Special Collections
Grade 11 and 12 Common Core Text Exemplars
Description: These books exemplify the level of complexity that Common Core State Standards require students to engage with. While the choices serve to help educators select texts of similar complexity, quality, and range, this not a required reading list. #teachers
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The Tipping Point
by Malcolm GladwellThe tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.
[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 11-12 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
Walden
by Henry David ThoreauTo celebrate the 150th anniversary of the original publication of Thoreau's classic work (which is cited in Books for College Libraries, 3rd ed.), this special edition is published in cooperation with the Walden Woods Project, a nonprofit organization founded in 1990 to preserve the land, literature, and legacy of Thoreau. The text includes a brief introduction by E. O. Wilson.
[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 11-12 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
What They Fought For, 1861-1865
by James M. McphersonIn Battle Cry Of Freedom, James M. McPherson presented a fascinating, concise general history of the defining American conflict. With What They Fought For, he focuses his considerable talents on what motivated the individual soldier to fight.
In an exceptional and highly original Civil War analysis, McPherson draws on the letters and diaries of nearly one thousand Union and Confederate soldiers, giving voice to the very men who risked their lives in the conflict.
His conclusion that most of them felt a keen sense of patriotic and ideological commitment counters the prevailing belief that Civil War soldiers had little or no idea of what they were fighting for. In their letters home and their diaries--neither of which were subject to censorship--these men were able to comment, in writing, on a wide variety of issues connected with their war experience.
Their insights show how deeply felt and strongly held their convictions were and reveal far more careful thought on the ideological issues of the war than has previously been thought to be true.
Living only eighty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Civil War soldiers felt the legacy and responsibility entrusted to them by the Founding Fathers to preserve fragile democracy--be it through secession or union--as something worth dying for.
In What They Fought For, McPherson takes individual voices and places them in the great and terrible choir of a country divided against itself. The result is both an impressive scholarly tour de force and a lively, highly accessible account of the sentiments of both Northern and Southern soldiers during the national trauma of the Civil War.
[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in History and Social Studies in grades 11-12 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
A White Heron and Other Stories
by Sarah Orne JewettA celebration of the past in stories dealing with female friendships and tales that portray the resilience with which her female characters respond to poverty. Includes "The Town Poor," "Miss Peck's Promotion," "The Passing of Sister Barsett," "The Denham Ladies," "Miss Tempy's Watchers," and 5 more.
[This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 11-12 at http://www.corestandards.org.]