RILINK Schools: Cumberland High School Library: Grade 9

Hours

7:00 am - 2:00 pm

Monday - Friday

Librarian

Grade 9 ELA Cover Gallery

ELA Grade 9, Unit 1

Grade 9, Unit 1 - Divided We Fall

Why do we feel the need to belong?

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

Check the tabs for each book to see what is available in the library for each text, including books in Spanish and Portuguese, audiobooks, ebooks, graphic novels and movies. Check under "Additional Resources" for more content on the unit theme.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
ISBN: 9780312384487
Publication Date: 2008-12-23
American Born Chinese tells the story, in graphic novel format, of three apparently unrelated characters: Jin Wang, who moves to a new neighborhood with his family only to discover that he's the only Chinese-American student at his new school; the powerful Monkey King, subject of one of the oldest and greatest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, who is ruining his cousin Danny's life with his yearly visits. Their lives and stories come together with an unexpected twist in this action-packed modern fable.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy [this book is a graphic novel]

The library also recommends:

American Born Chinese (television series on Disney+) Trailer

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
ISBN: 9780140177398
Publication Date: 1993-09-01
A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression. They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
Portuguese print copy
eBook
Audiobook
Movie

The library also recommends:

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
ISBN: 9780684842677
Publication Date: 1999-05-25
Frank McCourt's masterful memoir depicts his impoverished childhood in Ireland. "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook
Audiobook - coming soon

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 9, Unit 2

Grade 9, Unit 2 - The Call to Adventure

What will you learn on your journey?

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
ISBN: 9780547928227
Publication Date: 2012-09-18
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." So begins one of the most beloved and delightful tales in the English language--Tolkien's prelude to The Lord of the Rings. Set in the imaginary world of Middle-earth, at once a classic myth and a modern fairy tale, The Hobbit is one of literature's most enduring and well-loved novels. Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook
Audiobook - coming soon
Audiobook (BBC radio drama)
Movie - coming soon

The library also recommends:

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
ISBN: 9780446600255
Publication Date: 1994-04-01
Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past-a mythic legacy as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America. And at each life turn there is Ultima, who delivered Tony into the world...and will nurture the birth of his soul.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

NO class sets in the book room - library can try to Inter-Library loan one or more for you to try
eBook
Audiobook
Movie - coming soon

The library also recommends:

National Endowment for the Arts - The NEA Big Read: Bless Me, Ultima. Page includes downloadable Readers' Guides (in English and Spanish), Teacher's Guide, video interview with Rudolfo Anaya, and additional resources.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
ISBN: 9780553525069
Publication Date: 1998-05-04
Following his return to America after twenty years in Britain, Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to test his own powers of ineptitude, and to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. For a start, there's the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa who accompanies the similarly unfit Bryson on the trail. Mile by arduous mile these latter-day pioneers walk America, along the way surviving the threat of bear attacks, the loss of key provisions, and everything else this awe-inspiring country can throw at them. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to this fragile and beautiful trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, a lament, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is destined to become a modern classic of travel literature.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

NO class sets in the book room - library can try to Inter-Library loan one or more for you to try
English print copy
Audiobook - coming soon

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 9, Unit 3

Grade 9, Unit 3 - Declaring Your Genius

How do you define intelligence?

Animal Farm by George Orwell
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
The Odyssey by Homer

Animal Farm by George. Orwell
ISBN: 9780451526342
Publication Date: 2004-04-06
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel--a scathing satire on a downtrodden society's blind march towards totalitarianism. A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned--a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
Graphic novel version - available via inter-library loan
eBook
eBook (multiple file formats) from Open Rights Library
Audiobook
Audiobook - Open Rights Library
Movie - coming soon

The library also recommends:

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
ISBN: 9780316024976
Publication Date: 2008-11-18
In this stunning book, Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band. Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

NO class sets in the book room - library can try to Inter-Library loan one or more for you to try
English print copy
eBook
Audiobook

The library also recommends:

The Odyssey by Homer
ISBN: 9780393356250
Publication Date: 2018-11-06
Composed almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
Graphic novel version
eBook (multiple file formats) from Project Gutenberg
Audiobook (from LibriVox)

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 9, Unit 4

Grade 9, Unit 4 - The Art of Disguise

How do we perform for different audiences?

Romiette and Julio by Sharon Draper
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare

Romiette and Julio by Sharon M. Draper
ISBN: 9780689821806
Publication Date: 1999-09-01
Romiette and Julio discover that they attend the same high school after falling in love on the Internet, but are harassed by a gang whose members object to their interracial dating.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

NO class sets in the book room - library can try to Inter-Library loan one or more for you to try
English print copy
eBook
Audiobook - coming soon

The library also recommends:

Lord of the Flies by William Golding; E. M. Forster (Introduction by); E. L. Epstein (Notes by)
ISBN: 9781573226127
Publication Date: 1997-08-01
Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first it seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary standards of behavior collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them--the world of cricket and homework and adventure stories--and another world is revealed beneath, primitive and terrible. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook
eBook (Spanish)
Audiobook
Movie (1963 version)
Movie (1990 version)

The library also recommends:

The Simpsons, Season 9, Episode 14 "Das Bus"

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
ISBN: 9780743477116
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
One of Shakespeare's most popular and accessible plays, Romeo and Juliet tells the story of two star-crossed lovers and the unhappy fate that befell them as a result of a long and bitter feud between their families. The play contains some of Shakespeare's most beautiful and lyrical love poetry and is perhaps the finest celebration of the joys of young love ever written.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
Portuguese print copy
Graphic novel version
eBook (multiple file formats) from Folger Shakespeare Library
Audiobook
Movie (1968 version)
Movie (1995 version)
Movie (2013 version)

The library also recommends:

Gnomeo & Juliet (animated movie)
West Side Story (old version) - coming soon
West Side Story (new version) - coming soon

ELA Grade 9, Unit 5

Grade 9, Unit 5 - The Dance of Romance

When is love worth the fall?

Untwine by Edwidge Danticat
Anthem by Ayn Rand
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Untwine by Edwidge Danticat
ISBN: 9780545423045
Publication Date: 2017-01-31
Waking up in the hospital seriously injured, Giselle reflects on her past choices to evaluate how her friends, her family and especially her identical twin have defined her existence. Award-winning author Edwidge Danticat brings her extraordinary talent to this graceful and unflinching examination of the bonds of friendship, romance, family, the horrors of loss, and the strength we must discover in ourselves when all seems hopeless.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

NO class sets in the book room - library can try to Inter-Library loan one or more for you to try

The library also recommends:

Anthem by Ayn Rand; Leonard Peikoff (Appendix by, Introduction by)
ISBN: 9780525940159
Publication Date: 1995-08-01
Ayn Rand's Anthem is a hymn to man's independent spirit and to the highest word in the human language - "Ego. Anthem tells the story of a man who rediscovers the individualism and his own "I" - in a world of absolute collectivization, a world where sightless, joyless, selfless men exist for the sake of serving the State; where their work, their food and their mating are prescribed to them by order of the Collective's rulers in the name of society's welfare.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

NO class sets in the book room - library can try to Inter-Library loan one or more for you to try
eBook (multiple file formats) from Project Gutenberg
Audiobook (from the Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection)

The library also recommends:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
ISBN: 9780140430035
Publication Date: 1965-12-30
Pip is a poor orphan, a boy with “no expectations” being raised by his unkind sister and her husband in a small home on the marshes of Kent. But when Pip meets the bizarre Miss Havisham and her beautiful ward, Estella, he starts to yearn for a life as a gentleman. However, Pip will discover that wealth and honesty do not go hand in hand, and that kindness can be found in the most surprising places. A love story, a mystery, and a sharp critique of upper-class English society, Great Expectations remains one of Dickens’s best-regarded works.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

NO class sets in the book room - library can try to Inter-Library loan one or more for you to try
English print copy
eBook (multiple file formats) from Project Gutenberg
Audiobook (from LibriVox)

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 9, Unit 6

Grade 9, Unit 6 - Human Potential

How can you help others achieve their goals?

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
ISBN: 9780553496673
Publication Date: 2017-03-07
What if you couldn't touch anything in the outside world? Never breathe in the fresh air, feel the sun warm your face . . . or kiss the boy next door? In Everything, Everything, Maddy is a girl who's literally allergic to the outside world, and Olly is the boy who moves in next door. My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I'm allergic to the world. I don't leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. Maybe we can't predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It's almost certainly going to be a disaster.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

NO class sets in the book room - library can try to Inter-Library loan one or more for you to try
English print copy
eBook
Audiobook
Movie

The library also recommends:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee Harper
ISBN: 9780060173227
Publication Date: 1995-09-01
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
Portuguese print copy
Graphic novel version
eBook
Audiobook
Movie

The library also recommends:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
ISBN: 9780345514400
Publication Date: 2009-04-21
Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age--and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook
Audiobook - coming soon

Cumberland High School Library: Grade 9

Hours

Librarian

Grade 9 ELA Cover Gallery

ELA Grade 9, Unit 1

Grade 9, Unit 1 - Divided We Fall

Why do we feel the need to belong?

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Angela's Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 9, Unit 2

Grade 9, Unit 2 - The Call to Adventure

What will you learn on your journey?

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 9, Unit 3

Grade 9, Unit 3 - Declaring Your Genius

How do you define intelligence?

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

The Odyssey by Homer

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 9, Unit 4

Grade 9, Unit 4 - The Art of Disguise

How do we perform for different audiences?

Romiette and Julio by Sharon Draper

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 9, Unit 5

Grade 9, Unit 5 - The Dance of Romance

When is love worth the fall?

Untwine by Edwidge Danticat

Anthem by Ayn Rand

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 9, Unit 6

Grade 9, Unit 6 - Human Potential

How can you help others achieve their goals?

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends: