The Book Thief

I liked this book. I really liked the perspective from which the book was taken. The Book Thief was written, through the eyes of Death, about a German girl, during the Holocaust. Did you get all that? How many stories do you read that follow the German through the Holocaust? That's what I was thinking...Anyway it's not just about how that part of the story was different. Lets talk about Death. I read someone's blog earlier, maybe Paige? and she wrote about picturing death as the grim reaper from Family Guy. This wasn't the case, I pictured him as an angel, maybe the only thing dark or punk on him would be a lip ring with a chain wallet. He was soft!!! How many characters playing Death are actually sympathetic. I can think back to the Christmas Carol and the the three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future... Depending on which version you watched (not the Muppet Christmas Carol or Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol), those dudes weren't pleasant people. I mean, if you think about it in depth, they really were worried about Scrooge's demeanor but weren't overly sympathetic. Along with the three ghosts... we can talk about Paige's grim reaper, what a scary dude!!!! All of these characters fail to parallel with the narrator of The Book Thief.

Talking about our German girl, Liesel, and how we are following her throughout this story and not some Jewish person is a different choice of perspective. Growing up, the two supplemental materials that were offered with the Holocaust were The Diary of Anne Frank and Night. Each of these novels were from a Jewish persons perspective. With The Book Thief being published in 2005 and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas having been published in 2006, these texts lend a different perspective to the reading audience.

So the question is... Do I use this book in my classroom????? It will take a lot of coaxing to get a middle school, heck even high school student to read a book over 500 pages that isn't leisure... However, even though it took me a solid 100 pages to get into the book and get through, what I thought was a drawn out way to set the story and all of its characters, I liked the book. I feel that it had plenty of teachable moments. This book can obviously be paired to a World War II Unit and possibly be split up into group projects to see the different perspectives of the four books I mentioned earlier. But again, the book is long, I read more pages in this book than I read in all of my classes combined in high school. Not saying that every high school student is going to be like me, in fact I hope they are not, but this is asking a lot from students at their age to read and analyze, especially with all of the other work high school students do.

So I will leave you with this... I am going to relate this book to a movie, not one that anyone else might have picked up on... I related Death to the movie "The Sixth Sense." Bruce Willis is the main character throughout who follows this poor young boy, "Who see's dead people." It takes Bruce until the end of the film to realize that he is dead!!! I see Death hovering over Leisel like Bruce did over the little man in the Sixth Sense. I also thought of this because, while most of us probably picked up on the whole narrator being Death, I for one missed that for a good part of the beginning part of the story. With that being said, who's to say that our high school students might miss that concept. I dunno, it's a stretch, but a thought.

American Born Chinese

I knew I would like this book from the minute I picked it up. Once I read the inside cover and found that this novel would be a culmination of three main characters, three different point of views, that would lead us to a common connection at the end.

Graphic novels are fun because the text is accompanied with pictures! Yes, I am passed the point of picture books, but who doesn't like to have novels with pictures to switch it up every once in awhile. This is the first graphic novel that I have read and it was definitely enjoyable. I found myself speeding through this book as if I were watching a movie. Every picture was descriptive as was the subtitles and the dialogue throughout the text. After reading the inside cover, I spent the entire time reading the book trying to make connections between the three characters but found that I was wayyyyy off when we finally found out.

As I read the book, I marked pages where stereotypes were present in the text. Being part of the presenting group in the following class, I am working on the stereotype portion of the discussion. Many were blatantly obvious while reading... Like on page 103 when Jin is looking for Wei-Chen and he questions, "What's taking him so long? He couldn't've gone to Math Circles - It's Wednesday!" The one stereotype that comes to mind when talking about people of Asian descent, it's that they are good/enjoy math. So this builds to the stereotype I think. Like, why couldn't it be a creative writing class or soccer practice? I don't know, I just pulled that out.... among many others.

Which include:

• When Chin-Kee is answering all of the questions in the classes he is attending with is cousin "Daaa - neeeee." Fitting the stereotypes that the Chinese are smarter than Americans.
  
• Or when Steve, the jock, that has nothing to talk about but basketball and how he beats the snot out of kids. Typical meathead comments...
• Or on page 118 when Chin-Kee takes Steve's coke and "Me Chinese, me play joke! me go pee-pee in his coke! This was a phrase that was thrown around the school when I was younger... childish
  
• or when the kid on page 121 is pulling outward on his eyes to slant them (this is a common gesture from people making fun of Asians)
• Or when Jin speaks about his mother and father and how they started dating... His mom chose him because of the thickness of his glasses. Because, it has been said that the thicker the glasses the smarter someone is... This is false by the way for those of you who still believe.
• and then there is the comment on 164 that Jin is talking about regarding another Asian, his cousin Charlie
• "Charlie had breath that smelled of old rice, a Bruce Lee haircut, and parents even stricter than my own, so I always thought it was just sour grapes
• Asians are also tied to rice and compared to Bruce Lee, because he is Asian

Overall, I enjoyed the layout of this novel and how well it was illustrated. I liked how it brought all of the the characters together at the end. Negative stereotypes are throughout this story which would make for good teaching points. I look forward to sprinkling this into our presentation next Wednesday.


And for my real world connection:




South Park is a show that is watched by most teens and young adults. It is filled with negative stereotypes and racial slurs. I must admit it is comical, at times, but they are usually only making jokes at the expense of other groups. If the language was clean in this show, this would be a clip of how not to act in life....

Monster

Best novel we have read yet! I found this story very easy to read and very difficult to put down. I had a unique experience reading this book while travelling through New York City. It made me think of Steve's POV as he was travelling in the back of the van on the way to court. In fact, I put myself in his shoes and pretended that the bus I was riding in was actually the van that Steve rode in to court. But anyway, I enjoyed this story and it could definitely be used in a middle school/high school classroom.

I took a minority literature class in high school where the only story we read, that was teachable, were excerpts from the Autobiography of Malcolm X (which I loved). This story would be great to teach the many stereotypes that are present in today's society. Throughout this story Steve is trying to convince himself that he is not a monster but he is not getting much support from the people around him. His own lawyer doesn't trust him and she lets it be known throughout the text. I mean, Steve, who is 16, is trying to have a casual conversation about what O'Brien is going to be doing on the weekend. O'Brien pauses and gives a blank stare, then finally answers him. How is a client (especially a 16 year old) to feel confident when his own defense attorney shows signs of doubt? She talks with no confidence on page 24 when she says to Steve: "You have to believe in yourself if we're going to convince a jury that you're innocent." What kind of crap is that. How about rephrasing that and telling the boy that you believe he is innocent and that you are going to help him prove his innocence. Of course he believes he is innocent, maybe if you would just listen to him you would understand!!! Even after the trial is over, Steve leans in to give her a thank you hug... she turns her back. Yes she just helped this young boy win his trial, but she is just as prejudice as the rest of them. It makes you wonder that if he had a non-prejudice attorney he may have won the trial more handily.

That example sheds light on the hidden discrimination throughout the story. While reading this in your class of teenagers, see if they can pick up on the bigotry that is sprinkled throughout.

On another note I really enjoyed how the story was written. When I first looked at the text, I had a bad feeling. I hate hate hate reading plays and anything that resembles Shakespeare. However, this story was not at all what I thought it would be. I liked how it switched from scripted writing to journal writing. So that led me to think about my prejudices. Hear I am preaching about this attorney "reading a book by its cover," while I am judging this book on how it is written.

All in all, you can pull so many things from this book on identifying prejudices as well as reading a multifaceted genre. Like I said before, this would be a great book to go with a minority literature class or it could go with any English class for that matter.