April 23^rd, 2021 

April 23^rd is the World Book and Copyright Day. Do you know Ontario high school students are reading what kinds of books? There is a book list, called The Trillium List, which contains the titles of textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education for use in Ontario schools. By the way, students have a wide range of options for their reading in the English class. For instance, different high schools will not have a same book list for students' novel study. Let us show you a few book here and see what Bond students are reading in their English class.

Grade 9

• Speak

by Laurie Halse Anderson

At Merryweather High, Melinda gradually becomes isolated and stops talking altogether because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. She has begun her healing process by working on her art project. This time, when she has another violent encounter with the guy hurted her before, Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication.

Grade 10

• Shattered

by Eric Walters

In order to complete community volunteer service, fifteen-year-old Ian works at a soup kitchen for the homeless. It is here that he meets Sarge, the homeless man who saved Ian from a near-mugging. He was a Canadian soldier acted as a peacekeeper stationed in Rwanda, an African nation Ian knows little about. What he learns will change Ian’s view of the world—and may just help Sarge, too.

Grade 11

• Mister Pip

by Lloyd Jones

Thirteen-year-old Matilda lives on a copper-rich tropical island that has been shattered by war, from which the teachers have fled along with everyone else. Only one white man chooses to stay behind, the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn. He sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and steps in to teach the children when there is no one else, and his only lessons consist of reading from his battered copy of Great Expectations, a book by his friend Mr. Dickens.

Grade 12

• Everything I Never Told You

by Celeste Ng

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.

• A Raisin in the Sun

by Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry''s award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America—and changed American theater forever. The play''s title comes from a line in Langston Hughes''s poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." 

Have you read these books before? Bond's classrooms reflect multiculturalism, helping students from different ethnic groups to find connections with the inner world of the books.