Crefeld students are asked to read and practice math over the summer. As you scroll down this page, summer work is listed in the following order:

Middle School Reading
9/10 Reading
11/12 Reading
Math Links for Kahn Academy
Spanish 2

1) Middle School Required Reading

If you are new to Crefeld, welcome to our school! If you’re returning, we’re excited to spend another school year getting to know you and your student.

All students are required to read THREE books:

Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Rebel Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution by Judith Heumann and Kristen Joiner
El Deafo by Cece Bell
A choice book at or above the middle grade level.

Families are responsible for getting students hard copies of Rolling Warrior and El Deafo. Students can supplement their physical books with an audiobook of either text.

The choice book may be from any genre or subject area, but it must be middle grade or above. Additionally, the choice book should not be a book that students have read before.

If you or your child are struggling to find a middle grade or young adult book, take a look at the list below for possibilities and pick a book that interests him/her/them. These texts range in content, genre, length, and reading level.

For more information about summer reading for Middle School, please click here.

2) 9/10 Recommended Reading

Crefeld’s rising 9/10 English students are strongly encouraged–but not required–to read at least one of these books during the summer of 2024. Summer Reading suggestions will complement the four core texts of 9/10 English class that will be studied next year in school. The four core 9/10 English texts are: George Orwell's Animal Farm, William Shakespeare's Othello, Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis, and Chimamanda Adichie's short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.

We recommend that each student read at least one of these three choices of titles over the course of this summer:

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (to complement Orwell's AF)
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (to complement both Othello and/or Adichie's TTAYN)
Marjane Satrapi (ed.'s) Woman, Life Freedom (to complement her Persepolis, both volumes)

The first two titles in this list are more "Advanced" in their reading demands. The WLF anthology of graphic short stories edited by Satrapi is at a more "Intermediate or Basic" reading level.

Enjoy whichever choice you make! And happy reading!

3) 11/12 Recommended Reading

Students are encouraged to read ONE book on the list during the summer, but there will be time at the beginning of the year to accomplish this. The first unit for English 11/12 will be Banned Books, which coincides with Banned Books Week. In addition to time for students to complete the reading, classes will complete various activities regarding banned books in general, eventually doing assignments related directly to their chosen books. Here are suggested Summer Reading Books, which will segue into the first unit of the year - Banned Books.

Students will choose one of the following three books to start reading in the summer or complete entirely within the first 2 weeks of school. All can be purchased through Amazon and other major book sellers.

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston (1989) (209 Pages; Ages 14+)

Maxine Hong Kingston's THE WOMAN WARRIOR: MEMOIRS OF A GIRLHOOD AMONG GHOSTS received a National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction in 1976, but the book stretches the definition of a memoir, as the author blends folk legends with personal memories and second-hand histories. The book begins with the narrator's mother telling her daughter a cautionary tale about a relative whose mistake earns her community's condemnation. Subsequent chapters include the story of a legendary woman soldier's training and battles, family memories of the narrator's childhood in Stockton, and tales from her mother's experience in medical school. The mother, Brave Orchid, who tells several stories, uses the term "ghost" loosely, to describe supernatural forces as well as anything or anyone she considers "other." She denigrates her children, yet tells inspiring stories about women's achievements, including her own. Many of this "creative nonfiction" book's stories and memories focus on the role of women in Chinese and Chinese-American society, and the impact of cultural attitudes on Chinese female children.

When I Was Puerto Rican (2006) by Esmeralda Santiago (278 pages; YA; grades 10-12)

In a childhood full of tropical beauty and domestic strife, poverty and tenderness, Esmeralda Santiago learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs, the taste of morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But when her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity. In the first of her three acclaimed memoirs, Esmeralda brilliantly recreates her tremendous journey from the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years, to translating for her mother at the welfare office, and to high honors at Harvard.

I Will Greet the Sun Again (2023) by Khashayar J. Khabushani (242 pages; grades 9-12)

Three young brothers leave Los Angeles in the dead of night for Iran, taken by their father from their mother to a country and an ancestral home they barely recognize. They return to the Valley months later, spit back into American life and changed in inexorable ways. Under the dazzling light of the California sun, our protagonist, the youngest brother, begins to piece together a childhood shattered by his father's violence, a queer adolescence marked by a shy, secret love affair with a boy he meets on the basketball court, and his ever-changing status as a Muslim in America at the turn of the new millennium.

4) 7/8, 9/10, & 11/12 Math Classwork through Kahn Academy

Crefeld is strongly suggesting that students to take part in one of the following math classes this summer. Choose the class that is appropriate for your math level. For more information on summer math work, please click here.

PRE-ALGEBRA: Here is the link to the Pre-Algebra summer work.