Reading Challenge Stop One: North America
Our first stop on our continental reading challenge is North America. North America is in the northern and western hemispheres. As of 2016, North America was home to roughly five hundred and eighty million people, four hundred and fifty-seven species of mammals and a little scarily, four thousand known species of arachnids.
North America is twenty-four million, seven hundred and nine thousand kilometres square and covers sixteen point five per cent of the Earth’s landmass and four-point-eight per cent of its total area. With such a large landmass it has a lot of different time zones spreading from UTC-10 to UTC.
It is thought that the Americas were named after an Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci by German cartographers Martin Walderseemüller and Matthias Ringmann.
There are twenty-three countries in North America and multiple regions that are part of other countries. These countries include: the United States of America; Canada; Mexico; Cuba; Jamaica; Costa Rica and Haiti to name a few. Multiple languages are spoken in North America including English; Spanish; French and Vietnamese.
There are a lot of books set in North America, especially in the United States: we’ve tried to give a wide range of different North American countries.
Costa Rica: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them – for a price.
Until something goes wrong…
The United States of America: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
‘Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a Mockingbird.’
Lawyer Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee’s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl.
Canada: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
As soon as Anne Shirley arrives at the snug white farmhouse called Green Gables, she is sure she wants to stay forever . . . but will the Cuthberts send her back to to the orphanage? Anne knows she’s not what they expected—a skinny girl with fiery red hair and a temper to match. If only she can convince them to let her stay, she’ll try very hard not to keep rushing headlong into scrapes and blurting out the first thing that comes to her mind. Anne is not like anyone else, the Cuthberts agree; she is special—a girl with an enormous imagination. This orphan girl dreams of the day when she can call herself Anne of Green Gables.
Mexico: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
The United States of America: Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood
A riveting tale of passion, love, and heartbreak, Mrs. Hemingway reveals the explosive love triangles that wrecked each of Hemingway’s marriages.
The Paris Wife was only the beginning of the story…
Jamaica: A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert, gunmen stormed his house, machine guns blazing. The attack nearly killed the Reggae superstar, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Marley would go on to perform at the free concert on December 5, but he left the country the next day, not to return for two years.
Cuba: The Lightning Dreamer by Margarita Engle
“I find it so easy to forget / that I’m just a girl who is expected / to live / without thoughts.”
Opposing slavery in Cuba in the nineteenth century was dangerous. The most daring abolitionists were poets who veiled their work in metaphor. Of these, the boldest was Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, nicknamed Tula.
Puerto Rico: A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry
Everyone knows the legends about the cursed girl–Isabel, the one the señoras whisper about. They say she has green skin and grass for hair, and she feeds on the poisonous plants that fill her family’s Caribbean island garden. Some say she can grant wishes; some say her touch can kill.
The United States of America: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Mexico: The Murmur of Bees by Sofía Segovia
From the day that old Nana Reja found a baby abandoned under a bridge, the life of a small Mexican town forever changed. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, little Simonopio is for some locals the stuff of superstition, a child kissed by the devil. But he is welcomed by landowners Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt him and care for him as if he were their own. As he grows up, Simonopio becomes a cause for wonder to the Morales family, because when the uncannily gifted child closes his eyes, he can see what no one else can—visions of all that’s yet to come, both beautiful and dangerous. Followed by his protective swarm of bees and living to deliver his adoptive family from threats—both human and those of nature—Simonopio’s purpose in Linares will, in time, be divined.
Canada: The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
Marian is determined to be ordinary. She lays her head gently on the shoulder of her serious fiancé and quietly awaits marriage. But she didn’t count on an inner rebellion that would rock her stable routine, and her digestion. Marriage à la mode, Marian discovers, is something she literally can’t stomach…
The United States of America: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Set against the background of dust bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel West in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision; an eloquent tribute to the endurance and dignity of the human spirit.
