
it, pretends with it, sleeps with it
each night. The love he steadfastly
bestows on his toy helps him
through a serious illness and
afterwards saves his beloved bunny from a terrible fate.
Grades 6-8
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
The main characters, Meg Murry,
Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin
O'Keefe, embark on a journey
through space and time, from
universe to universe, as they
endeavor to save the Murrys'
father and the world. The novel
offers a glimpse into the battles
between light and darkness, and
goodness and evil, as the young
characters mature into adolescents
on their journey. The novel wrestles with questions of
spirituality and purpose, as the characters are often
thrown into conflicts of love, divinity, and goodness.
Grades 9-12
Much Ado About Nothing by William
Shakespeare
The primary plot of Much Ado
About Nothing turns on the
courtship and scandal involving
young Hero and her suitor,
Claudio, but the witty war of
words between Claudio’s friend
Benedick and Hero’s cousin
Beatrice often take center stage.
Set in Messina, the play begins as Don Pedro's army
returns after a victory. Benedick, a gentleman soldier,
resumes a verbal duel with Beatrice, the niece of
Messina's governor, Leonato. Count Claudio is smitten
with Leonato's daughter, Hero. After Don Pedro woos
her in disguise for Claudio, the two young lovers
plan to marry in a week. To fill in the time until the
wedding, Don Pedro and the others set about tricking
Benedick and Beatrice into falling in love with each
other. Meanwhile, Don Pedro's disgruntled brother, Don
John, plots to ruin Hero and halt her wedding. Claudio
believes Don John's deception, is convinced Hero has a
lover, and, at the wedding, brutally rejects her.
With Hero in hiding and falsely reported dead, Beatrice
persuades Benedick to fight Claudio. Tragedy is averted
when the bumbling city watch, having discovered
Don John's treachery, arrives and clears Hero's name.
With Claudio forgiven, both couples are ready to get
married.
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Everybody loves Mother Paula’s
pancakes. Everybody, that is,
except the colony of cute but
endangered owls that live on
the building site of the new
restaurant. Can the awkward new
kid and his feral friend prank the
pancake people out of town?
Or is the owls’ fate cemented in
pancake batter? The setting takes
place in Florida, where new arrival Roy makes two
oddball friends and a bad enemy, and joins an effort
to stop construction of a pancake house which would
destroy a colony of burrowing owls who live on the site. Based on historical people and real
events, Miller's drama is a searing
portrait of a community engulfed
by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy
of Salem, rumors that women are
practicing witchcraft galvanize
the town's most basic fears and
suspicions; and when a young
girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor
of being a witch, self-righteous
church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be
brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and
the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor
brilliantly illuminate the destructive power of socially
sanctioned violence.
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