American Born Chinese - Yang

This book got me out of my normal comfort zone and I really appreciated it.  I haven't read a comic book since I was a teenager.  The story was a bit confusing at first, three seemingly disparate stories that interweave struggles that many students go through.  While this may have been written with immigrants and the like in mind, I feel that many kids can relate to the feelings of not fitting in and embarrassed of their home-lives.

There can be much done with the book.  The pictures can be analyzed to develop meaning, obviously.  I think a much more fun activity would be to have students create their own kung-fu master animal and have them make a comic book.  Within this book, characters have great personalities and would be a rich vein of lesson planning.

As I said before, I rather enjoyed this book, it is a bit different from what I have read but still has a lot of great qualities to it.

Night

I can see how this would be a hard text for students to read. The writing is not very complicated. And the author did not use a lot of foul language. But there is a lot of graphic, visually and emotionally exhausting scenes. Students could have trouble really understanding what is going on because they have never experienced something as horrible as the Holocaust in their own lives. It's hard to look at the Holocaust because there is so much hate and violence.
I would use Night in a Social Studies or humanities classroom as a text to supplement out historical study of World War II and the Holocaust. We would have at home reading assignments every night and  could place the events in the book and characters (Hitler, Himmler, Mengele) with those that we are studying in class. We would also use their textbooks to teach the students about the history. Finally, students would look at themes like hate crimes and government directives as they created the Holocaust.

Romeo & Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is one of those seminole pieces of literature.  It is something that has been studied for centuries.  I love there is so much that can be taken from this play.  There are love scenes, fight scenes, humor, tragedy, and all the while the main characters are 16 and 13 - ages at which our readers are at.  The play can be read with so many different levels to it, advanced readers can analyze the poetry while those not quite there can read for the themes of romance and tragedy.

Because the book has been read and re-read so many times, there are a TON of resources to help teachers find a quality lesson plan that would work for their classrooms.

The story itself I find a bit irritating at times.  I just want to shake these characters and tell them to stop being so stupid and vain - just wait until things have settled down a bit.  Your families want to help but there is just such a lack communication between everyone that it is SO frustrating I can't stand it sometimes.  It may be a literary device used by Shakespeare to move the plot along, but I still don't like it.

This is a classic story but because it has been done SO many times, I'm not entirely sure I would use it in my classroom.

Things Fall Apart - response

I just finished Things Fall Apart and I was a bit astounded by the ending, but it does go along with much of what I felt while reading this book.

Achebe has a great way of blending words and images to create a beautiful picture of the village and the people in it.  It was interesting reading, not only in how he describes the places/people but his style of writing.  I felt lost sometimes as I was reading with how stop - start his writing became.  The images he used were powerful at times, but I didn't understand some of them because of the vast cultural differences.  I did like how long he took to set the scene because it gave a lot of background into the life of Okwenko and his tribesman.  This did help a lot when the white man came and showed how quickly things had changed around our characters.

Okwenko's life was full of trials and tribulations from the time he was born.  A father who he viewed as unworthy did not leave him the traditional compound and farm.  He had to earn things for himself from the start.  He was a great fighter and known throughout all his tribe as a man not to be trifled with.  This does not mean he was unloved by his wives and children, as they understood him to be a strong man with incorruptible principles.  His passion for hard-work and perseverance was tried mightily through his walk with Ikemefuna, his unintentional shooting of a clansman and 7 year exile, the betrayal of his son, and influence of the white man and church on his home land.  It is a lot for a man to deal with, and he felt very alone.  His loneliness led him to his final decision at the end, he could not stand to be part of his tribe any longer.

Okwenko wanted so badly to e a man of importance.  He tried to lead his people but none would follow and so he viewed everyone else as a coward.

This whole book is an interesting look into African culture and the influence European culture has had onto the planet as a whole.  As I finished the last few chapters, I could only think of what I know of the Native Americans and their similar struggles to cope and eventual capitulation to the white culture.