Week One: (Monday, June 19)—All Groups

Chew on This : Everything You Don’t Want to Know about Fast Food

By Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson 270 pgs.

From the Barnes and Noble Editors

In this book, bestselling author Eric Schlosser directs insights from his groundbreaking exposé, Fast Food Nation, to the preteens and adolescents who comprise the fast food industry's biggest market. Focusing on topics of special interest to young readers, Schlosser and his journalist coauthor, Charles Wilson, go behind the scenes to slaughterhouses, factories, and restaurant chains to present some eye-opening -- and occasionally stomach-churning -- facts about fast food and its impact on health, economy, community, and more.

Week Four: (Monday, July 17)—All Groups

When the Emperor Was Divine

By Julie Otsuka

From Publishers Weekly

This heartbreaking, bracingly unsentimental debut describes in poetic detail the travails of a Japanese family living in an internment camp during World War II, raising the specter of wartime injustice in bone-chilling fashion. After a woman whose husband was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy sees notices posted around her neighborhood in Berkeley instructing Japanese residents to evacuate, she moves with her son and daughter to an internment camp, abruptly severing her ties with her community.

Summer Book List

Week Two: (Monday, June 26)—All Groups

Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy's Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard

By Mawi Asgedom 192 pgs.

 

 

Weeks 6-8

Red and White Groups

Week Six (Monday, July 31) Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen

Week Seven (Monday, August 7) Whirligig by Paul Fleischman

Week Eight (Monday, August 14) Red Kayak by Priscilla Cummings

 

 

Blue Group

Week Six (Monday, July 31) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Week Seven (Monday, August 7) Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Week Eight (Monday, August 14) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

 

 

Buy Local and Save!!

All books are available at the Storyteller Bookstore in Lafayette and at Orinda Books in Orinda.

 

Purchase your books at either of these stores and receive a $5 discount per class.

 

Week Five: (Monday, July 24)—All Groups

Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-Time

By Mark Haddon

Amazon.com
Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts--one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is mathematically gifted and socially hopeless, raised in a working-class home by parents who can barely cope with their child's quirks. He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers.

Contact Maggie

Maggie Jacobberger

Lafayette, CA 94549                                

Phone: (925) 878-5202

Email: Maggie@ivyenrichment.com

From Booklist
When he was four years old, Asgedom's family left their war-ravaged home in Ethiopia. They spent three years in a Sudanese refugee camp before coming to the U.S. in 1983, where they were settled by World Relief in a wealthy white suburb near Chicago. He later earned a full scholarship to Harvard, where in 1999 he delivered the commencement address. His simple lyrical narrative, both wry and tender, stays true to the child's viewpoint as he grows up, taunted at school, but pretty bad and rough himself. His coming-of-age story is both darkened and enriched by the stories he hears about his parents' lives back home and by the pieces he remembers. Hazel Rochman

Week Three: (Monday, July 10)—All Groups

The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream

By Paulo Coelho 176 pgs.

From Publishers Weekly
This inspirational fable by Brazilian author and translator Coelho has been a runaway bestseller throughout Latin America and seems poised to achieve the same prominence here. The charming tale of Santiago, a shepherd boy, who dreams of seeing the world, is compelling in its own right, but gains resonance through the many lessons Santiago learns during his adventures. He journeys from Spain to Morocco in search of worldly success, and eventually to Egypt, where a fateful encounter with an alchemist brings him at last to self-understanding and spiritual enlightenment.