Book updates: Older daughter had to Read Catcher in the Rye (which we already talker about in this thread and I posted a vocabulary thread about). Now for mandatory summer reading, younger daughter has to read it! Poor girl. Well, maybe she might actually like

For mandatory summer reading... older daughter she has to read:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel (which is being made into a 3D film by Ang Lee)
The Secret Sits by Robert Frost
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
The Tiger by William Blake
Some things that fly there be (#89) by Emily Dickinson
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
and Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers by Adrienne Rich

Then... Select one of the poems and write an essay in which you compare and contrast a particular aspect of this poem to the novel Life of Pi.

While looking to the Life of Pi in the used book store, I came across a copy of Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andrei Makine. This book is the first novel in history to win both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis plus the Goncourt des Lyceens. It was actually written in French and translated into English. Here is a link to the review from The New York Times

The first of Makine's four novels to appear in English, this autobiographical novel won the 1995 Prix Medicis for Best Foreign Fiction as well as France's prestigious Prix Goncourt, never before awarded to a non-Frenchman. Its coming-of-age story describes young Andrei's summers with his French grandmother Charlotte in the remote Russian village of Saranza. She came to Russia as a Red Cross nurse during World War I and fell in love with a Russian lawyer who went off to the front and later died a premature death from his war wounds. Charlotte and Andrei spend many summer evenings sharing her memories of turn-of-the-century Paris. As the adolescent Andrei struggles with his identity?is he Russian or French?he discovers that it was possible for Charlotte to live in such a foreign land and retain her "Frenchness" because of her love for her husband. Andrei finally reconciles these contrasting facets of his identity and eventually emigrates to France. Makine has fashioned a deeply felt, lyrically told tale.
I hope that maybe... I'll be able to read this one over the summer. Has anyone read this book already???