Great Books Program

The International School of Kraków’s Great Books program has been a part of the school’s English / Language Arts curriculum for grades 3-12 since 2007. The program evolves and expands as new literature is discovered and as the school acquires new books. The goals and procedures of the program are outlined below.

Goals of the Program

• Facilitate a core literature base (both classical & modern) through works by English-language authors, as well as internationally recognized authors.
• Tie in with ISK's Summer Reading Program (ISK Middle School & High School).

Procedure

The novels covered each year will be a selection from the below list per grade. It is assumed that students will read books independently throughout the year; however, these Great Books will be required reading. Language Arts / English teachers will decide which books should be read and which will make up the summer reading requirement (middle & high school only).

ISK's Great Books Program - Elementary

Grade 3

• BFG by Roald Dahl
• Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr
• Freckle Juice by Judy Blume
• Stone Fox by ohn Reynolds Gardier

Great Books List for Grade 4

• Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan
• Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord
• Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (British)

Grade 5

• Voyage of the Frog by Gary Paulsen
• Danny Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
• Sheila the Great by Judy Blume
• Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
• Boy by Roald Dahl
• Holes by Louis Sachar
• Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell

ISK's Great Books Program - Middle School

Summer Reading (Middle & High School)

In the middle and high schools, students will be required to read one ISK-recommended book over the summer vacation and complete accompanying assignments. The summer reading selections will also be chosen from the Great Books listed below per grade.

Grade 6

1. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
2. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
3. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
4. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
5. The Call of the Wild or White Fang by Jack London
6. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth Speare
7. The Cay by Theodore Taylor
8. Retold Asian Myths
9. Tales of Courage, Tales of Dreams

Grade 7

1. So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Kawashima Watkins
2. The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. The Giver by Lois Lowry
5. A Day of Pleasure by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Grade 8

1. Animal Farm by George Orwell
2. The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
3. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksander Denisovich
4. The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
5. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
6. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
7. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

ISK's Great Books Program - High School

Grade 9

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
3. A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
4. The Odyssey by Homer
5. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
8. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
9. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
10. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
11. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
12. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Grade 10

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare
3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
4. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
5. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
6. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
7. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
8. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
9. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
10. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
11. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

Grade 11 & 12 (may also include works from the AP Literature list)

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
2. Siddartha by Herman Hesse
3. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
4. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
5. Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello or King Lear by William Shakespeare
6. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
7. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
8. The Illiad by Homer
9. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
10. The Dubliners by James Joyce
11. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
12. The Stranger by Albert Camus
13. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
14. Night by Elie Wiesel
15. Native Son by Richard Wright
16. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
17. Botchan by Natsume Soseki
18. Oedipus the King by Sophocles


AP English Literature (may also include works from the grade 11/12 list)

1. Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
2. A Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
3. Crime and Punishment by Fiodor Dostoyevsky
4. A Passage to India by William Forster
5. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
6. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
7. Dune by Frank Herbert
8. Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
9. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
10. The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays by Oscar Wilde
11. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
12. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez