Humor, trouble, and adventure follow Tom Sawyer everywhere--from the banks of the Mississippi to the brink of death and back in Mark Twain's first full novel. The Big Read Reader's Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, timelines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great American author.

In this class we will practice skills in reading, analyzing, and writing about fiction, poetry and drama from a select sampling of 20th Century American Literature. Through class discussion, close reading, and extensive writing practice, this course seeks to develop critical and analytical skills, preparing students for more advanced academic work.

This site provides 253 narratives describing travels in the colonies and U.S. The collection includes works by authors not widely known as well as by Matthew Arnold, James Fenimore Cooper, Dickens, Washington Irving, Sir Charles Lyell, Robert Louis Stevenson, and other major figures. The collection is searchable and can be browsed by not only by author and title, but also by subject.

Students read biographies and explore websites of selected American authors and then role-play as the authors.

One of the most respected works of Chicano literature, Rudolfo Anaya tells the story of Antonio Juan Marez y Luna, a young boy who grapples with faith, identity, and death as he comes of age in New Mexico. The Big Read Reader's Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, timelines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great American author.

Thornton Wilder is the only writer to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and drama. His novel "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" and his play "Our Town" ask us to examine how we live our precarious, precious lives, whether in small-town America, eighteenth-century Peru, or anywhere else. This Big Read Teachers Guide contains ten lessons to lead you through Thorton Wilders The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Our Town. Each lesson has four sections: a focus topic, discussion activities, writing exercises, and homework assignments. In addition, we have provided capstone projects and suggested essay topics, as well as handouts with more background information about the book, the historical period, and the author. All lessons dovetail with the state language arts standards required in the fiction genre.

Abducted from his comfortable home and sold as a sled dog, Buck battles the elements to become leader of the pack. This story of a struggle for survival is an unforgettable adventure. The Big Read Readers Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, timelines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great American author.

This set of lessons extends over several weeks and incorporates all acts of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible. Students will closely read The Crucible. Students will cite textual evidence and make interpretations about character development. Students will combine the textual evidence with their interpretations and write interpretive statements. In the culminating activity, students will write a character analysis.

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes journalist James Fallows for a discussion of his career, the ideas and events that shaped his thinking, and his perspective on his craft as a writer and author.

Dr Sally Bayley presents an illuminating reading of Emily Dickinson's 'I started early, took my dog'. In her reading, she seeks out allusions to Shakespearean plays including Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice. She then answers questions about the poem. This audio recording is part the Interviews on Great Writers series presented by Oxford University Podcasts.

In one of literature's most haunting denunciations of censorship, Ray Bradbury uses the materials of science fiction to tell the story of Guy Montag, a fireman forced to burn books. The Big Read Reader's Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, time lines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great American author.

A story of love and pain, loyalty and desertion, Ernest Hemingway's World War I novel features the tragedy of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful nurse. This Big Read Teachers Guide contains ten lessons to lead you through Ernest Hemingways classic novel, A Farewell to Arms. Each lesson has four sections: a thematic focus, discussion activities, writing exercises, and homework assignments. In addition, we have provided capstone projects and suggested essay topics, as well as handouts with more background information about the novel, the historical period, and the author. All lessons dovetail with the state language arts standards required in the fiction genre.

A Dust Bowl saga of the Joad family's rough passage to California and the rougher treatment they find there, John Steinbeck's novel is tragedy and comedy, story and allegory, editorial and epic. The Big Read Readers Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, timelines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great american author.

Told through the eyes of narrator Nick Carraway, F. Scott Fitzgerald's lyrical masterpiece recounts Jay Gatsby's desperate quest to win back his first love as he struggles to recapture the past. The Big Read Readers Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, time lines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great American author.

Combining stylistic virtuosity with a deep understanding of the darkness of the human heart, Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems have haunted readers for more than 150 years. The Big Read Readers Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, timelines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great American author.

A teenage outcast, a drunken socialist, a black doctor, and a sad cafe owner confess their secrets to a deaf-mute, in Carson McCullers's dramatic story of poverty and racism in a 1930s Georgia mill town. This Big Read Teacher's Guide contains ten lessons to lead you through Carson McCullers's classic novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Each lesson has four sections: focus topic, discussion activities, writing exercises, and homework assignments. In addition, we have provided capstone projects and suggested essay topics, as well as handouts with more background information about the novel, the historical period, and the author. All lessons dovetail with the state language arts standards required in the fiction genre.

This course examines major works by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, exploring their interconnections on three analytic scales: the macro history of the United States and the world; the formal and stylistic innovations of modernism; and the small details of sensory input and psychic life. WARNING: Some of the lectures in this course contain graphic content and/or adult language that some users may find disturbing.

When Ruth and her sister Lucille are abandoned in the isolated Idaho town of Fingerbone, their lives become intertwined with the legacy of loss that haunts the Foster family. The Big Read Reader's Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, timelines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great American author.

Julia Alvarez's popular novel is a fictional account influenced by the real lives of the Mirabal sisters, who grew up in the Dominican Republic and were involved in the rebellion against dictator Rafael Trujillo in the 1930s. The Big Read Reader's Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, timelines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of a great American author.

Filled with radiant depictions of the Mexican landscape and unforgettable characters, Luis Alberto Urrea's novel chronicles a young woman's quest to protect her hometown from banditos. This Big Read Teacher's Guide contains ten lessons to lead you through Luis Alberto Urrea's Into the Beautiful North. Each lesson has four sections: a focus topic, discussion activities, writing exercises, and homework assignments. In addition, we have provided capstone projects and suggested essay topics, as well as handouts with more background information about the novel, the historical period, and the author. All lessons dovetail with the state language arts standards required in the fiction genre.