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PART I
PART II
Parts of speech:
Syntax:
• Subject- Kris went to an amusement park with his friends, Sam and
Alicia.
• Predicate- They went on many rides.
• Preposition- Sam and Alicia would wait extra time to be in the first row.
• Object of a preposition- They went through loops on roller coasters,
zoomed around the park, and had a ton of fun!
• Direct Object- After six hours of fun, the group bought ice cream to
cool off.
• Indirect Object- Then, Sam gave Kris a ride home.
• Subject Complement- Sam is a famous doctor, and has a lot of money.
• Appositive- Kris, an author, has an iPhone.
• Direct Address- “Sam, thank you for the ride home and for a great
day,” said Kris happily.
Part III
Short Stories:
Part IV
Novels:
In 1936, during the Great Depression, 10-year-old Bud Caldwell lives in the
orphanage in Flint, Michigan that has been his home since his mother died
when he was six. Because of his mother's death, Bud had no family members
near to him, and was sent to live in the local orphanage, which he calls "The
Home". He hates the orphanage, but his situation does not improve when he
is sent to live with a foster family, the Amoses, who prove to be abusive.
Todd Amos, the Amos' twelve year old son, abuses Bud harshly, including
shoving a pencil up Bud's nose and accusing him of bed wetting, which Mrs.
Amos, the leader of discipline in the family, despises. To punish him, the
Amoses lock Bud up in a shed, which is filled with many terrors including
sharp-toothed fish and a hornets’ nest, giving him a night full of frights and
injuries. Eventually, Bud escapes the shed and goes back to the house to
gather his things. Before he leaves, however, Bud attempts to make Todd
wet his bed to get even. After unsuccessfully trying to put Todd's hand in a
glass of warm water that was just a bit too small, Bud just pours the glass of
water over Todd's pajama pants, finally resulting in Todd wetting the bed.
Later, Bud sets off in search of his father, who he has never met. The journey
is wrought with narrow escapes, including being rescued just barely from the
uniformly prejudiced town of Owosso by "Lefty Lewis". He undertakes this
journey to find Herman E. Calloway, who he believes to be his father, and is
currently living in Grand Rapids. His only clue is a flyer advertising a jazz
band that used to belong to Bud's mother, Angela Janet Caldwell. Bud aims
for "Herman E. Calloway and the Dusky Devastators of the Depression",
convinced that this is the man he is looking for.
Upon arriving at the establishment where Herman E. Calloway and his band
are playing, Bud begins to tell his story . Bud notices that Herman E.
Calloway is far too old to be his father. Bud's mother turned out to be
Herman E. Calloway's daughter, who had run away, and the man in the
picture, who Bud believes to be his dad, is his grandfather. He finally accepts
his new family.
Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt
One day in early summer, Dicey Tillerman's mother begins a trip with her
children in their battered station wagon to see their Aunt Cilla in Bridgeport,
Connecticut. When they have driven about half the distance between their
home in Provincetown and Bridgeport, Momma stops the car and gets out,
telling the three younger children, James, Maybeth, and Sammy to mind
Dicey. Their Momma does not return, and the next day the children, under
Dicey's determined leadership, set out to walk to Bridgeport, with only a
map, a change of underwear, and seven dollars. The children walk for days
on end, buying food as cheaply as possible, scrounging for change alongside
of the road, and sleeping in or near empty houses. After several days, they
stop to rest in a state park, where clams, mussels, and fish abound, and they
meet a young runaway couple, Edie and Louis. In the park, Sammy, to
Dicey's dismay, steals both food and money, and they leave in a fright when
the police begin looking for them.
By the time they reach the Connecticut River, they are completely out of
money. Dicey decides to earn money by washing windows, and soon has the
children carrying bags in the parking lot of a grocery store. Before long, they
have enough money to continue on. They cross the forbidding river in a
rowboat, and continue on towards the west. When they reach New Haven,
however, they are once again out of money, and Dicey is near despair. A
couple of Yale students, Stewart and Windy befriend them, take them in for
the night, and feed them. That night, James steals twenty dollars from their
benefactors, which he grudgingly returns the next morning. Dicey chastises
him severely, and Stewart talks seriously to him about the moral implications
of his actions. The next day, Stewart drives them to Bridgeport, leaving them
at their aunt's door.
The children find that Aunt Cilla is dead, and their fussy and pious cousin,
Eunice, occupies the house alone. Eunice takes the children in, and soon the
three younger children are attending a church camp every day while Dicey
helps Eunice care for the house. Dicey also begins to earn money by washing
windows around town. In Bridgeport, Dicey talks to the police about
Momma's disappearance, and before long, the police have located her: she is
comatose in a mental hospital in Boston. The Tillerman children are unhappy
in Bridgeport. Sammy gets in fights, upsetting Eunice, the nuns want to label
Maybeth as retarded and give her special schooling, and Dicey feels the
children growing apart from one another. When Eunice decides to give up
her dream of becoming a nun and adopt the children—although she still
considers handing the belligerent Sammy over to the state—Dicey acts
quickly. While in Bridgeport, they have learned of their grandmother, Abigail
Tillerman, who lives in Crisfield, Maryland, and Dicey decides they must meet
her.
Dicey and her siblings leave without Eunice's permission, boarding a bus one
morning for New York. They eventually take a bus to Wilmington, where
Dicey panics when she finds they have missed the bus to Crisfield and buys
tickets for Annapolis, worried that Eunice may have the police looking for
them. In Annapolis, they convince two boys, Tom and Jerry to sail them
across the bay, and during the trip, Dicey falls in love with sailing. Once
across, Dicey, determined to save money for a possible return trip, decides
they must walk again. They find a circus and befriend the proprietor, Will.
After a couple of days, they see signs advertising work picking tomatoes, and
Dicey and the children approach a local farmer, Rudyard, asking for work.
The children sense the man's untrustworthiness, but work through the
morning. By the time evening comes, they are sure the man means them
harm, and when he pulls up in his truck, they dash away into the night,
crossing a nearby river. He pursues, but soon gives up his chase. The next
day, however, he finds them in a nearby town and pursues them hotly. The
circus has come to the town, however, and Will protects the Tillermans from
the evil man.
The Tillermans spend the next several days with the circus, and Will offers to
drive them to Crisfield when the circus moves to a town near it. When they
finally arrive in Crisfield, Will wants to stay and make sure the children are all
right, but Dicey explains they must face this challenge alone. The children
find their belligerent and eccentric grandmother on a run-down farm seven
miles outside of town. The grandmother agrees to let them stay the night,
but adamantly refuses to let them stay for good. Dicey and the others,
however, start to fall in love with their grandmother's beautiful farm on the
shore, and Dicey has found an old sailboat in the barn, which she is
determined to use. The children decide that they will start doing work around
the farm, postponing their departure one day at a time until their
grandmother gets used to them. The children work diligently for about five
days, until Will pays a visit, bringing the children used bicycles as a gift. That
night, however, their grandmother explodes when Sammy rides off without
permission and Dicey refuses to allow their grandmother to punish him by
sending him to bed without supper. When Dicey resignedly asks if they can
stay, their grandmother refuses.
That night, Dicey finds her grandmother writing a letter to Eunice in the kitchen.
She takes this opportunity to explain to Dicey the reasons she cannot take the
children in: she has little money and no income, she cherishes the freedom and
independence she gained when her stern husband died four years ago, and she is
afraid of repeating the mistakes she made as a mother that drove her children
away. Dicey's grandmother admits to Dicey, however, that she likes the children
and wants them to stay. The next morning, their grandmother seems to remember
little of her proclamation of the night before, and several days later, she takes the
children to town to register for school, explaining that it may take weeks for Eunice
to write back to her letter, expressing whether she will take the children back. At
school, Maybeth passes a test allowing her to study in the third grade, much to the
joy of all her family members. As they are preparing to return home, Dicey realizes
her grandmother has forgotten to mail the letter to Eunice. She reminds her
grandmother of the letter, but before she can get to the letterbox, Dicey stops her,
telling her that she should take the children in, even if she does not want to. To her
surprise, her grandmother agrees, stating in mock exasperation that the children
have worn her down. Overjoyed, the five return home together, united in their
sense of hope and relief.
Romeo, the son of Montague, runs into his cousin Benvolio, who had earlier
seen Romeo moping in a grove of sycamores. After some prodding by
Benvolio, Romeo confides that he is in love with Rosaline, a woman who does
not return his affections. Benvolio counsels him to forget this woman and
find another, more beautiful one, but Romeo remains despondent.
In Capulet’s household, young Juliet talks with her mother, Lady Capulet, and
her nurse about the possibility of marrying Paris. Juliet has not yet
considered marriage, but agrees to look at Paris during the feast to see if she
thinks she could fall in love with him.
The feast begins. A melancholy Romeo follows Benvolio and their witty friend
Mercutio to Capulet’s house. Once inside, Romeo sees Juliet from a distance
and instantly falls in love with her; he forgets about Rosaline completely. As
Romeo watches Juliet, entranced, a young Capulet, Tybalt, recognizes him,
and is enraged that a Montague would sneak into a Capulet feast. He
prepares to attack, but Capulet holds him back. Soon, Romeo speaks to
Juliet, and the two experience a profound attraction. They kiss, not even
knowing each other’s names. When he finds out from Juliet’s nurse that she
is the daughter of Capulet—his family’s enemy—he becomes distraught.
When Juliet learns that the young man she has just kissed is the son of
Montague, she grows equally upset.
As Mercutio and Benvolio leave the Capulet estate, Romeo leaps over the
orchard wall into the garden, unable to leave Juliet behind. From his hiding
place, he sees Juliet in a window above the orchard and hears her speak his
name. He calls out to her, and they exchange vows of love.
Romeo hurries to see his friend and confessor Friar Lawrence, who, though
shocked at the sudden turn of Romeo’s heart, agrees to marry the young
lovers in secret since he sees in their love the possibility of ending the age-
old feud between Capulet and Montague. The following day, Romeo and
Juliet meet at Friar Lawrence’s cell and are married. The Nurse, who is privy
to the secret, procures a ladder, which Romeo will use to climb into Juliet’s
window for their wedding night.
In her room, Juliet awaits the arrival of her new husband. The Nurse enters,
and, after some confusion, tells Juliet that Romeo has killed Tybalt.
Distraught, Juliet suddenly finds herself married to a man who has killed her
kinsman. But she resettles herself, and realizes that her duty belongs with
her love: to Romeo.
Romeo sneaks into Juliet’s room that night, and they are united. Morning
comes, and the lovers bid farewell, unsure when they will see each other
again. Juliet learns that her father, affected by the recent events, now
intends for her to marry Paris in just three days. Unsure of how to proceed—
unable to reveal to her parents that she is married to Romeo, but unwilling to
marry Paris now that she is Romeo’s wife—Juliet asks her nurse for advice.
She counsels Juliet to proceed as if Romeo were dead and to marry Paris,
who is a better match anyway. Disgusted with the Nurse’s disloyalty, Juliet
disregards her advice and hurries to Friar Lawrence. He concocts a plan to
reunite Juliet with Romeo in Mantua. The night before her wedding to Paris,
Juliet must drink a potion that will make her appear to be dead. After she is
laid to rest in the family’s crypt, the Friar and Romeo will secretly retrieve
her, and she will be free to live with Romeo, away from their parents’
feuding.
Juliet returns home to discover the wedding has been moved ahead one day,
and she is to be married tomorrow. That night, Juliet drinks the potion, and
the Nurse discovers her, apparently dead, the next morning. The Capulets
grieve, and Juliet is entombed according to plan. But Friar Lawrence’s
message explaining the plan to Romeo never reaches Mantua. Its bearer,
Friar John, gets confined to a quarantined house. Romeo hears only that
Juliet is dead.
Romeo learns only of Juliet’s death and decides to kill himself rather than live
without her. He buys a vial of poison from a reluctant Apothecary, then
speeds back to Verona to take his own life at Juliet’s tomb. Outside the
Capulet crypt, Romeo comes upon Paris, who is scattering flowers on Juliet’s
grave. They fight, and Romeo kills Paris. He enters the tomb, sees Juliet’s
inanimate body, drinks the poison, and dies by her side. Just then, Friar
Lawrence enters and realizes that Romeo has killed Paris and himself. At the
same time, Juliet awakes. Friar Lawrence hears the coming of the watch.
When Juliet refuses to leave with him, he flees alone. Juliet sees her beloved
Romeo and realizes he has killed himself with poison. She kisses his
poisoned lips, and when that does not kill her, buries his dagger in her chest,
falling dead upon his body.
The watch arrives, followed closely by the Prince, the Capulets, and
Montague. Montague declares that Lady Montague has died of grief over
Romeo’s exile. Seeing their children’s bodies, Capulet and Montague agree
to end their long-standing feud and to raise gold statues of their children
side-by-side in a newly peaceful Verona.
Part V
Literary Terms:
Alliteration
○ The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words or
within words.
Characterization
○ The methods an author uses to acquaint a reader with the
characters in a work.
Flashback
○ An interruption in the action of a story, play, or piece of
nonfiction to show an episode that happened at an earlier time.
Imagery
○ Concrete words or details that appeal to the senses of sight,
sound, touch, smell, taste, and to internal feelings.
Inference
○ The process of arriving at some conclusion that, though it is not
logically derivable from the assumed premises, possesses some
degree of probability relative to the premises.
Irony
○ A contrast between what appears to be and what really is.
Metaphor
○ A figure of speech that involves an implied comparison between
two basically unlike things.
Mood
○ The atmosphere or feeling within a work of art.
Personification
○ A figure of speech or figurative language in which human
characteristics are given to nonhuman things.
Plot
○ A series of happenings in a literary work. Plot consists of these
elements: a conflict, a pattern of events, a climax, and a
conclusion.
Point of view
○ The relationship between the narrator of a story and the
characters and action in it.
Setting
○ The time and place in which the events in a narrative occur.
Simile
○ A comparison in which the word like or as is used to point out a
similarity between two basically unlike things.
Symbol
○ A person, place, event, or object that has a meaning in itself but
also suggests other meanings.
Theme
○ The main idea or underlying meaning of a literary work.
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