The Westing Game

After years and years of listening to my sister go on and on and ON about how great this book is, I had to finally admit that maybe I should read it too. So it entered my "list"...that ever-growing, impossible-to-catch-up-on list that haunts me and overwhelms me (aka: it wasn't ever read). But then this week I was assigned the task of planning an entire thematic unit with two other good friends of mine from class and we decided upon the theme of Mystery (could there be a cooler theme? I think not) and this book seemed to fit perfectly as the centerpiece for my English unit...except I should probably read the book before writing five lessons about it. So read it I did. And I couldn't put it down. Well...I did put it down at times, but only because I had to be doing big girl things like sleeping and eating and going to work. But I immediately became fully engrossed in the plot and the characters and the complex but extremely interesting mystery elements. There are so many twists and turns and vital pieces of information that the author has purposefully kept from you the reader just as she has kept them from the characters themselves. The basic, brief plot overview is this: sixteen hand-chosen people become the participants in a Clue-like game, the object of which is to determine who killed Sam Westing (the man running the game from the grave) and receive his millions. Needless to say...it's a good one. And highly, highly recommended by me (and...everyone else who's read it). I had to force myself to just simply read the book rather than take notes during the whole thing, though, about how I'm going to use it in my unit. Now that I'm done, let the note-taking commence. I'm pretty excited; stay tuned for an update on that.

Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

Well...I gave up on this one. I hate to do that and I rarely do because so many times I think a book starts out slow (like Wendesday Wars) or I possibly even think it's incredibly boring (like Shooting the Moon) until I read a little bit more or finish it out and I love it. But sadly, this just wasn't going to happen with this one. I chose to "read" Sammy and Juliana with an audiobook - my first audiobook - and was so disappointed. There were two truly dramatic and captivating scenes in the book (as of the first eight or so chapters that I've read) but other than that I didn't enjoy it. I wasn't interested, I didn't enjoy it, and I found myself deeply annoyed by the amount of cursing that took place. Who cares that it's about high schoolers? I couldn't ever use that book in my classroom because of it, so it annoyed me. All of that added to the fact that I would listen while I drove, and would therefore either come close to rear ending semis because I was half-way falling asleep or I would just never opt to listen to it and plug in my iPod instead...I'm gonna have to give it the boot. Sorry, Sammy. Maybe next time.

I also wanted to mention that there was a lot about this book that I didn't like - beyond just being bored by the audiobook and some of the plot. I also felt like there was far too much foul language and sex in it. This is where I say that I've been having somewhat of an internal battle about this very thing in literature for a while, and struggling with what I deem "appropriate" and who gets to make that call. I feel like there's a lot that should be left up to each individual student, but I also know that if a student takes my recommendation for a book or pulls one off my classroom shelf, I will be the one who is responsible when angry parents come to complain. I also know that my parents sheltered me very much as I was growing up and I appreciate that very much; I tend to lean more on the conservative side of things when it comes to what is appropriate and what isn't. But I also know that a book that might very well be completely inappropriate for the majority of seventh graders may be the life of a different seventh grader and is therefore normal rather than inappropriate. It's a debate, I know, and one that I often have with myself. All of that being said...I did find this one to be slightly inappropriate. There wasn't a lot of sex but any sex in books is annoying to me. The language didn't start off that bad but as I progressed through it the f-words flew much more rapidly and regularly, and that also annoys me. Personally, this one's a no-go.

[Page 1] The Westing Game

Here's the first page of the book I'm reading, The Westing Game, written by Ellen Raskin:

"The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange! Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers. This glittery, glassy apartment house stood alone on the Lake Michigan short five stories high. Five empty stories high. Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed Barney Northrup. The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northrup."

Stay tuned for more of my thoughts when I finish!

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Could there be a more adorable cartoon boy than Harold? I think not. Believe it or not, I just read this classic for the first time about a month ago and thought it was the cutest thing I'd read since I myself was a toddler. When I had to do a children's book assignment for one of my classes this week, I knew the Harold was my boy. This book is, in my opinion, excellent for instilling inspiration and personal motivation in students: Harold wants to go for a walk with his crayon, so he draws his walk. He makes his own street. He makes his own moon and his own picnic and his own sailboat to rescue himself and his own apple tree. When Harold travels all over with his crayon, creating his own adventures, and wants to go back home, he draws his house and he's home. Basically, Harold decides that something should exist, so he creates it himself. When unforseen scary times approach - Harold accidentally draws waves that swallow him up and try to drown him - he doesn't loose all hope and give up...he draws himself a sailboat so he can pull himself out of the scary water and sail back to land. When he accidentally falls off a cliff that he never drew the other side of, Harold calmly draws a hot air balloon and floats away. What a perfect conversation starter for students who have grown up thinking that they have been provided with a concrete set of intelligence or skill or talent and that they lack any control over their success. I think it might be even more perfect for a conversation regarding how to react when bad things surprise you. Harold didn't give up. Harold simply created his own escape plan and turned it into something good. If you aren't so interested in this particular route for instruction, I think this book also works beautifully for introducing unconventional figures (historical, scientific, fictional) who broke the rules and thought a bit nontraditionally but who made a huge difference in their given field. If none of these interest you, you could perhaps discuss Harold's impact on the environment as he travels through his drawn world...but that might be a little bit of a stretch...

Love That Dog

This is one of those books that I've seen around and heard mentioned a couple of times, but didn't really know much about it [as it turns out, this happens to me much more than you might think]. But I read it yesterday and I am now in love with it. Written entirely in poetry, Love That Dog takes you through Jack's entire school year via his poetry journal he keeps in his English class. Although he starts his school year writing poetry that grumbles about writing poetry, and even at times writes poetry that mocks writing poetry, Jack slowly begins to embrace this method of communication and outlet as the year progresses. The reader - and Jack's teacher - immediately see that this young boy has a definite talent for composing poetry; his teacher requests to use his words as an example for the class on several occasions. This book is encouraging for an English teacher hopeful like myself: this boy didn't even know how talented he was and was writing brilliant poetry while trying to make fun of it. It's also encouraging because I too am a bit intimidated by poetry at times, but the fictional teacher in this story makes it come alive for the students; Jack is able to form opinions about poems, connect with poems, and be inspired by poems. I also see this book as a handbook for how to encourage students to feel safe and able to share insights into their personal lives so that you can form a connection with them and know them better. Any opportunity for a window into the mind of a student is worthwhile and exciting. I would use this book as a hook for a poetry unit - or the beginning of the year, if you plan to incorporate poetry throughout all units - and/or as a conversation piece for forming classroom community. It would also be a valuable tool for showing students that composing poetry doesn't have to be scary or rigid, but that it's a free expression of you, the poet...Jack's poetry illustrates this point brilliantly. As a teacher who will share poetry with students but who has also been intimidated by poetry in the past, this is especially encouraging to me as well.

Henry's Freedom Box

I read this book several years ago with a seventh grade boy I was tutoring, and we both loved it. When I was given a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble yesterday for my birthday (always my favorite gift), I knew going into the store that I wanted a picture book. After browsing the picture book section and having to tear my heart away from several others, I knew that this was the one I needed to add to my bookshelf. This book is awesome. The illustrations are beautiful, and the story is heartwrenching. The true story of Henry "Box" Brown, the book starts with Henry as a child, ageless due to his lack of an acknowledged birthday because he is a slave. As the book progresses, so does Henry's life. The small boy grows into an adolescent, then a teenager, then a married man with two small children. When Henry's master sells his family, he realizes he will never see his loved ones again and that his only option is to find freedom through the Underground Railroad. Historically acurate and engaging, this book would be great for an English classroom or a History classroom.

Except If

Here's another great one for perspective and how one small change can lead to a multitude of changes. The reader starts out looking at an egg, and the obvious statement that an egg is a baby bird...except if it's actually a snake. The book continues in similar fashiong, leading the reader in one direction - that should so obviously be the truth - until it flips the tables every other page with an except if...It's a fun and quirky little book, with a range of possible applications. [Sidenote: that's what I love about ambiguous picture books. Sometimes picture books tell one clear and purposeful story, and they're great because that's the purpose you need them for. But other times picture books are completely vague and strange and openended, and you can use them as a discussion starter for almost anything you want. You control the spin and the application, which is quite empowering as the big adult holding a tiny children's book. Plus, clearly, they're super fun. But back to Except If...] This one's particularly good - off the top of my head - for perspective, dealing with changed circumstances, the curveballs of life, "everything is not what it seems"...etc. It's also fun because it can easily fit into any content area [except maybe Math. I'm bad at finding ways to relate things to Math.]

John, Paul, George, and Ben

I had heard about this book for a while - seen it in stores, heard it referenced in the one day I spent in my accidental enrollment in an elementary ed. course, etc. - and pretended to know all about it but didn't really. When my professor brought it out the other day to show us, I secretly got really excited because I could finally have an actual wealth of knowledge about this popular little picture book. And honestly, it's really cool. Since I am going to be licensed to teach both middle school English and middle school History, I'm pretty interested in finding books that can span both of those subjects. [I'm really interested in finding books that can span all subjects, for the record.] This particular book follows the childhoods of four of our Founding Fathers, John Hancock, Paul Revere, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin. These childhoods range from being semi-fictional to [as far as I know] very fictional, but they're extremely humorous and they all relate to things we know as fact about those Founding Fathers. For example, John Hancock has a hard time not writing his name extremely large on all his elementary papers, and Paul Revere shouts constantly as a young boy. It's cute and it's very comical, and it would be a great way to introduce some funny post-unit material to students after they've learned the necessary information to "get it." All the little stories in this book are funny because we already know about what the grown men were like and what they are famous for; the book wouldn't be nearly as interesting to students if they hadn't learned those facts yet. There's something very powerful to a middle school student, though, to be able to watch a movie or read a book that has references to what they've learned in school and to get the reference. This book provides a great tool for that.

Rhyming Dust Bunnies

This book is completely adorable and completely hilarious. As you could imagine by the title and the image on the cover, it's a short picture book about four dust bunnies who like to speak in rhymes...except Bob, the difficult one. As the other three dust bunnies - Ed, Ned, and Ted - speak in perfect rhymes to get their points across, Bob continues to be a problem by speaking out of rhyme. Exasperated, Ed, Ned, and Ted correct him each time...until Bob turns out to be relaying a very important message.

Honestly, this book takes about three minutes to read out loud, start to finish. But the possible intents and messages to relay to kids or students seem endless. Bob is an outcast and nonconformist who is the only one willing to speak out of turn in order to accomplish something. Because of this, Bob goes unheard and mildly shunned by his peers. They roll their eyes and correct him and think that's he's maybe not all-together with it. But Bob, in the end, is the only one who's got it right. I know this may seem like a lot to extrapolate from a picture book that I've already confessed takes a brief three minutes to read, but seriously: it's a good one. So funny and so entertaining while also containing incredible potential for a conversation starter in a class of students. [Plus, isn't Bob one of the best names in the whole world? Don't agree? You clearly need to see this movie.]

Zoom

Banyai's books are typically unique in the fact that they are wordless, and rely heavily on messing with your perspective on a situation. Zoom doesn't disappoint, starting with a very zoomed (ha) in drawing of something you're not quite sure what it is. Then with each page, you zoom (ha again) out a little bit more. You keep thinking that you have it all figured out but then there's another page and another and another. Basically, there are a lot of "aha" moments. And a lot of predicting. It's awesome :)

I would say that this book would be great for a million different instructional reasons, but the obvious ones that come to mind are: predicting, perspective, needing to see the whole picture/both sides, etc. etc. But it's flexible enough that you could morph it into lots of different things.

Historical Fiction Thoughts

I've been thinking about it and I have read some Historical Fiction books already this year that aren't on my original list and so I haven't counted them...but I'm going to count them. The point and the spirit of the challenge is that I read 15 Historical Fiction books during 2011, right? Not that I read the 15 specific Historical Fiction books I said I would read in January? Plans change. (I was also lent a Historical Fiction book by a dear friend of mine that I "have to read immediately," so...that was the clincher for me.)

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

This book is one of the most fun things I've read in a long time. Super short and taking less than ten minutes to read start to finish, this picture book gives English teachers an awesome way to explain the purposes of the comma. Each two-page spread has the same sentence, altered only by the existence or non-existence of a comma...and the differences are hilarious. Each situation is illustrated with funny and engaging illustrations. Students of all ages - we were laughing out loud in my college class - would find this book funny, and wouldn't be able to help learning a valuable lesson about the placement of commas and their effect on the structure and meaning of sentences. [Funny, but I'm very aware of my comma placement in this post...] Highly recommended!

Here's the Thing...

I've been pretty busy, and therefore haven't been reading. And it's sad. I loved the first 50 pages of To Kill a Mockingbird but haven't been able to get back to it to read any more in about...oh gosh...two weeks? Almost two weeks I think. How horrible. I also haven't read Forgotten God in a few days so I'm not getting much farther in that and my audiobook (Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood) has moments of really surprising and interesting me and many other moments of making me zone out while driving at high speeds. So...maybe this weekend I need to plow through at least one of these so I can rejuvinate my reading life. (And what I mean by that is that I need to plow through my homework so I can get to some of this reading.)

Hope you're having more success...

Audiobooks

Has anyone ever listened to an audiobook? I've listened to lots of radio dramas, which involves actors for each character and sound effects and essentially has a movie experience without the picture. But I've never listened to a straight audiobook...or at least not recently and not in a way that I really remember. Certainly not for a whole novel. I was exploring in the Reading Center here at school yesterday though and found Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood in audiobook form, and I got really excited and checked it out. I'm a commuter and spend two hours in the car almost every day driving to and from school, so this could be a perfect way to knock some books out quicker than if I was reading them in paper form. I've heard, though, that it can be really boring. Stay tuned, though, and in approximately a week and a half I'll have a review of Sammy and Juliana as well as audiobooks. :)

The Butterfly and Rose Blanche

I stumbled across these books yesterday kind of on accident, but I am so thankful I did. The idea of a picture book about the Holocaust is disturbing and intriguing, and both books detail the events of this tragic time in the world's history from extremely different perspectives and with painfully different conclusions.

The Butterfly, by Patricia Polacco

In this story, Monique lives in war-torn France. Nazis are everywhere and the young girl fears the violence and oppression of the men in the "tall boots." She wakes up one night and sees a girl, who she assumes is a ghost, sitting on the end of her bed. As the story progresses, she sees this girl more and more, and eventually is able to speak to her one night before the "ghost" disappears. The girl describes that she is actually a Jew living in hiding with her family in the basement of Monique's house. Monique and the girl form a friendship throughout the rest of the story, until a neighbor sees them playing through a window and Monique's mother is forced to help the girl's family relocate to a new safe house.

The Butterfly is a very interesting story describing a point of view that we are familiar with in regards to World War II, but from a somewhat new angle. To look at a country occupied by the Nazis through a child's eyes is intriguing, as well as to see her come to terms with the concept of hiding Jews in her home in order to keep them safe. The progression of the plot is endearing and engaging: you easily become afraid for the characters as they are forced to relocate and as they attempt to avoid being captured by the Nazis. The ending is sweet, though, and encouraging; both you and the characters are left with a feeling of hope that everyone is safe. It's a great book with a sweet story and an interesting twist on a history we are commonly familiar with in regards to World War II.

Rose Blanche, by Roberto Innocenti

Rose Blanche is a young girl living in Germany during World War II who has an up-close and personal perspective to the actions of the Nazis. The beginning of the book details several encounters with Nazi soldiers in which Rose views trucks and trains transporting soldiers and machinery off to war, but several strange things that she accidentally witnesses in the middle of the story cause her to question and wonder what she has seen. After a moment of curiosity getting the better of her, Rose follows a truck deep into the woods where she discovers a concentration camp. Throughout the rest of the book, the young girl returns to the camp in order to slip food to the prisoners through the fence until a surprising and heartwrenching conclusion changes everything.

This book broke my heart. I won't spoil the ending more than just to say that in stark contrast to The Butterfly, it does not end hopeful or happy. If you are searching for a short picture book with beautiful illustrations and an emotional response from your audience, this is an excellent source. What I also love about it is that an entirely different perspective is offered than what might be considered common or usual; Rose is a German girl who is entirely unaware of what her country's leaders and soldiers are doing. These actions that we as modern Americans are so used to and so aware of was not broadcasted on newspaper headlines and shouted about throughout the streets during the war itself in Germany. We take for granted that knowledge about concentration camps and the hideous civilian death tolls was widespread, but it really wasn't. Because of that, this story paired with the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - or scenes from it, perhaps - could be an interesting teaching tool. When collecting books about World War II or about war in general, this would be an excellent tool for varied perspectives, as well as varied responses and results.

[Page 1] Forgotten God

Here's the first page (basically) of a book I'm reading, The Forgotten God, written by Francis Chan:



"You might think that calling the Holy Spirit the 'forgotten God' is a bit extreme. Maybe you agree that the church has focused too much attention elsewhere but feel it is an exaggeration to say that we have forgotten about the Spirit. I don't think so. From my perspective, the Holy Spirit is tragically neglected and, for all practical purposes, forgotten. While no evangelical would deny His existence, I'm willing to bet there are millions of churchgoers across America who cannot confidently say they have experienced His presence or action in their lives over the past year. And many of them do not believe they can. The benchmark of success in church services has become more about attendance than the movement of the Holy Spirit. The 'entertainment' model of church was largely adopted in the 1980s and '90s, and while it alleviated some of our boredom for a couple of hours a week, it filled our churches with self-focused consumers rather than self-sacrificing servants attuned to the Holy Spirit. Perhaps we're too familiar and comfortable with the current state of the church to feel the weight of the problem."

Stay tuned for more thoughts when I finish!

[Page 1] To Kill a Mockingbird

One of the new changes I decided last night that I want to start adding to my blog is a series titled Page 1, which shares a passage from the first page of each book I start. Here's the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird:

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.

When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out. I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn't? We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right."