Category Archives: Books

It goes far beyond your Everyday story

Books, Jackie Catcher October 30, 2014 Leave a comment

51i318LHixL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_If you doubt, question, or undermine the complexity or rigor of young adult literature, read Everyday by David Levithan. Despite the book’s bland beige and gray cover, there is nothing dull or colorless about this story. It is a philosophical and, in my opinion, a political statement that calls into question what it means to be an individual in today’s world.

In the book, A is a genderless soul that inhabits a different body everyday (hence the title). The conflict is that A, in the first chapter, falls in love with Rhiannon, the girlfriend of a boy whose body A currently inhabits. Don’t worry; it isn’t as confusing as it sounds. This simple love story leads its readers to question what defines gender and even love as A inhabits different bodies throughout the book. Furthermore, A questions what the difference is between the soul and the body and how they can function as one or even two distinct beings.

David Levithan captures the beauty and innocence of being human through the simple yet straight forward perspective of A, an old soul with deep knowledge: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: We all want everything to be okay. We don’t even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.” A goes on to one of my favorite passages of the book, a passage that is great for book talking and providing a brief teaser without giving anything away.

I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned how to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present, because that is where I am destined to live.

“I learn. Sometimes I am taught something I have already been taught in dozens of others classrooms. Sometimes I am taught something completely new. I have to access the body, access the mind and see what information it’s retained. And when I do, I learn. Knowledge is the only thing I take with me when I go” (Levithan 6).

As a teacher, it is easy to love this passage. After all, it ends with the value of learning, but beyond that, this page (the entirety of page 6) shows A’s struggle with defining him/herself as an individual. Not only is there minimal diversification in the sentence starters, but A uses the personal pronoun “I” 25 times in just one page: “I would,” “I took,” “I felt,” “I am,” etc. This practice goes against the rule of what we oftentimes teach to young writers—stray away from using I at the beginning of every sentence. Levithan’s willingness to break the rules and question the norm is what makes this piece both a masterful mentor text and thought provoking must-read.

Starting with the Ending

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Books October 13, 2014 Comments: 3

I am not one of those people who jumps to the last few pages to read how a book ends before I’ve ever started it. I do not understand those people. At all. I like to savor a good book, take it slow, breathe in and out the beauty of the language. OR, I like to devour it in one sitting, holding my breath and wanting more. So, it’s a little surprising that I’ve pulled the last paragraph of a book to use as a craft study.

I promise it gives nothing away. I also promise:  you may just shudder at the loveliness of the language like I do.

If you have not read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, you must. Find the time. It’s worth it.

I don’t know if I can motivate my students to read this lovely book though– it is thick with 771 pages, and the story itself is long, and there are times your love/hate relationship with the main character makes you want to shout the house down. But I’ll try. Because I love it.

This is why:

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt P771

Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important:  whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair. But the painting has also taught me that we can speak to each other across time. And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life — whatever else it is — is short. That fate is cruel by maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway:  wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch. For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time — so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.

 

Let’s just take it sentence by sentence. Then let’s choose a sentence we like and respond to it. That’s enough for now.

 

I Am Malala…Too!

Books, Erika Bogdany October 11, 2014 Comments: 2

From the moment I learned of Malala Yousafzai, she captured my heart.  Two short years ago, this young woman was targeted by the Taliban in Pakistan for her activism in support of accessible education for females.  She went to great lengths to ensure she, and her female classmates, were granted the right to their education.  And that was all before her life changed drastically on that fateful day when the Taliban tried to silence her through unthinkable violence.

Yet, she lives to tell about it.

Not only does she live to tell about it; she writes about it, campaigns about it, continues to fight for it.  So, it is no wonder that just yesterday, Malala was granted the honor of a shared Nobel Peace Prize for her unshakable efforts, astounding heroism, and courageous bravery.

Here’s what I love even more:

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There are two versions of her story!

In the more complex version (right) aside from learning the intricacies of Malala’s extraordinary life, it chronicles the inner workings of Pakistan, its politics, its back story, and so much more.  It vividly weaves us through the timeline of events taking place in a country that Malala (til this day) calls home.  We visit her classroom, accompany her while doing chores at home, meet her family, join her while eating the foods of the land, watch fearfully as the Taliban circles the streets…This is the piece I read.  Students willing to take on a piece sprinkled with higher level vocabulary and concepts, also enjoy it thoroughly.

And in exposing students to Malala and her cause, we visit her on Facebook at: MalalaFund, on Twitter at @Malala, and on the internet at http://www.malala.org.  We also support the “I Stand with Malala” initiative by sharing our love for literature with the world!

IMG_20130418_155448

So, when Patricia McCormick decided to pair up with Malala to create a YA version of her story, I (and students) could not have been more thrilled.  This piece (left) is written in a more linear fashion.  While it would be remiss to alleviate all of Pakistan’s intricacies, it focuses more on Malala and her journey.  It is a narrative that provides students an opportunity to learn about this incredible young woman, be motivated by her desire to push agendas in the most positive of ways, and gently guides them through an understanding of what life is like for those fighting for their basic right to education.  This piece pairs beautifully with students who have a thirst for knowledge yet are still diligently building their literacy skills.

And so I recommend Malala finds her way (in both forms) into each one of our classrooms.  Let her spark a fire within our students.  Let her show us the way to having the world hear our voices.  Let her age be only a number.  As Malala so eloquently states at the end of the Prologue:  Who is Malala?  I am Malala and this is my story.

And, what a story it is.

 

Painting With Words: Sold

Books, Jackie Catcher, Readers Workshop October 2, 2014 Comments: 3

c_soldPatricia McCormick is a painter. Not literally, but she might as well be given the way she writes. Her vivid imagery and poetic prose paired with her short vignettes make Sold a must-read.

Somehow, Patricia makes the heavy subject of sexual slavery both approachable and manageable. Whereas many of my heavier books on women’s rights or international affairs sit dormant in my classroom library, Sold has made it through many hands. I believe there are multiple reasons for this: first, Sold isn’t intimidating in length or size. It feels manageable for many students. Second, Sold is written in short vignettes with wide spacing between the lines. Students can find themselves ten or twenty pages into the book with minimal effort.

Furthermore, the book lends itself to close reading and craft study. Each vignette is chock full of exceptional writing as Patricia McCormick plays with diction, descriptions, repetition, and a wide variety of craft marks. In turn, I can’t pick only one example, so bear with me as I walk you through two of the many passages with which I am obsessed:

Everyday, students walk into my classroom burdened by mammoth backpacks and equally sized worries. It’s tough to be a teenager, which is why I love the vignette “What I Carry.” I hope to use this as a quickwrite to find out what students carry with them throughout the

One of the many passages I have photocopied and dissected in my writer's notebook.

One of the many passages I have photocopied and dissected in my writer’s notebook.

day.

WHAT I CARRY

Inside the bundle Ama packed for me are:

my bowl,

my hairbrush,

the notebook my teacher gave me for being the number one

girl in school,

and my bedroll.

Inside my head I carry

my baby goat,

my baby brother,

my ama’s face,

our family’s future.

My bundle is light.

My burden is heavy.

In the second passage, “Between Twilights,” I love McCormick’s use of sensory details. This is an excellent passage to model the concept of “show don’t tell” in writing.

BETWEEN TWILIGHTS

Sometimes, between the twilights.

I unwrap my bundle from home

and bury my face in the fabric of my old skirt.

I inhale deeply,

drinking in the scent of mountain sunshine,

a warmth that smells of freshly turned soil and clean laundry

baking in the sun.

I breathe in a cool Himalayan breeze,

and the woodsy tang of a cooking fire,

a smell that crackles with the promise of warm tea

and fresh roti.

Then I can get by.

Until the next twilight.

A Lesson in Craft: The Yellow Birds

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 29, 2014 1 Comment

If you have not read The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, go buy it and start reading it today. It’s that good. Maybe I loved it because Powers is a poet, and his poetry flows into the language on every page. Maybe I loved it because I have similar fears as the mothers portrayed in this book. At least one of my sons will join the Army in a year.

Whatever the reason, I love this novel, and I know many of my students will appreciate the beauty of it, too.

Many passages are worthy of study, but when I read myself into this one, I knew that the discussion around it in class would be powerful. What do you think students might discover about language by reading this?

I hadn’t know what I was doing then, but my memories of Murph were a kind of misguided archaeology. Sifting through the remains of what I remembered about him was a denial of the fact that a hole was really all that was left, an absence I had attempted to reverse but found that I could not. There was simply not enough material to account for what had been removed. The closer I got to reconstructing him in my mind, the more the picture I was tying to re-create receded. For every memory I was able to pull up, another seemed to fall away forever. There was some proportion about it all, though. It was like putting a puzzle together from behind: the shapes familiar, the picture quickly fading, the muted tan of the cardboard backing a tease at wholeness and completion. I’d think of a time when we sat in the evening in the guard tower, watching the war go by in streaks of read and green and other, briefer lights, and he’d tell me of an afternoon in the little hillside apple orchard that his mother worked, the turn and flash of a paring knife along a wrap of gauze as they grafted uppers to rootstocks and new branches to blossom, or the time he saw but could not explain his awe when his father brought a dozen caged canaries home from the mine and let them loose in the hollow where they lived, how the canaries only flitted and sang awhile before perching back atop their cages, which had been arranged in rows, his father likely thinking that the birds would not return by choice to their captivity, and that the cages should be used for something else: a pretty bed for vegetables, perhaps a place to string up candles between the trees, and in what strange silences the world worked, Murph must have wondered, as the birds settled peaceably in their formation and ceased to sing. And I’d try to recall things until nothing came, which I quickly found was my only certainty, until what was left of him was a sketch in shadow, a skeleton falling apart, and my friend Murph was no more friend to me than the strangest stranger.

Viral Titles

Books, Guest Post, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes September 25, 2014 Leave a comment

ifistay1Every year, one or two books go viral. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, and Hate List by Jennifer Brown have all held the Viral Title award in the past.  I couldn’t keep those books on my shelves, and students couldn’t read them fast enough.

This year, If I Stay by Gayle Forman is everywhere I look.  All of my students want this book–AP, on level, male, female, black, white, readers, non-readers.  I have six copies and all are checked out.

I got into bed Tuesday night with my Nook, where I’d recently downloaded If I Stay.  It’s been about a month since I’ve read a book for pleasure, so I intended to just read a chapter or two and then go to sleep after my 14-hour day.

I stayed up ’til midnight and finished the book.

Silent tears dripped down my face around page 15, when Mia’s family is destroyed in a car accident.  Forman’s writing shoves me into the moment and I am right there with Mia, feeling her anguish as she sees her parents strewn across the road.  I agonize with her over the whereabouts of her younger brother, Teddy, and I hear the eerie quiet of a post-collision highway.

I was captivated from that moment onward, terrified for Mia as she watches her own injured, unresponsive body be flown to the hospital.  Watches her now-daughterless grandparents in the waiting room.  Watches the surgeons and nurses frantically try to save her.  She vacillates between wanting to stay in this world, and wanting to leave it behind.

NPR calls this story “achingly beautiful,” and I would agree.  Its language, its structure, haunts me, days later, and I know my students and I will study Forman’s craft soon…the way she brings us into a moment, frozen in time, and suspends our disbelief as we stay beside Mia’s spirit, watching all of this unfold.  Please read this book, and get it into the hands of your students, too.

ifistay2

If I Stay, Gayle Forman, pp. 15-16

You wouldn’t expect the radio to work afterward.  But it does.

The car is eviscerated. The impact of a four-ton pickup truck going sixty miles an hour had the force of an atom bomb.  It tore off the doors, sent the front-side passenger seat through the driver’s side window.  It flipped the chassis, bouncing it across the road and ripped the engine apart as if it were no stronger than a spiderweb.  It tossed wheels and hubcaps deep into the forest.  It ignited bits of the gas tank, so that now tiny flames lap at the wet road.

And there was so much noise.  A symphony of grinding, a chorus of popping, an aria of exploding, and finally, the sad clapping of hard metal cutting into soft trees.  Then it went quiet, except for this:  Beethoven’s Cello Sonata no. 3, still playing.

Sometimes There’s This One Book

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 18, 2014 Leave a comment

Before the first day of school this year, I learned that a student who was to attend our campus took her own life. She was 15. This would have been her 16th year. It should have been a shining time for her:  a junior in high school, a driver’s license, maybe her first job, and if her family was like mine, her first date (I had to be 16).

Her family, of course, is devastated. I didn’t even know this child, and I am devastated, as I am every single time I hear of the awful reality of suicide.

We have to do something.

I don’t know what, really. I do know that the world should be a hopeful place. I also know that so often adults refuse to act like it is. I am as guilty as the next guy of going through the motions, mirroring the depressive nature of my Bad Day. But I vow to stop.

I want to be an example of hope. I want to smile more. Love more. Laugh more. I want my students to see that I love my job. I cannot wait to get there. (That’s what being at a new school has done for me this year. I’ve let the negativity that I let nag at my soul so long go, and I feel new, reborn, liberated. Strange to use those words, I know, but they describe the “freeing” best.)

Recently, I read Matthew Quick’s book Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, and it rocked my world. Seriously. You know when you read a book, and then it haunts you — like forever? This is one of those books for me. I am, and will be, a better teacher, friend, wife, mother, daughter, colleague, leader, consultant because I read this book.

Here is a bit that I will use in class. Maybe we’ll use this passage for close reading. It’s a good one for tone or sentence structure. Maybe we’ll use it to launch a class discussion about hopes and dreams and how to hold on to them. I don’t know yet. But there’s something important here — for us and our students. Read it. You’ll see what I mean.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick, p46-47

The whole time I pretend I have mental telepathy. And with my mind only, I’ll say– or think?–to the target, “Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a roller coaster. Swim in the ocean naked. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never even heard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make pictures with colorful chalk. Close your eyes and try to see the world with you nose–allow smells to be your vision. Catch up on your sleep. Call an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Roll up your pant legs and walk into the sea. See a foreign film. Feed squirrels. Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take. Just don’t go back to that miserable place you go every day. Show me it’s possible to be an adult and also be happy. Please. This is a free country. You don’t have to keep doing this if you don’t want to. You can do anything you want. Be anyone you want. That’s what they tell us at school, but if you keep getting on that train and going to the place you hate I’m going to start thinking the people at school are liars like the Nazis who told the Jews they were just being relocated to work factories. Don’t do that to us. Tell us the truth. If adulthood is working some death-camp job you hate for the rest of your life, divorcing your secretly criminal husband, being disappointed in your son, being stressed and miserable, and dating a poser and pretending he’s a hero when he’s really a lousy person and anyone can tell that just by shaking his slimy hand–if it doesn’t get any better, I need to know right now. Just tell me. Spare me from some awful f******fate. Please.”

 

Note:  There are two footnotes in this passage. I left them off quite simply because I do not know how to format them in WordPress. Sorry, Mr. Quick.

Sentence Imitation with We Were Liars

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 15, 2014 1 Comment

I listened to the audiobook, and liked the novel so much I had to go and buy it in hardback for my classroom library. The story still haunts me. (I read it soon after I read Jellicoe Road, and that story haunts me, too. These two books make an interesting pairing.)

The following is the beginning of chapter two in We Were Liars. It’s an compelling list of sentences that create the the basics of what we need to know about our protagonist. It will be an interesting passage to use for sentence imitation.

I wonder what my students will say about themselves.

 

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart P4

My full name is Cadence Sinclair Eastman

I live in Burlington, Vermont, with Mummy and three dogs.

I am nearly eighteen.

I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects.

I used to be blond, but now my hair is black.

I used to be strong, but now I am weak.

I used to be pretty, but now I look sick.

It is true I suffer migraines since my accident.

It is true I do not suffer fools.

I like a twist of meaning. You see? Suffer migraines. Do not suffer fools. The word means almost the same as it did in the previous sentence, but not quite.

You could say it means endure, but that’s not exactly right.

 

 

 

Growing Readers

Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 3, 2014 Comments: 4
Autumn in my New Hampshire school district.

Autumn in my New Hampshire school district.

In New England, where I teach, time is measured by temperature. New Englanders cherish Indian summers (the bout of warmth before fall settles in); we sense the bite of autumn, and can smell an oncoming snow. We are a community of seasons, and ultimately these changes dictate the course and development of our year. In turn, to show the development of my classes’ reading progress throughout the year, I drew my inspiration from what New England is famous for—its foliage. To visually represent my classes reading progress within the reading workshop, I developed a reading tree.

The concept of the tree is simple: for every book read, students received a leaf. On the leaf they wrote their initials, the book they read, and the author. They would then staple the leaf to their class’ branch. In turn, students had a visual representation of their individual progress (because they put their initials on the leaves) as well as their class’ progress. They would look to the tree to see what books were the most popular/appeared on the tree most often.

The bare tree before students arrived.

The bare tree before students arrived.

The reading tree exhibits student work and promotes individual success. In addition, it also reinforces teamwork since students look to see how their class is doing as a whole. Furthermore, the tree inspires friendly competition between classes. When I first introduce the tree, I tell students that the class with the most books read wins an ice cream party at the end of the year. This year, due to increased federal health regulations on snacks during the school day, my rules have changed. Instead, students will be able to drop two of their lowest reading scores. Unlike last year, I will tally the total books per class every quarter instead of at the end of the year to determine each quarter’s winner.

Construction for the tree is relatively simple and can be used from year to year.

Materials:

  • One concrete form tube sawed in half. I purchased mine from Home Depot and they sawed it in half for me
  • Two cans of brown spray paint. I used a textured spray paint similar to Rust-oleum’s multicolored textured spray paint, but you can use any type
  • A ream of brown paper—the same type you use to cover bulletin boards
  • A staple gun and staples.
  • Four packs of different colored paper for the leaves.
  • Brown or black duct tape
  • Bulletin board

Process:

  1. Spray paint the concrete form tube with the two cans of brown spray paint. This will serve as your trunk.
  2. Pull large sections of the paper of the ream and begin twisting the paper. As you twist the paper, begin stapling it to the concrete tube using the staple gun. Continue ripping off multiple pieces of paper from the ream, twist and intertwine them as you go along. This will make your trunk look three-dimensional and more realistic. Leave long ends on the bottom. Twist these to a point to create the roots of the tree.
  3. Before you get to the top of the trunk, fashion what looks like a strap. I did this by taking a piece of the brown paper and folding it to make a 2’ X 6” rectangle to wrap around the top of the trunk and affix to the wall. I reinforced the back of the piece of paper with brown duct tape. I then put this strap around the front of the trunk where the bulletin board first meets the concrete tube. I stapled the strap to the tree then the excess ends of the strap to the bulletin board to ensure that the tree wouldn’t fall over once it was complete.
  4. Finally, I continued twisting individual brown pieces of paper and then layering them by twisting multiple pieces together to create a thicker branch. Make sure to create a branch for each of your classes that will be participating.
  5. As you create the larger branches, staple them to the bulletin board. Because the paper is pliable, it is easily to manipulate to look more like a tree. Add smaller branches by twisting additional paper scraps.
  6. Cut out small leaves and store them in a jar or bag to give out to students as they finish their books. I usually have a volunteer cut them out for me so that I have a bulk amount for each quarter.
  7. Get excited to watch your tree (and readers) blossom!
    The reading tree full of leaves at the end of last year.

    The reading tree full of leaves at the end of last year.

While the tree may look complex, it does not take an extraneous amount of time to complete or teach to students. Last year, I allowed my classes to pick which branch they would like to use. Furthermore, I color coded the leaves based on the quarter. Each quarter, I would let my students pick the new leaf color. Green was the first quarter, red was second, orange was third, and yellow was fourth. Just as fall foliage shows the change of seasons in New England, the changing leaves showed my students their development and growth as readers throughout the year.

 

 

 

What is the “soundtrack of your rebellion?”

Amy Rasmussen, Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 1, 2014 Leave a comment

I liked this book in a lot of ways, and I hated it in others. Maybe because my heart is too soft for all the heartache and suffering of these children. The mother in me couldn’t stand it. Maybe because my Christian heart couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of so many people calling themselves Christian, the parents included. My friend raved about how her students devour this book. It has left me unsettled, but I do think many students will like the emotion this book evokes. It’s just not my kind of emotion.

This is a passage that I think my students will be able to make a connection:

Jesusland by Julia Scheers P159

That day I realized I wasn’t immune to my father’s violence. For years, while my brothers were whipped and I was spared, I thought I had some kind of biological privilege — that my father wouldn’t harm his own genetic material. But in their absence, my father didn’t have anywhere to train the spotlight of his rage on but me.

So when my parents left for another missionary meeting in California and the nurse from my dad’s clinic who was staying with me caught Scott climbing out of my bedroom window one morning, I left home. If my father wanted to choke me over a forgotten milkshake, what would he do to me for losing my virginity?

I moved in with my brother Dan and his three roommates at Purdue and found a part-time job as a busgirl at the Howard Johnson’s Hotel on Highway 52. I biked to work, and to Harrison –an hour’s ride away–if I couldn’t find someone to drive me. I didn’t go to school if I wasn’t in the mood for it, and a couple of teachers threatened to flunk me before passing me with D’s.

Although I was dirt poor–I paid half of Dan’s rent, and frequently resorted to eating off the room service trays I was sent to collect from the hotel hallways–I was happy. I didn’t have to go to church, spent hours watching MTV, and didn’t need permission to do anything. I was free.

I listened to Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil” on my Walkman as I rode through the streets of Lafayette on my bike, rewinding the cassette tape again and again.

It was the soundtrack of my rebellion. That was me, running with the devil. Doing bad things and liking it.

 

I wonder how students would respond to this question:  What is “the soundtrack of [your] rebellion”?