2025
—Spring Courses—
We teach six books each session at three levels of difficulty to accommodate various ages and abilities:
Level I
Our Level I books are typically taught in Grades 7-9 and utilize relatively simple vocabulary and straightforward syntax. The underlying themes can be nuanced, however, and students will need to learn how to read closely and think deeply to uncover the work's hidden meaning. These books offer a solid foundation for those students who are still developing the basic skills and knowledge necessary for more advanced literary analysis.
Level II
Level II books are generally taught in Grades 10-11 and contain more advanced vocabulary, challenging syntax, and complex themes. Students will need to learn how to read between the lines to understand the writer's true intent. The most widely read classics in American and World Literature fall in this category, and most colleges will expect incoming students to have read these books at some point in their high school careers.
Level III
Level III books are the most challenging that students will read at the high school level. They are usually reserved for AP classes in Grade 12 and represent the type of books that students will read at the college level. These books are subtle and complex, often employing difficult syntax that requires careful reading to decipher the underlying themes. When students are comfortable with Level III books, they know that they are ready for college.
Derek Bunting
CEO/Founder
Lead Instructor
B.A. English
Dartmouth College
M.A. Education
Stanford University
Course Description
Our four-week intensive courses focus on the fundamentals of literary analysis so students better understand the writer's craft while acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary for success at the college level. Students will learn how to analyze a complex text through the "four pillars" of literary analysis—diction, imagery, language, and syntax—and how authors use various literary techniques—such as point of view, characterization, setting, and irony—to establish tone and convey theme.
In addition to analyzing and discussing literature, students will also have an opportunity to write three argumentative essays modeled after those found on the AP Literature and Composition Exam: a poetry analysis, a passage analysis, and a literary argument. To receive guidance during the writing process, students can schedule 15-minute pre-writing and post-writing conferences to receive help organizing their thoughts, finding evidence to support their claims, and receiving constructive feedback on their finished drafts.
​
We limit our classes to a maximum of twelve students to ensure all students will have ample opportunity to schedule individual writing conferences and to share their ideas during class discussions. Each course homepage provides a detailed Daily Agenda with descriptions of every class activity with links to assignments and supplemental material so students will be able to extend their learning independently beyond our scheduled class time.
Session One
March 25 - April 17
Morning Courses
Level I
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
March 25 - April 17
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
10:00 a.m. - 10:50 a.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
One of the best-loved stories of all-time, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, is gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable coming-of-age tale set in the Depression-era South during a time that is poisoned by virulent prejudice. Lee's novel views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of Scout, a young girl whose father, Atticus Finch, a crusading local lawyer, risks everything to defend a Black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.
Level II
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
March 25 - April 17
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
11:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
Chinua Achebe’s critically-acclaimed narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with European colonialism is told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s. Things Fall Apart, a classic of world literature that was originally published in 1958, explores one man’s futile resistance to the devaluing of Igbo customs and traditions in a way that broadens our understanding of contemporary realities in a post-colonial world.
Level III
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
March 25 - April 17
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, published in 2003, we meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world—conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly illuminates the tangled ties of the immigrant experience.
Afternoon Courses
Level I
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
March 25 - April 17
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
4:00 p.m. - 4:50 p.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
Born in Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp and then later to Buchenwald. Night, published in 1956, is the terrifying record of the death of Wiesel’s family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair confronting the evil of which humans are capable. Wiesel’s memoir is one of the most important documents of our time with its message that this type of horror must never be allowed to happen again.
Level II
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
March 25 - April 17
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
5:00 p.m. - 5:50 p.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
When The Awakening was first published in 1899, the critical outcry proved so vociferous that the novel was banned for decades. Now praised as a classic of early feminist literature, Kate Chopin’s novel has inspired generations of readers by rejecting conventional female roles and celebrating a woman’s journey towards self-discovery. As the heroine, Edna Pontellier, awakens to her own desires, she begins to question her ideas about marriage, motherhood, society, art, and the nature of love itself.
Level III
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
March 25 - April 17
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
6:00 p.m. - 6:50 p.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Mr. Kurtz. Travelling upriver to the heart of Africa, he gradually becomes obsessed by how this enigmatic figure has gained power and control over the local people, which makes him question, not only his own nature and values, but those of Western civilization itself in this highly influential Modernist masterpiece.
Session Two
April 29 - May 22
Morning Courses
Level I
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
April 29 - May 22
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
10:00 a.m. - 10:50 a.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window and learns that her family—along with thousands of other Japanese Americans—have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty incarceration camp in the Utah desert. Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine, written in 2003, is a lean and devastatingly evocative novel that tells this family’s story from five flawlessly realized points of view.
Level II
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
April 29 - May 22
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
11:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
Decades after its original publication in 1977, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico, deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his own people. Only by immersing himself in Native American history can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him.
Level III
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
April 29 - May 22
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
12:00 p.m. - 12:50 p.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a profoundly important classic of world literature for its searching depiction of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order—all at the cost of our freedom, our full humanity, and perhaps our souls. Huxley’s masterpiece is as relevant today as it was in 1932 when it was published amid the rise of European fascism.
Afternoon Courses
Level I
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
April 29 - May 22
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
4:00 p.m. - 4:50 p.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954 for its startling, brutal portrait of a group of ordinary English boys marooned on a coral island. Alone in a world of uncharted possibilities, devoid of adult supervision or rules, the boys begin to forge their own society, exposing the duality of human nature—the dark, eternal divide between order and chaos, intellect and instinct, structure and savagery.
Level II
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
April 29 - May 22
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
5:00 p.m. - 5:50 p.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
No dramatist has ever seen with more frightening clarity into the heart and mind of a murderer than has William Shakespeare in the compelling tragedy of Macbeth. Fast-moving and bloody, this drama—written in 1606—has an extraordinary energy that derives from brilliant plot devices, replete with treachery and murder, and from Shakespeare’s compelling portrait of the ultimate battle between a person’s ambition and the consequences of guilt and remorse.
Level III
Duration:
Four Weeks
​
Dates:
April 29 - May 22
​
Days:
Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time:
6:00 p.m. - 6:50 p.m. MT
​
Tuition:
$225
​
Published in 1987, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding novel that won the Pulitzer Prize for its unflinching look into the abyss of slavery. Sethe escaped to Ohio after being born a slave, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm in Kentucky where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby girl, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Scholarships
Literary Focus is committed to having classes that are as diverse as possible. We want every student who has a desire to attend one of our academic enrichment classes to have that opportunity—regardless of that student's financial situation. If you qualify for the USDA free and reduced lunch program or have other financial concerns, please complete an application with your parent or guardian to receive one of our tuition-free scholarships.
