RILINK Schools: Cumberland High School Library: Grade 12

Hours

7:00 am - 2:00 pm

Monday - Friday

Librarian

Grade 12 ELA Cover Gallery

ELA Grade 12, Unit 1

Grade 12, Unit 1 - What's Next?

How can we transform the future?

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
ISBN: 9781505297058
Publication Date: 2014-11-30
The Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed (metamorphosed) into a large, monstrous insect-like creature. The cause of Samsa's transformation is never revealed, and Kafka himself never gave an explanation. The rest of Kafka's novella deals with Gregor's attempts to adjust to his new condition as he deals with being burdensome to his parents and sister, who are repulsed by the horrible, verminous creature Gregor has become.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

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

The library also recommends:

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
ISBN: 9780812988406
Publication Date: 2016-01-12
This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

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

The library also recommends:

Brave New World by Aldous. Huxley
ISBN: 9780060850524
Publication Date: 2006-10-17
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order--all at the cost of our freedom, and perhaps also our souls. Brave New World has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as a thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New World likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook
Graphic novel version available via inter-library loan
Audiobook

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 12, Unit 2

Grade 12, Unit 2 - Uncovering Truth

How do challenges cause us to reveal our true selves?

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Richard III by William Shakespeare
Beowulf by Anonymous / translated by Seamus Heaney
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
ISBN: 9780743477123
Publication Date: 2003-07-01
Hamlet is Shakespeare's most popular, and most puzzling, play. It follows the form of a "revenge tragedy," in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against his father's murderer, his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its fascination, however, lies in its uncertainties. Among them: What is the Ghost--Hamlet's father demanding justice, a tempting demon, an angelic messenger? Does Hamlet go mad, or merely pretend to? Once he is sure that Claudius is a murderer, why does he not act? Was his mother, Gertrude, unfaithful to her husband or complicit in his murder?

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 - coming soon

The library also recommends:

Richard III by William Shakespeare
ISBN: 9781476786926
Publication Date: 2018-02-06
In Richard III, Shakespeare invites us on a moral holiday. The play draws us to identify with Richard and his fantasy of total control of self and domination of others. Not yet king at the start of the play, Richard presents himself as an enterprising villain as he successfully plans to dispose of his brother Clarence. Richard achieves similar success in conquering the woman he chooses to marry. He carves a way to the throne through assassination and executions.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook (multiple file formats) from Folger Shakespeare Library
Audiobook - coming soon

The library also recommends:

Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
ISBN: 9780393320978
Publication Date: 2001-02-17
Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid fight against a dragon. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface.

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
Movie

The library also recommends:

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
ISBN: 9781501146213
Publication Date: 2016-07-12
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare stages the workings of love. Theseus and Hippolyta, about to marry, are figures from mythology. In the woods outside Theseus's Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves out into couples--but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another. Also in the woods, the king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy; Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, whose head is temporarily transformed into that of a donkey by a hobgoblin or "puck," Robin Goodfellow. Finally, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of "Pyramus and Thisbe."

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 Folger Shakespeare Library
Audiobook - coming soon
Movie

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 12, Unit 3

Grade 12, Unit 3 - Against the Wind

How do leaders fight for their ideas?

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandava

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
ISBN: 9780679405450
Publication Date: 1991-11-26
Jonathan Swift's classic satirical narrative was first published in 1726, As a parody travel-memoir it reports on extraordinary lands and societies, whose names have entered the English language: notably the minute inhabitants of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, and the Yahoos in Houyhnhnmland, where talking horses are the dominant species. It spares no vested interest from its irreverent wit, and its attack on political and financial corruption, as well as abuses in science, continue to resonate in our own times.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook (multiple file formats) from Project Gutenberg
Audiobook - coming soon
Audiobook (from the Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection)
Movie

The library also recommends:

Gulliver Mickey (Disney short)

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
ISBN: 9780316545853
Publication Date: 1994-11-01
Nelson Mandela was one of the great moral and political leaders of his time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. After his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela was at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is still revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

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 - coming soon
Movie - coming soon

The library also recommends:

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
ISBN: 9780451531728
Publication Date: 2010-12-07
Nectar in a Sieve depicts a woman's struggle to find happiness in a changing India. Married as a child bride to a tenant farmer she had never met, Rukmani works side by side in the field with her husband to wrest a living from a land ravaged by droughts, monsoons, and insects. With remarkable fortitude and courage, she meets changing times and fights poverty and disaster. This beautiful and eloquent story tells of a simple peasant woman in a primitive village in India whose whole life is a gallant and persistent battle to care for those she loves.

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

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 12, Unit 4

Grade 12, Unit 4 - Sculpting Reality

What is the power of story?

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar. Wilde
ISBN: 9780380012770
Publication Date: 1976-01-01
The Importance of Being Earnest is satire of Victorian social hypocrisy; the witty play is considered Wilde's greatest dramatic achievement. Jack Worthing is a fashionable young man who lives in the country with his ward, Cecily Cardew. He has invented a rakish brother named Ernest whose supposed exploits give Jack an excuse to travel to London periodically to rescue him. Jack is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, the cousin of his friend Algernon Moncrieff. Gwendolen, who thinks Jack's name is Ernest, returns his love, but her mother, Lady Bracknell, objects to their marriage because Jack is an orphan who was found in a handbag at Victoria Station.

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)
Movie - coming soon

The library also recommends:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
ISBN: 9780062118158
Publication Date: 2011-12-27
Emily Brontë’s 1847 gothic novel is set on the windy moors of Yorkshire and depicts the tragic and ill-fated love between Catherine Earnshaw and her father’s adopted son, Heathcliff. Using vivid imagery to portray their volatile, passionate relationship, Brontë has crafted a timeless masterpiece that honestly depicts the pain and anguish felt from love, hatred, and revenge.

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
Audiobook (from the Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection)
Movie - coming soon

The library also recommends:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane. Austen
ISBN: 9781503290563
Publication Date: 2014-11-29
Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows Mr and Mrs Bennet's five unmarried daughters after the rich and eligible Mr Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr Darcy, have moved into their neighbourhood. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, Darcy has difficulty adapting to local society and repeatedly clashes with the second-eldest Bennet daughter, Elizabeth. Elizabeth deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of the British Regency.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook (multiple file formats) from Project Gutenberg
Audiobook
Audiobook (from the Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection)
Movie

The library also recommends:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
ISBN: 9780141441146
Publication Date: 2006-08-15
A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre has dazzled generations of readers with its depiction of a woman's quest for freedom. Having grown up an orphan in the home of her cruel aunt and at a harsh charity school, Jane Eyre becomes an independent and spirited survivor-qualities that serve her well as governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a choice. Should she stay with him whatever the consequences or follow her convictions, even if it means leaving her beloved?

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)
Movie - coming soon

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 12, Unit 5

Grade 12, Unit 5 - Fractured Selves

What causes individuals to feel alienated?

1984 by George Orwell
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

1984 by George Orwell
ISBN: 9780451524935
Publication Date: 1950-07-01
Written in 1950, George Orwell's 1984 offers a chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can't escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching... A startling and haunting novel, 1984 creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the novel's hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions--a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

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

The library also recommends:

Frankenstein by Mary W. Shelley
ISBN: 9781512308051
Publication Date: 2015-05-21
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about the young student of science Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Few creatures of horror have seized readers' imaginations and held them for so long as the anguished monster of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story of Victor Frankenstein's terrible creation and the havoc it caused has enthralled generations of readers and inspired countless writers of horror and suspense. With Frankenstein, she succeeded admirably in the task she set for herself: to create a story that, in her own words, "would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror -- one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart."

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook (multiple file formats) from Project Gutenberg
Audiobook
Audiobook (from the Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection)
Movie - coming soon

The library also recommends:

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
ISBN: 9780307278449
Publication Date: 2007-05-08
A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. In Morrison's acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove--an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

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 12, Unit 6

Grade 12, Unit 6 - Times of Transition

How are we shaped by change?

Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Sovinka
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka
ISBN: 9780393888720
Publication Date: 2023-09-25
Based on events that took place in Oyo, an ancient Yoruba city of Nigeria, in 1946, Wole Soyinka's powerful play concerns the intertwined lives of Elesin Oba, the king's chief horseman; his son, Olunde, now studying medicine in England; and Simon Pilkings, the colonial district officer. The king has died and Elesin, his chief horseman, is expected by law and custom to commit suicide and accompany his ruler to heaven. The stage is set for a dramatic climax when Pilkings learns of the ritual and decides to intervene and Elesin's son arrives home.

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

The library also recommends:

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
ISBN: 9781594631931
Publication Date: 2013-03-05
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, caught in the tragic sweep of history, The Kite Runner transports readers to Afghanistan at a tense and crucial moment of change and destruction. A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons--their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

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

The library also recommends:

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
ISBN: 9780679722021
Publication Date: 1989-03-13
In this haunting masterpiece of postcolonial literature, Naipaul gives us a convincing and disturbing vision of a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past. This novel takes us into the life of a young Indian man who moves to an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Uncertain of his future, he has come to take possession of a local trading post he has naively purchased sight unseen. But what Salim discovers on his arrival is a ghost town, reduced to ruins in the wake of the recently departed European colonizers and in the process of being reclaimed by the surrounding forest. Salim struggles to build his business against a backdrop of growing chaos, conflict, ignorance, and poverty. Salim discovers that the nation's violent legacy persists, through the rise of a dictator who calls himself the people's savior but whose regime is built on fear and lies.

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
Audiobook - coming soon

The library also recommends:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
ISBN: 9781936594146
Publication Date: 2011-07-04
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. The story tells of Charles Marlow, an Englishman who took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Heart of Darkness exposes the myth behind colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist, Marlow, encounters--the darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the European's cruel treatment of the natives, and the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil.

Available formats in the CHS Library:

Class sets in the book room
English print copy
eBook (multiple file formats) from Project Gutenberg
Audiobook
Audiobook (from the Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection)

Cumberland High School Library: Grade 12

Hours

Librarian

Grade 12 ELA Cover Gallery

ELA Grade 12, Unit 1

Grade 12, Unit 1 - What's Next?

How can we transform the future?

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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 12, Unit 2

Grade 12, Unit 2 - Uncovering Truth

How do challenges cause us to reveal our true selves?

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Richard III by William Shakespeare

Beowulf by Anonymous / translated by Seamus Heaney

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

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:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 12, Unit 3

Grade 12, Unit 3 - Against the Wind

How do leaders fight for their ideas?

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandava

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 12, Unit 4

Grade 12, Unit 4 - Sculpting Reality

What is the power of story?

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

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:

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

ELA Grade 12, Unit 5

Grade 12, Unit 5 - Fractured Selves

What causes individuals to feel alienated?

1984 by George Orwell

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

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 12, Unit 6

Grade 12, Unit 6 - Times of Transition

How are we shaped by change?

Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Sovinka

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Available formats in the CHS Library:

The library also recommends:

Available formats in the CHS Library: