Grade 9 Novel Study

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2019
Freak the mighty
By: Rodman Philbrick

“I never had a brain until Freak came along…”

That’s what Max thought. All his life he’d been called
stupid. Dumb. Slow. It didn’t help that his body seemed to
be growing faster than his mind. It didn’t help that people
were afraid of him. So Max learned how to be alone. At least
until Freak came along.

Freak was weird, too. He had a little body - and a really

big brain. Together Max and Freak were unstoppable.
Together, they were Freak the Mighty.
Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone
By: J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts

when the letters start dropping on the doormat at
number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink
on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they
are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and
uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a
great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus
Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news:
Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An
incredible adventure is about to begin!
The boy in the Striped Pajamas
By: John Boyne

Berlin 1942

When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his
belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and
the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there
is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside
stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people
he can see in the distance.

But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to
this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new
environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very
different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has
devastating consequences.
Monster
By: Walter Dean Myers

This New York Times bestselling novel

from acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers
tells the story of Steve Harmon, a
teenage boy in juvenile detention and on
trial. Presented as a screenplay of
Steve's own imagination, and peppered
with journal entries, the book shows how
one single decision can change our whole
lives.
The oUtsiders
By: S.E. Hinton

No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy

is pretty sure that he's got things figured out.
He knows that he can count on his brothers,
Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can
count on his friends—true friends who would do
anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. But
not on much else besides trouble with the Socs,
a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good
time is beating up on “greasers” like Ponyboy.
At least he knows what to expect—until the night
someone takes things too far.
 A long way gone by: Ishmael Beah
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.
"Why did you leave Sierra Leone?"
"Because there is a war."
"You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?"
"Yes, all the time."
"Cool."
I smile a little.
"You should tell us about it sometime."
"Yes, sometime."
This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become
soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some
300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.
What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child
soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now,
there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.
In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled
attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the
government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.
 Night
By: Elie Wiesel
Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant
autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps.
This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator,
presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's
original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring
importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the
world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.
Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday
perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently
addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any
serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its
legacy is and will be.