Note from your new English Teacher:

Hello and welcome to Holy Family. We are so excited for you to

start! In this booklet you will find a range of activities for you to

complete over the summer holidays.

This is the first of two booklets which can be handed in to your

English teacher when you have your first class with them.

Booklet

1

Finding your next

favourite book… It is a brilliant feeling when you find a new book to read

that grabs your attention and you don’t want to put it

down. In the next section of the booklet are the openings

to a few novels you may have never read before. At the

end of each one, there are a few short questions to help

you explore whether or not the book has that attention

grabbing, un-put-down-ability, that all great readers look

for.

Please answer the questions honestly and who knows,

maybe you’ll find your next favourite book right here!

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

DEAD

How small I look. Laid out flat, my stomach touching ground.

My right knee bent and my brand-new Nikes stained with

blood. I stoop and stare at my face, my right cheek flattened

on concrete. My eyes are wide open. My mouth, too.

I’m dead.

I thought I was bigger. Tough. But I’m just a bit of nothing.

My arms are outstretched like I was trying to fly like

Superman. I’d barely turned, sprinting. Pow, pow. Two bullets.

Legs gave way. I fell flat. Hard. I hit snowy ground.

Ma’s running. She’s wailing, “My boy. My boy.” A policeman holds her back. Another

policeman is standing over me, murmuring, “It’s a kid. It’s a kid.” Ma’s struggling. She

gasps like she can’t breathe; she falls to her knees and screams.

I can’t bear the sound. Sirens wail. Other cops are coming. Did someone call an

ambulance?

I’m still dead. Alone on the field. The policeman closest to me is rubbing his head. In his

hand, his gun dangles. The other policeman is watching Ma like she’s going to hurt

someone. Then, he shouts, “Stay back!”.

People are edging closer, snapping pictures, taking video with their phones. “Stay back!”

The policeman’s hand covers his holster. More people come. Some shout. I hear my

name. “Jerome. It’s Jerome.” Still, everyone stays back. Some curse; some cry. Doesn’t

seem fair. Nobody ever paid me any attention. I skated by. Kept my head low.

Now I’m famous.

Chicago Tribune

OFFICER: “I HAD NO CHOICE!”

Jerome Rogers, 12, shot at abandoned Green Street lot. Officer says, “He had a gun.”

Grandma keeps house. She cooks, cleans. Makes it so me and Kim aren’t home alone.

Have snacks. Homework help (though I prefer playing video games).

GHOST

The apartment is packed. Ma’s sisters, Uncle Manny, my cousins. Reverend Thornton.

The kitchen table is covered with food—my favourites, potato salad, lemon meringue

pie, pork chops. If everyone wasn’t so sad-faced, I’d swear it was a party. I reach for a

cornbread square and my hand passes through it. Weird, but it’s okay. I’m not hungry. I

guess I’ll never be hungry again. I move, circling the living room.

People don’t pass through me. It’s like they sense I’m taking up space. Even though they

can’t see me, they shift, lean away. I’m glad about that. It’s enough being dead without

folks entering and leaving me like in Ghostbusters. Ma is in my bedroom, lying on my bed

with orange basketball sheets. A poster of Stephen Curry shooting a ball is taped on the

wall.

Ma’s eyes are swollen. Grandma holds her hand like she’s a little girl. I don’t feel much—

like I’m air touching the furniture or Ma’s hand. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re

dead? But seeing Ma crying makes me want to crush, slam something into the ground.

Inside me hurts; outside me feels nothing. I try to touch her—nothing—just like the

cornbread. Ma shivers and it makes me sad that I can’t comfort her.

I turn toward the doorway. Kim is reading a book. She does that when gunshots are

fired outside, when our upstairs neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Lyon, are fighting, yelling. For

now, I know she’s okay. Reading makes her feel better.

I stand in the doorway, shocked how my room is filled with family, how it isn’t my room

anymore. Isn’t my place where I imagine, dream I’m playing college ball. Or in the army,

diving out of airplanes. Or rapping on the radio. Or being president. To my right, Pop

leans into the corner. Like he wants to collapse into the space and disappear. His eyes

are closed and his arms are folded across his chest. Who will he shoot hoops with? Or

eat hot dogs with while cheering the Chicago Bears?

“I’m here. I’m still here,” I rasp.

Ma, on my bed, curls on her side; Pop’s lips tighten. Grandma looks up, searching.

“I’m still here, Grandma.”

Her face is a wrinkled mess. I didn’t realize it before, but Grandma is really old. She

looks up and through me. Her eyes glimmer; she nods. Does she see? Does she see me?

Reverend Thornton moves past me. He doesn’t realize he’s tucking his stomach in and

entering the room sideways. Grandma notices. Nobody else thinks it’s strange.

“We should pray,” he says.

“What for?” asks Pop. “Jerome’s not coming back.”

Ma gasps, sits up. “James. We don’t know God’s will.”

“It’s man’s will—it’s a policeman acting a fool. Murdering my boy.” Pop’s fist slams the

wall. The drywall cracks. I’ve never seen Pop violent.

1. Explain what you thought about the opening of this story?

The opening of the story was________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

__________________________________________

2. How did the writer try to grab your attention (how did he/she try and

make you interested in the story)?

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

____________________

3. Would you like to carry on reading this story? Give your reasons.

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

Squirm by Carl Hiaasen This one kid, he got kicked out of school.

That’s not easy to do—you need to break some actual laws.

We heard lots of rumours, but nobody gave us the straight

story. The kid’s name was Jammer, and I got his locker. Who

knows what he kept in there, but he must’ve given out the

combination to half the school. Kids were always messing

with my stuff when I wasn’t around.

So I put a snake inside the locker. Problem solved. It was an

Eastern diamondback, a serious reptile. Eight buttons on the

rattle, so it made some big noise when people opened the

locker door. The freak-out factor was high.

Don’t worry—the rattlesnake couldn’t bite. I taped its mouth shut. That’s a tricky move,

not for rookies. You need steady hands and zero common sense. I wouldn’t try it again.

The point is I didn’t want that rattler to hurt anyone. I just wanted kids to stay out of

my locker. Which they now do. I set the diamondback free a few miles down Grapefruit

Road, on the same log where I found him. It’s important to exit the scene fast, because

an adult rattlesnake can strike up to one-half of its body length. Most people don’t know

that, and why would they? It’s not a necessary piece of information, if you live a halfway

normal life.

Which I don’t.

“What does your dad do?”

I hear this question whenever we move somewhere new. My standard answer: “He runs

his own business.” But the truth is I don’t know what my father does. He sends a check,

Mom cashes it. I haven’t seen the guy since I was like three years old. Maybe four. Does

it bother me? Possibly. Sure. I’ve done some reading about this, how it can mess up a

person when his parents split, especially when one of them basically vanishes from the

family scene. I don’t want to be one of those screwed-up kids, but I can’t rule out the

possibility.

Mom doesn’t say much about Dad. The checks always show up on time—the tenth of the

month—and they never bounce. We might not be rich, but we’re definitely not poor.

You wouldn’t believe how many pairs of shoes my sister owns. God, I give her so much

grief. The way I look at it, Mom doesn’t get a free pass just because she doesn’t want

to talk about my father. That’s not what you’d call a healthy, open approach to an issue.

So I stay on her case, though not in a mean way.

“What does he do for a living?” I’ll say, like I’ve never asked before.

“Well, Billy, I’m not exactly sure what he does,” she’ll begin in the same tight voice, “but

I can tell you what he doesn’t do.”

Over time, based on my mother’s commentary, I’ve scratched the following professions

off my Phantom Father list: Astronaut, quantum physicist, lawyer, doctor, heavy-metal

guitarist, veterinarian, architect, hockey player, NASCAR driver, jockey, plumber,

roofer, electrician, pilot, policeman, car salesman, and yoga instructor.

Mom says Dad’s too claustrophobic to be an astronaut, too lousy at math to be a

quantum physicist, too shy to be a lawyer, too squeamish to be a doctor, too

uncoordinated to play the guitar, too tall to be a jockey, too hyper for yoga, and so on.

I don’t like this game, but I’m making progress, information-wise. Mom’s still touchy

about the subject, so I try to take it easy. Meanwhile, my sister, Belinda, acts like she

doesn’t care, like she’s not the least bit curious about the old man. This fake attitude is

known as a “coping mechanism,” according to what I’ve read.

Maybe my father is a psychiatrist, and one day I’ll lie down on his couch and we’ll sort

out all this stuff together. Or not.

At school I try to keep a low profile. When you move around as much as my family does,

making friends isn’t practical. Leaving is easier if there’s no one to say goodbye to. That

much I’ve learned.

But sometimes you’re forced to “interact.” There’s no choice. Sometimes staying low-

profile is impossible. The last week of school, some guy on the lacrosse team starts

pounding on a kid in the D-5 hallway. Now, this kid happens to be a dork, no question, but

he’s harmless. And the lacrosse player outweighs him by like forty pounds. Still, a crowd

is just standing around watching this so-called fight, which is really just a mugging.

There are dudes way bigger than me, major knuckle-draggers, cheering and yelling.

Not one of them makes a move to stop the beating. So I throw down my book bag, jump

on Larry Lacrosse, and hook my right arm around his neck. Pretty soon his face goes

purple and his eyes bulge out like a constipated bullfrog’s.

That’s when a couple of his teammates pull me off, and one of the P.E. teachers rushes

in to break up the tangle. Nobody gets suspended, not even a detention, which is typical.

The dorky kid, the one who was getting pounded, I didn’t know his name. The lacrosse

guy turns out to be a Kyle something. We’ve got like seven Kyles at our school, and I

can’t keep track of them all. This one comes up to me later, between sixth and seventh

period, and says he’s going to kick my butt. Then one of his friends grabs his arm and

whispers, “Easy, dude. That’s the psycho with the rattler in his locker.”

I smile my best psycho smile, and Kyle disappears. Big tough jock who likes to beat up

kids half his size. Pathetic.

But lots of people are terrified of snakes. It’s called ophidiophobia. The experts say it’s

a deep primal fear. I wouldn’t know.

During seventh period I get pulled out of class by the school “resource officer,” which

is what they call the sheriff’s deputy who hangs out in the main office. His name is

Thickley, and technically he’s in charge of campus security. He’s big and friendly,

cruising toward retirement.

“Billy, I’m going to ask you straight up,” he says in the hallway. “There’s a rumor you’ve

got a snake in your locker. A rattlesnake.”

“A live rattler?” I laugh. “That’s crazy.”

“Can we have a look?”… That’s when it all went wrong.

1. Explain what you thought about the opening of this story?

The opening of the story was________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

__________________________

2. How did the writer try to grab your attention (how did he/she try and

make you interested in the story)?

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

_______________________________

3. Would you like to carry on reading this story? Give your reasons.

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

_______________________________

The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Rauf There used to be an empty chair at the back of my classroom. It

wasn’t a special chair. It was just empty because there was no one

sitting in it. But then, one day

just three weeks after school started, the most exciting thing

that could ever happen to anyone, happened to me and my three

best friends. And it all began with that chair.

Usually, the best thing about starting a brand-new term is that

you get extra pocket money to buy new stationery with. Every

year, on the last Sunday of the summer holidays, my mum takes

me on an Extra Special Adventure to hunt down my stationery set

for the new school year. Sometimes I get so excited that my feet

feel jumpy inside and I don’t know which shop I want to go into first. There aren’t many

nice stationery shops where I live – they only ever have boring dinosaur sets for boys or

princess sets for girls. So Mum takes me on the bus and train into the city where there

are whole streets of shops – even huge department stores that look like tall blocks of

flats from the outside.

I don’t like maths. Simple maths is fine, but this year we’re learning about long division

and square numbers and all sorts of things that my brain doesn’t like doing. Sometimes I

ask for help, but it’s embarrassing putting your hand up too many times to ask the same

question. I’m lucky because Tom and Josie and Michael always help me with the things I

get stuck with. They’re my best friends and we do everything together. You know a

friend’s a Best Friend when they’re willing to sit in detention with you, that’s what Josie

and Michael did for me (escaped hamster … long story).

Josie and Michael are always competing with each other to see who can get the most

gold stars and A’s in class. Michael is the best at history and Josie is the best at maths.

But I’m better at reading and spelling than both of them – especially Josie. She hates

reading and never, ever reads anything outside class. She says she doesn’t have an

imagination, so there’s no point to reading books. I find that strange, because how can

anyone not have an imagination? I think she must have had one when she was younger

but that it was knocked out of her when she fell off her bike last summer.

Mum says people without imaginations are dead inside. I don’t think Josie is dead

anywhere – she talks too much.

Having three best friends can make school seem like the best place to be, even on the

most boring day. Although this year, school has become a whole lot more

fun – and that’s because of our new teacher, Mrs Khan. Mrs Khan has extra bouncy hair

and always smells of strawberry jam – which is much better than smelling of old socks

like Mr Thompson used to do. She’s new to the school and extra clever – much cleverer

than Mr Thompson ever was. And she gives us prizes on Fridays when we’ve all been

good. No other teacher in our year does that.

Mrs Khan lets us do all sorts of interesting things that we have never done before. In

the first week of school, she helped us make musical instruments out of things we found

in the school’s recycling bin, and in the second week, she brought in a brand-new comic

book to read to us that wasn’t even in the school library yet. Then in the third week,

something happened that was so surprising and made everyone so curious, that even Mrs

Khan couldn’t make us focus on our lessons properly. And it all began with the empty

chair.

It was on the third Tuesday after school had started, and Mrs Khan was taking the

register. She was just about to call my name when there was a loud knock at the door.

Usually when there’s a knock on the door it’s just someone from another class bringing a

note, so no one really pays any attention; but this time it was Mrs Sanders, the Head.

Mrs Sanders always wears her hair in the exact same way and peers over her glasses

whenever she talks to anyone. Everyone is scared of her, because when she gives

detention, she doesn’t just make you sit in a room; she makes you memorise long words

from the dictionary and doesn’t let you leave until you’ve learnt them all off by heart –

the meaning AND the spelling. I’ve even heard of lower graders being stuck in detention

for hours because they had to learn words that were as long as this page! So when we

saw that it was Mrs Sanders at the door, we all fell silent. She looked very serious as

she walked up to Mrs Khan, and we all wondered who was in trouble. After she had

whispered and nodded for a few seconds, she suddenly

turned around and, peering over her glasses at us, pointed to

the empty chair at the back of the class.

All of us turned around to have a look at the empty chair.

As I said, it was a pretty ordinary chair, and it was empty

because a girl called Dena left our class at the end of last

year to move to Wales. No one really missed her except for

her best friend Clarissa.

After whispering for a few more seconds with Mrs Khan,

Mrs Sanders left the classroom. We expected Mrs Khan to say

something, but she seemed to be waiting, so we waited too. It was all very serious and

exciting. But before we could start guessing about what was going on, Mrs Sanders came

back, and this time she wasn’t alone.

Standing behind her was a boy. A boy none of us had ever seen before. He had short

dark hair and large eyes that hardly blinked and smooth pale skin.

‘Everyone,’ said Mrs Khan, as the boy went and stood next to her. ‘This is Ahmet, and

he’ll be joining our class from today. He’s just moved to London and is new to the school,

so I hope you’ll all do your very best to make him feel welcome.’

We all watched in silence as Mrs Sanders led him to the empty chair. I felt sorry for

him because I knew he wouldn’t like sitting next to Clarissa very much. She still missed

Dena, and everyone knew she hated boys – she says they’re stupid and smell. I think it

must be one of the worst things in the world to be new to a place and have to sit with

people you don’t know. Especially people that stare and scowl at you like Clarissa was

doing. I made a secret promise to myself right there and then that I would be friends

with the new boy. I happened to have some lemon sherbets in my bag that morning and I

thought I would try and give him one at break-time. And I would ask Josie and Tom and

Michael if they would be his friends too.

After all, having four new friends would be much better than having none. Especially for

a boy who looked as scared and as sad as the one now sitting at the back of our class.

1. Explain what you thought about the opening of this story?

The opening of the story was________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

2. How did the writer try to grab your attention (how did he/she try and

make you interested in the story)?

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

3. Would you like to carry on reading this story? Give your reasons.

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

My Book Shelf.

Fill this bookshelf with the names of some of your favourite books

and books you want to read.