Welcome 2013!

I realize I'm a wee bit late ringing in the new year on the Internet, but the big thing is that I'm back. And, more excitingly, I plan on posting here more regularly.

This year, I'm going to try posting not only book reviews, but also educational materials/worksheets that I have found beneficial when teaching English Language Arts.

Exciting, eh?

Teaching Resources

My Easter break is almost over, and sadly I have not read as much as I thought I would. Somehow life and other things took over. Drat.

In other news, I've been thinking about whether or not I want to teach both The Road and Lord of the Flies in ELA B30 next year. I'm tempted to drop Lord of the Flies in favour of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. While my students really love Lord of the Flies (or they did last semester, I'm not so sure about this one), I feel like I'm ready for a change, and I do think that BMHaWK would be culturally relevant for these kids. So often, I get questions from them about the Aboriginal experience in the United States, and I can only devote a small amount of time to discussing this history with them. Dee Brown's non-fiction masterpiece might offer a little more insight.

Grrr.

I'm also torn on dropping Three Day Road, in ELA A30, in favour of something else. My students found the book to be long, and I kept on thinking how the entire class was seemingly bogged down in the trenches of World War One. The story of Elijah and Xavier is interesting, but fails to captivate female students - which is a problem. Maybe In Search of April Raintree instead?

Fixing Delilah Hannaford

Whenever I read a teen novel, I ask myself, “Will my kids enjoy this book? Is there enough drama, tension, romance, and angst in here that they will be able to relate to? Is this a quality book for teens?”  And, when reading Fixing Delilah Hannaford, I asked myself these same questions. Thankfully, all the questions were answered in the affirmative – this novel is the quintessential great read for adolescents.

Our protagonist, Delilah Hannaford, is troubled. She’s been caught shoplifting, cutting class, and going around with a “non-boyfriend”. The only route to her redemption lies in taking a cathartic family vacation to Maine, and dealing with not only her grandmother’s death but also unanswered family skeletons. Of course, no summer is complete without a cute boy, so Delilah meets one, and romance ensues. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that Delilah becomes more mature as the summer progresses.

The author, Sarah Ockler, has written a quality novel. This book is powerful, enticing, and moving. I would recommend it to any  young audience, or any adult who has an interest in teen literature.

4/5

Information:

Fixing Delilah

Sarah Ockler

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (2010), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 320 pages

Poetry Break

Yesterday, I exposed my students to this and powerful beautiful poem by Sharon Olds:

Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941

That winter, the dead could not be buried.
The ground was frozen, the gravediggers weak from hunger,
the coffin wood used for fuel.  So they were covered with something
and taken on a child's sled to the cemetery 
in the sub-zero air.  They lay on the soil,
some of them wrapped in dark cloth
bound with rope liek the tree's ball of roots 
when it waits to be planted; others wound in sheets,
their pale, gauze, tapered shapes
stiff as cocoons that will split down the center
when the new life inside is prepared;
but most lay like corpses, their coverings
coming undone, naked calves
hard as corded wood spilling
from under a cloak, a hand reaching out 
with no sign of peace, wanting to come back
even to the bread made of glue and sawdust,
even to the icy winter, and the siege.

It made them think of the influenza epidemic of 1919, and how stories related to that tragedy      are handed down in families. Of how bodies weren't placed in coffins, but merely

placed in a shroud. Bodies taken away to an island for an anonymous remembrance.

After reading said poem, one my students asked, "Alexis, do you like death like a lot?" I had 

to think for a moment (because I had made them read The Black Cat, Do Not Go Gentle, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, and The Cask of Amontillado)  to think about my

 response. I realized that I had picked poems/short stories that relate to death because death 

poetry and short stories usually have a lot of figurative language in them.  This makes it easy for students to analyze for literary devices (oh metaphor!). Furthermore, death is a universal theme, of which everyone can relate. Reading about death, quite frankly, makes one think about their own personal experiences, and usually forces students to think critically about the poem or 

short story at hand.

And there, my dears, is my story.