Post 24: This is the one where I rant about summer reading lists

I love getting those emails from a department head which say that since their list of agenda items is so short perhaps I would like to contribute something on summer reading lists at their meeting after school...today!

I see two problems here.  The first is the fact that I am obviously an afterthought and if the department had a few more things to discuss I wouldn't be invited.  How valued I feel!  Next, they want me to talk about summer reading.  If you have read any of my blog posts about the issue we have at school with recreational reading, you would see the irony of this.  I sit in the staff meeting wanting to yell out, "if they aren't reading during the school year, what makes you think they'll read this summer!"  And then there are the lists they have come up with.  Before I had even opened the files, I knew what sort of books would be on them.  I had even come up with some of the titles.  Below is the list for students going from grade 8 (year 9) into grade 9:

Things Fall Apart
Citizen Soldiers
Wuthering Heights
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold The Red Badge of Courage
An American Tragedy
The Mill on the Floss
The Sound and the Fury
The Reluctant Fundamentalist Catch 22
A Farewell to Arms
Dispatches (NF)
On the Road
One Hundred Years of Solitude All the Pretty Horses
Animal Farm
The Bell Jar
The Crying of Lot 49
Anthem
All Quiet on the Western Front Call It Sleep
The Catcher in the Rye
Marmon Ceremony Slaughterhouse-Five
The Autobiography of Malcom X 

Not a single book written by a children's author.  I am loosing the will to live!  Can you imagine how the grade 8s will feel this summer!