The Talk Funny Girl

I read The Talk Funny Girl by Roland Merullo over the Thanksgiving holiday.  I thought it was fitting, because the story takes place in New England, and that is where I was when I read most of it.  It is about a teenage girl who has been raised by two strange and cruel parents in rural New Hampshire.  Her family is so isolated and so cut off from the rest of civilization that they speak a strange dialect that no one else but their immediate family speaks.  "I don't for why know I'm afraid," is an example of something Marjorie, the protagonist, says.  She and everyone in their community is afraid because a killer is on the loose in their area.  Every six months or so, for the past several years, a young girl has been kidnapped and murdered.  Her parents seem to live in fear too - fear of the rest of the world.  They rarely leave home except to attend church, and her father refuses to drive on the highway because of a fear of the world that that highway leads to.  Despite her strange way of speaking and the fact that she was kept out of school until she was nine-years-old (when someone reported that fact to social services), Marjorie is bright and talented.  When she turns seventeen and has to get a job to support her family (neither of her parents work), she begins working for a man who has moved into town to rebuild a "cathedral" out of the ruins of an old church.  Her relationships with her boss and with her step-aunt Elaine turn out to be the saving grace in Marjorie's life.  After her parents strange and brutal forms of "penance" for perceived indiscretions on Marjorie's part go too far, she finds safety and solace with Elaine and her boss. 

This is an inspiring and unexpected story, unlike anything I have ever read.  It did continue with the theme of overcoming difficult upbringings - particularly overcoming bad parenting - that I have noticed in several of the books I chose this semester.  Other books that could be a part of this thematic unit would be The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and Burned by Ellen Hopkins. 

The ending of The Talk Funny Girl really took me by surprise.  After I finished the book, I had to go back and review several sections to check for clues that I may have missed.  I think this would be an excellent book for teaching the skill of prediction.   



Webquest

Here is the link to the webquest I created for Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

http://msetzoldswebquestonalongwaygone.weebly.com/

Matched

I found this book to be the most enjoyable out of all of the books that I have read this semester – and I have read some pretty awesome books! I personally enjoy the dystopian genre, so this partly explains my favoritism. I also enjoyed Ally Condie’s writing style. The writing was not so complex that my struggling readers would have difficulty understanding it, yet also contained bountiful opportunities for higher-level thinking. The book contains many symbolic elements, opportunities to infer meanings and make predictions, literary allusions that could lead to exploration of other works, and includes many topics that students could connect to their own lives, current events, and other popular novels (such as Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, and The Giver). I can see teaching this novel alone, or as part of a larger thematic unit on dystopian literature. I can also imagine several writing assignments that could stem from topics covered in this book, such persuasive essays on banned books or censorship, arranged marriages, euthanasia, or having students create and defend a list of the 10 works that they think should be included in the Society’s 100 books, poems, movies or songs.

90 Miles to Havana book trailer

90 Miles to Havana by Enrique Flores-Gallis

I have to admit that I chose this book because I had to include a couple of “middle school books” on my reading list and I did not think that it would be something I would seriously consider reading with my students, but I was wrong.  This is a book that anyone at any age could enjoy.  It happens to be about a young boy, I think about 9 or 10 years old, but it tells of an entertaining adventure and emotional struggles that anyone would enjoy reading or could relate to.  I chose this book over many other middle school titles because it describes a scenario that many of my students can relate to and I wanted to learn more about – moving to Miami from Cuba and adjusting to a new culture.  This story takes place during the 1960’s, when 14,000 children were sent to America from Cuba without their parents to escape the revolution and the new regime.  Even my students from other Latin American countries probably would learn about a time in history that they didn’t know much about.  This book lends itself easily to cross-curricular extension activities such as learning about the Cuban revolution or about America’s changing policies regarding Cuban refugees.  I think that it could also be a great tool for introducing a unit on bullying, which is a very important topic for today’s schools. 

In the story, Julian (the young protagonist) has to defend himself against a bully-turned-mini-dictator in the children’s refugee camp in Miami.  At first he has his brothers’ protection, but once they are taken from him he uses his cleverness and his sense of morality to help set things right in the camp so that none of the children have to be tormented anymore.  He even navigates his way through the streets of Miami and eventually the 90 mile stretch of water that separates Cuba from the United States to help rescue others from Cuba.  He becomes a hero in more ways than one, and when he is reunited with his family in Connecticut and starts school there, he is no longer intimidated by anyone.

I think this book could lead to a variety of writing assignments, and this could be a perfect opportunity to provide a choice for students.  They could write a personal narrative about an experience they have had with a bully, a mini-research paper about the effects of bullying or how it can be prevented, or they could write a short story about someone who faces a bully.  This would allow all students to learn more, develop empathy, and/or express their own struggles – whichever that student needs to do, he or she would have the opportunity to do.



Reading Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Not Reading

I thought the title of this book was clever, and a topic that my students would enjoy, so I decided to give it a try (even though I teach high school seniors and this book is clearly targeted to a middle school audience).  It was an enjoyable read, and short (which my students would appreciate!).  Most of my students would certainly relate to Charlie Joe’s animosity towards reading, but I am not sure they would be able to relate to much else.  Despite his opposition to reading, he is very intelligent and articulate.  He even admits that he is a pretty good writer and doesn’t mind doing it.  The only thing my students like less than reading is writing, so that might alienate them a bit.  I also worry that Charlie Joe’s white, upper-middle class family, friends, and school might turn my students off.  Charlie Joe’s dad is a lawyer; most of my students don’t really even have dads.  Charlie Joe hates reading because his dad gave him a bunch of books for his 6^th birthday; my students hate reading because they can’t do it very well.

Despite these differences, I still think I might consider reading at least some of this book aloud to my students.  The chapters are all very short, so it lends itself very well to read-alouds.  I was thinking of reading the section about when his hatred of reading began (the birthday presents).  I could use this as a writing prompt and ask my students to write about when they decided that they didn’t like to read and what prompted that decision.  Since they are so much older and wiser now (being seniors and all) maybe realizing how immature they were when they reached that conclusion might make them reconsider it.  One can hope, anyway…

Choices

Our school used the Edge textbook program, which is published by Hampton-Brown.  Each unit is organized around a theme, such as loyalty.  Each unit includes three trade books, each at a distinct difficulty level.  I believe that motivation is such an important component to reading that I feel the need to provide my students with a choice, rather than requiring students to read a book based solely on the lexile level.  I believe that students will gain more from reading a book that is somewhat “easy” than they would by pretending to read a more challenging book that does not appeal to their interests.  On the other hand, a student might be capable of reading a more challenging book than would be expected if the motivation is there to try.  Restricting students’ choices based solely on a lexile ranking is one of the most frequent complaints I have heard from students, teachers, and parents about the AR program. 

I encourage student choice by introducing each book with a youtube video trailer and asking students to jot down notes about each book as they view the trailers.  Then I ask them to rank the books in order of preference.  I review their choices, and try to allow each student to read his or her first choice book.  If I notice that a student has selected a book as a first choice that I think could be too difficult, I explain this to him or her.  Then I will show the book and ask him or her to “take 5” – read about 5 fingers length of text aloud and count how many errors are made.  If a student makes more than 5 errors in that length of text, the book is probably too difficult.  At that point I would strongly encourage the student to make another choice. 

The books my students had to choose from most recently were Two Badges by Mona Ruiz, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Wave by Todd Strasser.  Below are two of the trailers I used to introduce these books.