<p>im a 16 yearold boy and I didnt even start reading the book before i watched to movie and I got the book after watching it and for the confusing sections just look at sparknotes… but anyway…</p>
<p>The curious incident IS AMAZING… one of my favorite books EVER</p>
<p>Summer reading and writing assignments are becoming more and more common with Honors, AP, IB, and college literature courses. As an English prof., I have to say I’m aware of the double standard that exists in getting many guys to read books with female protagonists and that gals will read male main character stories much more readily (a sad generalization, but still, unfortunately, true for too many students). That doesn’t stop me, though, from assigning great books with female leads, and it hasn’t stopped the male students who are interested in literature from getting good out of these books, or from male/female students alike coming around to enjoying a book after they’ve been led into it. However, I wouldn’t have assigned P&P over the summer for that reason (suspecting fewer of the males than the females would even try to read it). I suspect the teacher thinks it’s a longish, and certainly older prose style, book to get through in the school year and reading it over the summer will give the class a jump start on time if they can come right in and begin discussing the book as a whole without waiting for everyone to read it first. The teacher may also be sparing him/herself the angst of hearing the students complain as they read it during the school year, too. 
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<p>Another strategy that operated at our h.s. was that students who did not complete the summer assignment were thought to be less interested, motivated, or capable of handling the advanced lit. course and were advised to take something else if they walked in the door the first day of school without their summer “homework” (which was actually due sometime in August, actually, before school started in Sept., now that I think of it). </p>
<p>Under the circumstances you describe at your S’s school, might the summer assignment be a similar kind of gatekeeping mechanism?</p>
<p>I guess it’s obvious what I think of Spark Notes, watching the film instead of reading the book, etc. (teachers know students try this, btw–I used to quiz for reading by asking students to write a few sentences describing the first scene in HAMLET. I could tell if they read the play themselves, or not–even down to which film version they watched–from their answers!). </p>
<p>P&P is a classic, and it is a reasonable assignment for an Honors English class. Team reading might be a great way through the assignment for a good student who is less than enthusiastic about literature–does your S know another student who really IS into literature? Reading and discussing the book over the summer with him/her might be a big help to him.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the input.</p>
<p>TooRichForAid, These two books assigned are mandatory reading. There is no choice. I assume it is done this way so the Eng. teachers can focus on further study of just these two books when school starts.
Every senior honors Eng. student has to read these two. The reg. Eng. classes have to just read “The Curious Incident…”. AP Eng. has 5 books to read.</p>
<p>I will probably take the advice to have him start reading the book and then have SparkNotes for explanation. I feel sure he’ll end up watching the movie too but will try to push him through the book first. I love to read and will be happy to read along with him but don’t now if it will help. </p>
<p>I think I’ll advise him to do P&P first to get it over with and then move on to “The Curious Incident…” </p>
<p>To further complicate all this, S plays varsity football. Nightly work-outs start June 11. So we’ll have to sandwich the reading between summer job and football workouts,arrgghh. </p>
<p>There is no summer vacation,lol!!!</p>
<p>What about getting it as a book on tape? I had my son who dislikes reading do this and then look at Sparks notes.</p>
<p>doubleplay, did you really say that about a book?</p>
<p>guess my D shouldn’t have had to read those books about ww2</p>
<p>egad, to assign a gender to a book is just strange</p>
<p>and going into college and life people have to read stuff all the time that bores them to tears, but you do it</p>
<p>now, you must remember in college you won’t be able to spark note, or get books on tape so why not learn in HS how to get through stuff that puts you to sleep</p>
<p>Princedog has a good suggestion. Read a chapter then the Spark notes. If he’s willing, you could even read the book with him. Last summer, I bought two copies of The Scarlet Letter, and D and I alternated reading chapters aloud. We made it through. Not easily, but we made it through. </p>
<p>Also, jcll2002, The Kite Runner was a wonderful book. I loved it. Anyone read his new novel yet?</p>
<p>CGM, I know a book isn’t meant to be geared to one gender or anyother- but as far as teenagers are concerned, there are definite preferences for one type or another. P & P is a novel about courtship, definitely not my teenage son’s cup of tea. If you took a group of teens, boys and girls, into the classics section of the local B&N, and had them select whatever classic they wanted, I’d guarantee there would be a definite pattern though.</p>
<p>Follow up-
My kids summer reading required one or two books, then they were allowed to pick several others off a list. The required books would be something like Hamilton’s Mythology. The list would be long enough that the kids could definitely find something they would enjoy reading. For example, Wuthering Heights was included, and widely read by the girls but not the boys. My son’s picks over the years were anything by Twain, Tolkien, or Dickens, Crime and Punishment, Great Gatsby, Genome … can’t remember but it seemed to me he definitely stayed away from certain types of books that seemed more girl-oriented.</p>
<p>I liked summer reading a lot better when my kids were in the early grades and its main purpose was to keep them reading over the summer.</p>
<p>In high school, though, it seems that teachers are increasingly using summer reading to get a head start on the curriculum. The kids arrive in the fall having already read the first two or three books that will be discussed in class. Unfortunately, this means that the kids don’t get any choices about what they read. And for those who care about their grades, it often means that summer reading shouldn’t really be done until the last few weeks of summer vacation (otherwise, the student might have forgotten too many details from the book). But for many kids who are in sports or marching band, those last few weeks of the summer are incredibly busy. It’s tough to fit in the summer reading then.</p>
<p>Expanding on the gender issue, I actually think this might be a very important issue in this reading assignment. I agree that P&P is definitely geared towards girls; after all, it’s really just a light romantic comedy, and typically females have been more attracted to this genre than males, perhaps because they usually are more sensitive to emotions than males (and therefore I would actually recommend that some teenage boys reading may benefit by reading cliff notes alongside it, so that can follow some of the social nuances that might not be as obvious to them as for girls).</p>
<p>The Curious Incident, however, could also be considered a book that boys might relate to better than girls since in a sense it is exactly opposite of a romantic comedy–on an emotional level–since it involves an autistic male teenager trying to solve a “mystery” in the persistent, analytical and unemotional manner common of autistics (and also more common among males). </p>
<p>Assigning this combination of books is quite interesting to me, and I cannot help but wonder if the two will be discussed and compared to each other in class focusing specifically on gender differences (eg differences between male/female social views of the world).</p>
<p>ARRRGGGGHHH!!!</p>
<p>Pride and Prejudice is not “just a light romantic comedy”! Unless you are in favor of reading in the most surface level way possible.</p>
<p>As I said on an earlier post:</p>
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<p>I think it would be great to teach student how not to read superficially, and this would be a great book to start with. Or, we can just keep perpetuating literary stereotyping which borders on philistinism.</p>
<p>so its a book about courtship, so what…seriouslly, are the boys too macho to read a book about girls and what they deal with</p>
<p>Look at all the books girls read and get through that that aren’t geared toward them</p>
<p>I don’t think you give enough credit to males to be able to handle a book about the female type people</p>
<p>Sometimes reading a book like this can give clues to humanity</p>
<p>My girls aren’t into wars, fighting, etc., but after reading novels about topics they aren’t “into” they learned quite a bit</p>
<p>should we protect boys from reading books that aren’t all about them?</p>
<p>no sometimes a book is assigned to show them something different</p>
<p>I have never complained about my Ds getting assigned a book that was “male oriented”, it was good for them, so long as the lists are balanced</p>
<p>I agree with garland that P&P is a social commentary and partial satire, as well as a thorough examination of manners, not a light romantic comedy. I also agree that Jane Austen’s works apeal more to women than to men. So what? I read enough Shakespeare in high school and college and found the subject matter often quite oriented around traditional male interests, not to mention that most of the main characters (the interesting ones!) are male. </p>
<p>I also agree that Curious Incident is approached from a very male perspective and in some ways is polar opposite in style from P&P. What an interesting combination to assign!</p>
<p>P&P is about a time, a time when you had to act a certain way, when women couldn’t really be who they were, a time of change and all the subtelties of society, something that I think would be good for the males to learn about</p>
<p>seriously, why not make them expand what they “like” to read, </p>
<p>if we did that- let them pick, why bother having literature classes in HS, just let the girls read nancy drew and the guys read about cars (just an example)</p>
<p>school is about reading and learning what you don’t necessarily find your favorite thing to do</p>
<p>you think my D loved chemistry, that she looked forward to reading and studying that every night, no not really</p>
<p>my D struggled through the Illiad and the Odessey, found (her words) it kind of stupid, all that running around and chasing things, but when she was done, she realized why she had to read it</p>
<p>and when my oldest read the book on WW1, something she most likely never would have picked up on her own, she learned about the fear of war, why men (and now women) fought, the friendships, the honor, the idea of running into battle, most likely to your death, and what drives people to do that</p>
<p>she wouldn’t have learned or discovered that side of people in any real sense if she hadn’t been assigned that book</p>
<p>and for boys to read about girls, and their emotions, conflicts, pressures, etc is a good thing and they just need to get over it</p>
<p>Pride and prejudice is probably the only book that we read in high school that could be considered a “girl” book. For whoever is complaining about their sons having to read it, think of all of the girls who have to sit through “guy” books like catcher in the rye, a separate peace, the illiad, and many many more books that don’t totally appeal to girls. The reading seems balanced since pride and prejudice will appeal more to girls, and a curious incident is much much more of a guy book</p>
<p>OK, Uncle! Uncle!
My boys did their share of reading what I still consider chick lit in high school and I didn’t make a big deal of it.</p>
<p>Here’s where I’m coming from (and this is just me…I can’t speak for all women):
Many if not all the books that my husband reads, I would enjoy reading as well. Ludlum, Cussler, Koontz…My favorite reads in high school were Winds of War and War and Remembrance. There really isn’t anything that I’d consider boy lit, other than maybe a biography of a sports star or a book on baseball stats, that I wouldn’t mind reading. On the other hand, my husband would never in a million years enthusiastically read some of the stuff I enjoy- some of the historical fiction that almost crosses into romance like Gabaldon’s Outlander series, or Phillipa Gregory’s Boleyn novels. So I read his stuff but he doesn’t necessarily read mine.</p>
<p>So it seems to me that it’s easier to find stuff that is palatable to guys and girls alike, but there are definite genres that go more toward women.</p>
<p>I’ve never been a fan of summer reading assignments, and fortunately, our schools in Toronto do not do this. We only had one school of the ones our kids attended in the U.S. that had a summer assignment and they were intelligent/thoughtful/responsible enough to give the kids a list from which to choose. </p>
<p>If the purpose of a summer reading assignment is to encourage kids to continue reading and to keep their minds engaged during the summer months, then why on earth would you not encourage them to read something that they’d enjoy, by giving them an element of choice in the decision? </p>
<p>As for P&P, it’s a wonderful book but, in my opinion, a poor choice for summer reading of this type. As garland has described, the book has so many different discussion area options, why not assign it during the school year so that those can be explored, in class, as the reading is being done? If teachers are utilizing summer reading as an opportunity to get a ‘head start’ on the school year’s curriculum, this is, in my opinion, ill-advised. What about the kid who chooses to do it early in the summer, who is then expected to be able to discuss it intelligently three months later? Doesn’t make much sense to me.</p>
<p>To the OP: since your son has no choice, I would agree that he should at least give the actual book a shot, prior to doing the Sparknotes route. I don’t see anything wrong with also having a look at the filmed version, and I would recommend the BBC mini-series rather than the recent film. No comparison.</p>
<p>I also neglected to mention that our school is on the 4x4 system. Those who are scheduled to have English the 2nd semster must still turn in their summer reading project by the 10th day of first semester and will have discussions/tests on the material when they start their English class in January! How ridiculous is that?</p>