Summer Reading/Writing for AP English Lit. & Composition (2026-2027)

Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition

Summer Reading/Writing 2026-2027

Instructor: Mr. Coffee, mcoffee@phm.k12.in.us 

Students registered for the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition course (0329) will receive their Summer Reading task as a shared document via email from Mr. Coffee near the end of the 2025-2026 school year. The parent email of record in Skyward will also receive that shared doc. The summer reading task will be available at the Penn High School website and through Kingsmen Nation sent from Mrs. Fry to all Penn students. 

Students enrolled in AP English Lit are typically seniors; although, it is not required that a student be a senior to participate in AP Lit. Students who believe they are improperly registered and should have received a Summer assignment should participate in the task and contact their counselors immediately in August 2026 as the school year gets under way. 

“Advanced Placement is always a choice, and it should be an informed one.”

N.B. The AP English Lit Course Description published by College Board in 2014 indicates that students enrolling in this course “should read widely and reflect on their reading through extensive discussion, writing and rewriting . . . [and] should assume considerable responsibility for the amount of reading and writing they do” (5). Additionally, this course seeks to engage “students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students consider a work’s structure, style, and themes as well as such smaller-scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism, and tone” (7). – Any reading students complete this summer should be done with this in mind. 

More recently, the AP English Literature Course and Exam Description published by College Board (Effective Fall 2024) establishes that: 

Over the course of their literature studies in secondary school, and by the end of their AP English Literature 

and Composition class, students should have studied a variety of texts by diverse authors from a variety of 

time periods ranging from the English Renaissance to the present. However, students may not be prepared 

to read and analyze the most challenging literature from the very beginning of the course because students 

have not yet developed proficiency in the content and skills necessary to engage such literary works. The 

texts that students read should accommodate their current reading skill proficiency but also appropriately 

challenge them to further develop their reading skills. (115)

It is important to remember as students read this summer and through the coming year: “[T]he universal value of literary art [often] probes difficult and harsh life experiences,” and as a result: 

fair representation of issues and peoples may occasionally include controversial material. Since AP students have chosen a program that directly involves them in college-level work, the AP English Literature and Composition Exam depends on a level of maturity consistent with the age of 12th-grade students who have engaged in thoughtful analysis of literary texts . . . AP students should have the maturity, the skill and the will to seek the larger meaning through thoughtful research. Such thoughtfulness is both fair and owed to the art and to the author. (“Course Description,” 2014, 8) 

 

In order to truly learn, we must often be uncomfortable. College Board states: 

Issues that might, from a specific cultural viewpoint, be considered controversial, including depictions of nationalities, religions, ethnicities, dialects, gender, or class, are often represented artistically in works of literature. AP students are not expected or asked to subscribe to any one specific set of cultural or political values, but are expected to have the maturity to analyze perspectives different from their own and to question the meaning, purpose, or effect of such content within the literary work as a whole. (“Course and Exam Description,” 2024, 115). 

The texts we will read this year do contain mature content (additionally, students have four independent reading choices that they may select from novels or plays that have appeared as suggested titles on previous AP Exams, and I have not read every one of those suggested titles). Our responsibility as scholars is to confront such material and understand why it is there. As I tell students from the start, any discomfort we may feel is akin to that we feel when we’re watching something with our parents, and that scene has to come on. 

*At the end of this document, please find a list of texts which we have read in this class in the past. Please note that we will not read all of the texts listed. Those listed and those assigned for summer reading represent the content a student might expect and the reading stamina an AP Lit student ought to have. 

Recall Test: Students’ summer reading grade will be determined by a multiple-choice test on both texts and an in-class timed essay over only one of the pieces students are responsible for this summer (students will choose which selection they will write about, and they will choose the prompt to which they will respond). Assessment will not occur until after Labor Day weekend which falls on the 7th this year (9/9 and 9/10). This gives us an opportunity to address questions face to face regarding the reading. We encourage students to complete the reading before school begins, but there is no writing assignment due on the first day. The multiple-choice and in-class essay will be recorded as two of the first scores of the school year. In addition, the writing task will also serve as a baseline by which to measure academic growth and mastery of skills of each student.

Summer Reading Requirements:  Over the course of the summer, actively read two texts: 

• Macbeth by William Shakespeare which will be the main stage production from the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival this summer. Opening night is historically right around our return to school (August 18-30). I will let you know more details as we get closer and they become available. 
• Richard II also by William Shakespeare. 

If students have accessed this document electronically, both plays do legally appear in the public domain, and links are provided. While I recommend hard copies for note-taking purposes in the text, I am not requiring such a task. I would recommend taking physical notes in a notebook as a student reads if they are unable to acquire a personal copy. 

These texts will serve as reference points this year, and they may appear as a recommended title for students to write about on the AP Literature Exam in May 2027. Additionally, they represent some of the literary challenges we will face both in class and on the AP exam in May 2027. 

In other words, if students struggle with Shakespeare, they may want to reconsider their course of choice for the year. Granted, students will not be left alone with difficult texts throughout the year. If they are willing to give it the effort, we will seek ways to make meaning from our reading together (and students are not entirely alone this summer either, as I am available for students’ questions via email through the summer). Therefore, before reconsidering because of a struggle, students should remember to ask for help.

Please share this handout with parents/guardians so that they know our purposes.  If students have any questions at any time, please do not hesitate to contact me at mcoffee@phm.k12.in.us. 

This is not an exercise in just jumping through hoops. There are thematic ideas that are introduced through these pieces that will span the year. Additionally, it is crucial that students have as much literature in their toolbelt as possible in preparation for the AP Exam. A total of 19 different Shakespeare plays have appeared as suggested titles on the AP Exam.

I recommend students do not wait until the last minute to begin reading these texts. Below, please find suggestions for how to focus their reading. 

Keep an eye out for the thematic motifs identified below:

• Many works of literature feature a character who may be reluctant to make a decision, unable to make a decision, or is resistant to doing so. This indecision can have broader implications for that character or other characters. Such implications may include changes to a character’s relationships, social and/or financial stability, well-being, or any other aspects of the character’s existence. Students should be able to explain how a character from their summer reading is indecisive and how that indecision contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.
• In his 2004 novel Magic Seeds, V. S. Naipaul writes: “It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts. That’s where everything starts unravelling.”  Students should be able to identify a character from their summer reading who holds an “ideal view of the world” and be able to analyze the character’s idealism and its positive or negative consequences, and explain how the author’s portrayal of this idealism illuminates an interpretation of the work as a whole. 
• It has often been said that what we value can be determined only by what we sacrifice. Consider how this statement applies to a character from your summer reading. Identify a character who has deliberately sacrificed, surrendered, or forfeited something in a way that highlights that character’s values. Then analyze how the particular sacrifice illuminates the character’s values and provides a deeper understanding of an interpretation of the work as a whole.  

Remember–when reflecting on the impact of a thematic idea on an interpretation of the work as a whole, to merely state that without that moment or action or character (just for example), the text wouldn’t be the same, one’s reader’s response would then be, “well, duh.” Also, the impact on the interpretation is not that the thematic idea merely furthers the plot. 

An interpretation of the work as a whole is its universal thematic statement. It is the overarching message about life or humanity, as stated or implied through the piece of literature. It is not a single word. For instance, Lord of the Flies’ theme is not savagery. Rather, Jack’s hunters’ cruelty in Lord of the Flies reveals that without parents and policemen and neighbors to keep a watchful eye, no matter how civilized we may think ourselves to be, we are not insulated from losing ourselves to temptations.

 

Again, if students have any questions, they should contact Mr. Coffee at the email provided above. 

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Representative texts from previous years of AP English Literature and Composition (I will sometimes read something over the summer and realize that I just have to find a way to incorporate it – James by Percival Everett, and both Margaret Atwood’s novels set in Gilead (The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments) were on my list a couple years ago, and this year, I’m looking at a retelling of King Lear, Learwife by JR Thorpe:

Medea by Euripedes The Oresteia by Aeschylus

Beowulf trans. Burton Raffel Grendel by John Gardner

Hamlet by William Shakespeare Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Henry IV, Part One by Shakespeare “Master Harold” . . . and the boys by Athol Fugard

King Lear by Shakespeare A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Macbeth by Shakespeare The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Othello by Shakespeare The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

The Tempest by Shakespeare Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot Becket by Jean Anouilh 

1984 by George Orwell The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Tess of the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys