AP ENGLISH LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION
SUMMER ASSIGNMENT 2024
AP English Literature is an enriching, rewarding, and rigorous course that builds upon the work you have done
over the past three years, extending and deepening the emphasis on argumentation, literary analysis, style
analysis, research and synthesis, and crafted communication. We will continue to carefully analyze complex and
beautiful works of literature, many of which require great patience, attentiveness, and involvement from us as
readers. These texts represent a variety of perspectives from around the globe, as well as a variety of genres, time
periods, sensibilities, styles, structures, and aesthetics. We also will continue to hone our voices as writers,
expanding the range, versatility, and beauty of how we communicate interpretations of texts. We will write about
the texts we study—and we will design and craft our own texts.
There is a required summer assignment which sets up our first unit of the year. This work sets the stage for our
first series of discussions, our first in-class writing assignments, and our first major paper in the fall. This means
that you will not be able to begin the work of the course until the summer assignment has been completed.
This summer, you must closely READ, ANNOTATE, and WRITE ABOUT the following novel:
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
by Kathleen Rooney
ISBN-10: 1250113326
ISBN-13: 978-1250113320
You can purchase the book at Beck's Bookstore (via the HP website), Amazon, halfpricebooks.com, bn.com,
and from other independent booksellers.
Please read the text closely and carefully, annotating according to the guidelines outlined below. The text is
lyrical, poetic, and powerful, and we expect that any student taking AP Literature will be able to independently
make sense of this novel. As an added bonus, Ms. Rooney is scheduled to visit with AP English Literature
students in August! She too will expect everyone to have done a careful reading of her book.
TRIGGER WARNING: You should be aware that the novel includes one scene of an attempted suicide.
If this topic is triggering for you, please skip pages 263-265.
Annotation Assignment
As you read, carefully and thoroughly annotate for the following:
1. Themes and Arguments: About voice, identity, freedom, choice, beauty, consciousness, gender, grief,
empowerment, poetry, humanity, etc. About forging one’s own path in life. About navigating our way
through ambiguity, relationships, darkness, illness, etc. About how we understand who and what we
value most in life, as well as why.
2. Stylistic / Rhetorical Devices: Pay attention to HOW the text is written—how Rooney incorporates
poetry, moves from past to present and back, crafts sentences, chooses words, etc. Use your work from
junior year to guide your reading of this novel. Mark sentences that are beautifully crafted and artfully
persuasive.
3. Contemporary and Personal Relevance: Consider how this novel speaks to and critiques the world in
which we live today and how we have learned to navigate our pathways towards an “idealized” sense of
the future. Comment on other themes and arguments that resonate with your life, your family, and your
concerns.
You will turn in your annotations on the first of school in the fall. If you prefer to write your annotations in
your notebook or type them, then be sure to refer to specific passages in the book, along with page numbers, in
your writing. You will turn in this writing along with your book.