Helping Students Find "The Cover That Fits"

Please view my final project at http://kkpike.tripod.com/

This website is dedicated to helping students find the right books for them. Eventually (once I have read more adolescent literature), I would envision dividing the pages into genres or categories, particularly for high school. Also, the attached blogs are intended to be open forums, but in the long run, I am not entirely sure that is the best format for the discussions; perhaps something more along the lines of a chatroom would work better.

Book Talk : Acceleration

Craft Lesson - Perspective/Point of View in Persepolis

Materials:
· History Textbook or Text on the Islamic Revolution
· Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Purpose: To help students understand the impact of using different perspectives. Help students analyze perspectives and bias when reading historical and other texts.

Lesson:
Completely discussion based lesson. Read both texts.

Teacher: Class, can you help me understand what point of view or perspective is?
Prompts – a way of seeing things, reflection on events, an opinion
Definition:
Point of View
1. a specified or stated manner of consideration or appraisal; standpoint

2. an opinion, attitude, or judgment

3. the position of the narrator in relation to the story, as indicated by the narrator's outlook from which the events are depicted and by the attitude toward the characters.

Perspective
1. the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship

**Definitions retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com

Now let’s take a look at the texts:
HISTORICAL TEXT or TEXTBOOK
Leading Discussion Questions:
What perspective is this text written from?
o Prompts: historical perspective, very factual (“Just the facts ma’am. Just the facts.”), no emotion or feeling at all, no detailed descriptions, limited visual representation
How does that perspective help you understand the time period and events?
o Prompts: helps us understand the technical details of the events and time period, provides an overview to work from
Why is this type of text important?
o It does provide us with the factual information from which to work and gives a broad overview of the things that occurred.
Is there any bias in this type of text?
o There can be – think of Persepolis pages 44 & 73 where they are tearing pages out of the history book and closing universities so that students are not “led astray”.
o How does bias get into this type of text? You would think the facts are generally pretty unbiased…
§ Government influence, writer bias, editorial bias
§ Think of other events where this might have occurred - Holocaust, Indian relocation, discovery of the Americas, establishment of the United States of America, etc.

PERSEPOLIS
Leading Discussion Questions
What perspective is this book told from?
o Prompts: 1st person, child/teenager, female, clinical; Is it also historical, factual??
How does this perspective add to your understanding of the events?
o Prompts: provides emotion, feelings, first-hand account of the events
Why is this type of text important?
What does it provide that the other does not? What does the other provide that this perspective does not?
o Prompts: a link to the emotional humanity of the events, a deeper understanding than simple facts can provide, an in-depth look
What bias is there in this type of text?
o Quite a lot, because you are only seeing one side of the story.
o A child’s point of view could be skewed due to parental protection, misunderstanding of events, misinterpretation of words, events, expressions, etc.
o Removed because this is being written by a woman who is looking back at her childhood growing up in this era instead of being written at that exact time, like Diary of Anne Frank. Therefore, she has had time to interpret the events in a mature way

Wrap-Up: What is the importance of reading multiple perspectives on a topic? How does looking at things from several perspectives help us make more informed decisions and take thoughtful stances?

TEKS: Social Studies: High School: World History: Standard 25; English III: Standard 7, 8, & 11

Book Review: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

This book provides an interesting look at a relatively dark and largely misunderstood period of time. Told from an interesting point-of-view – that of a child – and in a unique way – as a graphic novel, this book brings new insight to this time in history.

As the story begins, the young girls are being forced to wear head coverings, yet the young ones do not understand why. As the story progresses, the reader begins to understand the vast difference between what is portrayed in popular media and what actually occurs. The reader also begins to understand that the thoughts and beliefs of the people are not always reflected in their government. The book tells the story of the rebellion of the Iranian people against their government. What makes it more interesting is that the book is told from the perspective of the child of revolutionaries. We see her parents participate in protests, her parents’ friends arrested and tortured, the vast class differences that exist in that culture and their real implications on the people who live in that society, and finally, we watch as her parents send her away to receive a better education and “better life” in France.

The other aspect of this book that makes it so intriguing is that it is a graphic novel. The drawings are all black and white two dimensional drawings with short dialogue, much like you would find in a comic book only without the color. These drawings actually help the author treat the violence very clinically. The drawings evoke a lot of emotion and convey a lot of information and feelings without any of the gore or graphic images.

This book would be well suited for a history classroom, especially side-by-side with a true historical text or textbook. Using this book this way helps provide students with multiple perspectives on a series of historical events. It could also be used as a primary source, because the woman writing this book is doing so from her first-hand account of the events.

A word of caution…this book should be used with high school students or older. Younger students may not be mature enough to fully understand the content.

This review can also be viewed on Amazon.com

Red Hot Salsa

What a beautiful collection of poems!!  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.  The poems are beautifully written and poignant.

I especially enjoyed the variety of poetry.  There were some poems that made me laugh (Taco Bell is NOT Mexican food) and others that deeply touched my heart (Invisible Boundaries).  Each poem held a depth of meaning beyond the words of poetry and touched an inner part of me.  Though the collection is geared toward young Latinos, the themes are universal - a desperate need for love, acceptance, freedom, freedom to be yourself, searching for your own unique identity, the fear of being invisible and insignificant.  These themes can be understood and related to regardless of the reader's background or ethnicity.  

I also really enjoyed reading the Spanish translations.  This gives the book an extra dimension, especially in light of the proposed audience.  The Spanish language is such a beautiful and romantic language and it was a wonderful experience to read the two side-by-side.

I can see this book being used in multiple ways in the classroom - everything from being used as part of learning poetry to discussions on culture and use of language.  Overall, this was a wonderful book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Poet Slave of Cuba

This book was very interesting to me. I was not sure what to expect between the genre and the subject matter. I have never experienced a novel told through poetry the way this one is. The poetry is absolutely beautiful in this novel. Margarita Engle does such a wonderful job of weaving this haunting biography together through the use of multiple voices/perspectives to create a tapestry. The characters are developed so well through the poetic vignettes that we truly feel as though these characters are sitting in front of us telling their story.

I found myself rushing through the portions where Juan Manzano tells about the punishment and torture he received, thanking Don Nicholas for his kindness, hating La Marquesa De Prado Ameno for her cruelty, and feeling the anguish of a mother watching her child suffer with Maria Del Pilar. Each voice tells a different story; portrays a unique yet equally important aspect of the slavery. This novel provides the reader with perspectives not often explored in a slavery discussion. It also provides a different background setting instead of the Deep South/Cotton backdrop, and yet it still gives us insight into the history of this country as well as Cuba.

I think this would be a good book to use with the entire class in some form or fashion. It is very emotional and graphic in places, that I think it would be difficult to leave students alone with it, particularly middle school students.

Up Before Daybreak

This book was very interesting to me. Having grown up in cotton country, I realized just how little I know about this part of the world and our history. I also did not realize what an integral part cotton played in the Industrial Revolution and what an instrument of change it really was. I have always known that cotton played an integral role in our nation's history and obviously still affects our lives in significant ways even now, since many fabrics are based from cotton. I have a good friend who farms cotton and struggles to make ends meet now; I cannot even imagine what it would have been like for him to have been farming at that point in history.

What I really like about this book is that it puts historical facts side-by-side with primary sources; first-hand accounts of the time, whether it was the testimony of a former slave or a mill worker. These sources help bring this time period alive. It helps us understand the times on a more personal level. We can relate and to some degree try to put ourselves in their shoes. I also thought the photographs in this book were fantastic and very well placed. The photos helped me understand more about the text. Visual images can be so powerful in improving our comprehension and helped give me a deeper understanding and I think they did exactly that in this book.

I would most definitely use this book in a history classroom, especially in the classes that talk about "King Cotton" and slavery. I would also use this book when discussing the Industrial Revolution and the changes in the rights of women and children.