8th Grade Recommended Reading List: "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh"

Ray Bradbury is known for writing fantasy novels whose events could not happen in real life. But in a short story about a drummer boy, he creates characters that honor those who, despite their fears, faced down muskets and cannons at Shiloh (the site of an 1862 Civil War battle).

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 8 Unit 1's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: A Wrinkle in Time, The Drummer Boy of Shiloh, The Odyssey, A Man, Soldier home, Sonnet 116, Where I Find My Heroes, White House Funeral Sermon, O Captain! My Captain!, Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, A Definition of a Gentleman
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. solemn
    dignified and somber in manner or character
    It was indeed a solemn night for a boy just turned fourteen in the peach field near the Owl Creek not far from the church at Shiloh.
  2. askew
    turned or twisted to one side
    Beyond the thirty-three familiar shadows, forty thousand men, exhausted by nervous expectation, unable to sleep for romantic dreams of battles yet unfought, lay crazily askew in their uniforms.
  3. benediction
    the act of praying for divine protection
    A mile yet farther on, another army was strewn helter-skelter, turning slow, basting themselves with the thought of what they would do when the time came: a leap, a yell, a blind plunge their strategy, raw youth their protection and benediction.
  4. strew
    spread by scattering
    For with the careless bones of the young men harvested by the night and bindled around campfires were the similarly strewn steel bones of their rifles, with bayonets fixed like eternal lightning lost in the orchard grass.
  5. fiery
    characterized by intense emotion
    There wasn't a man-boy on the ground tonight who did not have a shield he cast, riveted or carved himself on his way to his first attack, compounded of remote but nonetheless firm and fiery family devotion, flag-blown patriotism and cocksure immortality strengthened by the touchstone of very real gunpowder, ramrod, Minie ball and flint.
  6. raw
    lacking training or experience
    And the others here not much older. Raw, raw, the lot of you.
  7. enthusiasm
    a feeling of excitement
    More innocents will get shot out of pure...enthusiasm than ever got shot before.
  8. lag
    hang or fall in movement, progress, development, etc.
    They would lag by the wayside.
  9. cavalry
    troops trained to fight on horseback
    Had he seen the ocean ever? Seen the waves rolling in like a well-ordered cavalry charge to the sand?
  10. brisk
    quick and energetic
    One following the other in good time, in brisk time.
  11. resolute
    firm in purpose or belief
    Move the blood up the body and make the head proud and the spine stiff and the jaw resolute.
  12. steady
    marked by firm determination or resolution; not shakable
    He must keep at it, at it! Long and steady, steady and long!
  13. slaughter
    the savage and excessive killing of many people
    If their blood was cold, it would be more than slaughter, it would be murderous nightmare and pain best not told and no one to guess.
  14. humble
    marked by meekness or modesty; not arrogant or prideful
    And maybe, many nights from tonight, many years from now, when you're as old or far much older than me, when they ask you what you did in this awful time, you will tell them--one part humble and one part proud--'I was the drummer boy at the battle of Owl Creek'
  15. tremor
    an involuntary vibration, as if from illness or fear
    He lay next to it, his arm around it, feeling the tremor, the touch, the muted thunder as, all the rest of the April night in the year 1862, near the Tennessee River, not far from the Owl Creek, very close to the church named Shiloh, the peach blossoms fell on the drum.
Created on Sun Dec 14 15:21:16 EST 2014 (updated Sun Dec 14 22:43:56 EST 2014)

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