Hi Drama Tweens! 
Here's our pick for Summer reading!
Enjoy !
The Awakening by Kate Chopin: The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier who is
vacationing with her husband, Léonce, and their two sons. Léonce is
kind and loving but preoccupied with his work. His frequent
business-related absences mar his domestic life with Edna.
Consequently, Edna spends most of her time with her friend Adèle
Ratignolle, a married Creole who epitomizes womanly elegance and charm.
Through her relationship with Adèle, Edna learns a great deal about
freedom of expression. Exposure to such openness liberates Edna from
her previously prudish behavior and repressed emotions and desires.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway: Lieutenant
Frederic Henry is a young American ambulance driver serving in the
Italian army during World War I. At the beginning of the novel, the war
is winding down with the onset of winter, and Henry arranges to tour
Italy. The following spring, upon his return to the front, Henry meets
Catherine Barkley, an English nurse’s aide at the nearby British
hospital and the love interest of his friend Rinaldi. Rinaldi, however,
quickly fades from the picture as Catherine and Henry become involved
in an elaborate game of seduction. Grieving the recent death of her
fiancé, Catherine longs for love so deeply that she will settle for the
illusion of it. Her passion, even though pretended, wakens a desire for
emotional interaction in Henry, whom the war has left coolly detached
and numb.
The Joy Luck Club:The Joy Luck Club contains sixteen
interwoven stories about conflicts between Chinese immigrant mothers
and their American-raised daughters. The book hinges on Jing-mei’s trip
to China to meet her half-sisters, twins Chwun Yu and Chwun Hwa. The
half-sisters remained behind in China because Jing-mei’s mother,
Suyuan, was forced to leave them on the roadside during her desperate
flight from Japan’s invasion of Kweilin during World War II. Jing-mei
was born to a different father years later, in America. Suyuan intended
to return to China for her other daughters but failed to find them
before her death.
My Antonia by Willa Cather: An
orphaned ten-year-old, Jim Burden, is sent to live with his
grandparents on their farm in the country, just outside the town of
Black Hawk, Nebraska. He is not the only one to discover and explore
the country; early on, he meets the immigrant Bohemian family, the
Shimerdas, who have come to Nebraska at the same time as Jim's arrival.
They are the Burdens' nearest neighbors. Antonia Shimerda, the elder
daughter, becomes his good friend and pupil. Antonia's father, Mr.
Shimerda, who Jim finds to be intelligent and genteel, asks Jim to
teach Antonia English. The Shimerdas have a hard life on the farm; they
are very poor and live in a shabby dugout, but Antonia remains
dedicated and determined to improve the conditions of her life and her
family's.
