Pondering IB Reading List for 2010-2011

Semester 1 (Part 2): Richard III or MacBeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Baldwin Essays, Song of Solomon (Morrison)

Semester 2 (Part 3): Theme -- The Roots of Evil. The White Tiger (Adiga), The Color Purple (Walker), The Fifth Child (Lessing), Oryx and Crake (Atwood)

This is a first draft of a curriculum for next year.

Why I like it: More women than last year, when I had two women. More diverse than last year, when I had four U.S. writers in a World Lit class -- now it's three. I get to teach The Color Purple, long one of my favorite books, and something that I think the kids will absolutely love (I know they've all seen the movie, which I actually think is a pretty poor adaptation of it.) Really tight theme in the second semester that kids could write about. Second semester novels are generally pretty short, so there will be plenty of time to practice with assessments. Really readable and high-interest texts in second semester when kids are getting bitten by senioritis.

Why it's still problematic: Still not very worldly -- three African American writers might be too many, especially because I've been asked to diversify the curriculum. I'll miss doing one huge novel that kids can pretty much draw from for any topic -- last year, it was East of Eden. Am I over-correcting my issue with length, which might not be an issue next year without the torrential snowfall we had this year?

What I could still do: I need to read some more books this summer. The list is so frustrating (I'm going to cut and paste it below again), because so many authors are out of print and also because, frankly, I haven't read most of the authors below who are not from North America. Also, regarding Rushdie, I need to double-check the rules, but I think Asia/India is out for me on the choices because I'm once again choosing The White Tiger (a big success last year).

So, I need to figure out some other things. If anyone has any recommendations of texts from the authors below, particularly texts that would fit the theme of the Roots of Evil, please let me know. I'll be scouring other schools' IB Part III lists and doing lots of reading this summer in the meantime...

The list (Parts II and III of the IB Reading List. Adiga isn't on here, but he fits the one WL text requirement -- not from the list -- that can be chosen.)

Africa: Ama Ata Aidoo, Cyprian Ekwensi, Bessie Head, Chenjerai Hove, Kojo Laing, Dominic Mulaisho, Charles Mungoshi, Isidore Okpewho, Ben Okri, Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Andrew Brink, Buchi Emecheta, Nadine Gordimer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

Asia: Amitav Ghosh, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Mulk Raj Anand, Anita Desai, R.K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie.

Caribbean: George Lamming, Richard Lovelace, V.S. Naipaul, Ama Brodber, David Dabydeen, Caryl Phillips, Jean Rhys.

Europe: Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, William Conrad, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, E.M. Forster, Joseph Hardy, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, William Trevor, Virginia Woolf, Kingsley Amis, Iain Banks, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Roddy Doyle, Margaret Drabble, Graham Green, Ishiguro Kazuo, Rudyard Kipling, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, George Orwell, V.S. Pritchett, Evelyn Waugh.

North America: Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Saul Bellow, Robertson Davies, William Faulkner, Timothy Findley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, Margaret Laurence, Anne Michaels, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Edgar Allan Poe, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Richard Wright, Raymond Carver, Sandra Cisneros, Kate Chopin, Louise Erdrich, Zora Neale Hurston, Jamaica Kinkaid, Alistair Macleod, Herman Melville, Rohinton Mistry, Flannery O'Connor, Carol Sheilds, Leslie Anne Silko, Mark Twain, Alice Walker, James Welch, Eudora Welty.

Oceania: Janet Frame, David Malouf, Christina Stead, Patrick White, Tim Winton, Peter Carey, Janette Hospial, Henry Lawson, Katherine Mansfield, Olga Masters, Randolph Stow, Albert Wendt.