Bits and Pieces

Last night I read Who Owns Kelly Paddik? by Beth Goobie. It’s a high/low book, part of the Orca Soundings series. Kelly has been sexually abused by her father, tries to commit suicide, and is now institutionalized. Not great literature, but my eighth grade reluctant readers will eat it up. We have one other book in this series (more are on order) which I will be reading immediately.

I’m trying to come up with some fall reading goals. For right now, here they are:
1. Reread the Battle of the Books selections for which I haven’t written enough questions. The North Carolina list can be reached here. I’m torn about whether to blog about these books – none of them are new titles so I’m not sure what I’ll do.
2. Read at least one new-to-me title from my media center each week and blog about it, even if it’s an old title.
3. Read at least one non-fiction title each week. I really need to boost my collection of non-fiction booktalks.
4. Read a more-appropriate-for-high-school title every other week and blog about it. I have several sitting on my shelf right now and several more on my list that I just need an excuse to go the bookstore and buy.

School has started for me. I’ve gotten used to reading blogs several times a day. Now it will probably be only once a day. I miss it. Of course, it didn’t help that massive computer problems greeted me. Hopefully today will be better.

Daniel Half Human and the Good Nazi by David Chotjewitz

Daniel is half human. Now the logical question after this statement is: What is the other half? Perhaps Klingon? No, Daniel is half German and half Jewish and since Nazi Germany considers Jews to be a sub-human species, hence the half-human categorization.

Daniel, however, hasn’t always known about his Jewish ancestry. His mother wasn’t raised Jewish, and his parents have never mentioned it. So the story begins in 1933 with Daniel and his best friend Armin out painting swastikas on the walls of the town, trying to incite the local communists. They both desperately want to join the Hitler Youth, but their fathers won’t let them.

They are thrilled when the Nazis take control, but life soon changes drastically for them. Daniel finds out that his mother is a Jew and he cannot join the Hitler Youth because the background check will surely reveal his ancestry. Life becomes all about trying to hide who he is. Unfortunately, the secret gets out, and slowly the things that make up his life are taken away. His father, who is a prominent lawyer, loses his law firm because he is married to a Jewess, Daniel can no longer play soccer with his team and is eventually thrown out of school, and the family cannot enjoy doing such simple things as going to the cinema.

Throughout the story Daniel’s friend Armin sticks with him, but Armin does eventually join the Hitler Youth and has to make some very difficult decisions. Telling more would give away the ending so I’ll leave it there.

What made this book one of the best I’ve read this year? It was so very real and so very chilling. I truly understood how so many children were brainwashed in school to believe the superiority of their race above all others. The characters were real and sympathetic and I wanted each of them to end in peace with themselves and who they were. And finally, to watch the noose slowly being tightened around Daniel’s family’s necks, to know what happens in the end to the Jews who don’t manage to escape . . .

And then the ending. To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about the last page of the book. Obviously, I cannot talk about it without spoiling it, but it would make for great conversation. Let's say that it shocked me so much that I had to read it twice before it sunk in.

Last month I read Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (I’m trying to read a play each summer). I would love to teach a class that used both the play and this novel because they would make for wonderful discussions. One of my favorite speeches is Shylock’s that reads in part “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” It is sad to think that in 2007 groups of people are still considered by other groups to be only half human. Will the day come when we just treat everyone like human beings?

What a choice!

You're the University of North Carolina!

Well well well. You made your idea of building a city on the
hill public before just about anyone else. And since you were stuck to one
place for a seemingly endless period of time, you're not above ramming
other people off of it. Though he's been retired for ages, you still buy
Jordans to put on your feet. You have nothing against the duchess, but you
simply cannot stand the duke.


Take the University Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I must say that as a proud UNC graduate in both 1987 and 1989, I couldn't be happier!

Day of Tears: A Novel in Dialogue by Julius Lester

What continually horrifies me about human beings is their willingness to view other human beings as less than human -- as animals -- as things. That’s what happened to the Jews during World War II (and many other times in their history). It’s also what happened to slaves in the United States. It’s such an easy cop-out. After all, if slaves aren’t real people, then they are not capable of having the same emotions as their white masters, and it is acceptable to own them and to do such things as sell them away from their families. In Day of Tears, Julius Lester does a masterful job of expressing the viewpoints of both the slaves and the white people involved in a fictional retelling of the “biggest slave auction in American history.”

Will and Mattie grew up with their owner, Pierce Butler. They have a daughter who looks after Butler’s two little girls. Even though most of the slaves on the large Georgia plantation are being sold to pay off Butler’s gambling debts, Will and Mattie know that they and their daughter Emma are safe, or so they think. When a lady from Kentucky offers to buy Emma, Butler caves in and she is sold without even the opportunity to say goodbye to her mother. She will never see her parents again.

Besides the obvious, heart-wrenching effects the sale has on all of the slaves involved, none of the white people ever really recover from it either. While most of the whites continue to view the slaves as sub-humans, they do not gain from the sale the things they hoped for. Lester creates interludes so that we learn what happens to all those involved in this horrible day, known in history as “the Weeping Time.”

Every year I read aloud Gary Paulsen’s Nightjohn to my eighth graders. I want them to truly understand that slavery wasn’t like what was presented in Gone with the Wind. Now I have another tool to use with my classes. Because it is told in dialogue, it will make great reader’s theater.

Bodies from the Ash by James. M. Deem

I’ve always been fascinated by Pompeii. Its story has many of the elements that I love: history, tragedy, love, horror. Bodies from the Ash may be my favorite book about this event. To have been there when that volcano exploded and try to flee, finally realizing that you can’t and that for you, life is over. And then to lie, covered by ash for almost 2,000 years until you’re discovered. Now, thanks to plaster casts made during the excavation, we can see the people of Pompeii in their moments of death. A beggar carrying a bag for alms. The slave trying to break free of his chains. The merchant struggling to pull himself up.

Deem does a wonderful job of both describing what it would have been like to have been in Pompeii and Herculaneum that fateful day in 79 A.D and how the excavations proceeded once Pompeii was rediscovered in 1748. It is sad to think that Pompeii is considered an endangered site and may not be there for future generations to see.

This is going to be a great book to share with my 6th graders during their Ancient Rome unit.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi

Somehow I have been a librarian for a very long time and have never read this book. I had read the back of it and decided that I wouldn’t really like it. Boy, was I wrong!

Charlotte Doyle lives in 1832. She is due to travel home to Rhode Island from England where she has lived most of her life. Two other families are supposed to travel on the ship with her but at the last moment they cancel and Charlotte is left as the only female on board.

Immediately you realize that something is very wrong. This is not a happy crew. Charlotte is warned not to stay on board, but she feels as though she has little choice. Soon she meets the cook, Zachariah, who gives her a knife to protect herself. Charlotte at first sympathizes with Captain Jaggery, who she thinks is the only gentleman on board. She soon realizes that he is cruel, if not completely crazy, and a mutiny ensues. During the voyage Charlotte has to reach down to levels she never realized she had and give up her visions of what she, as a young lady, must act like. She is a character that you can sympathize with and her growth in the book is wonderful to read about.

Masquerade by Melissa De La Cruz

I must say I read this one quickly. I started it last night and it was the first thing I picked up this morning (even before the paper!).

Anyway, on to Masquerade. Schuyler has gone to Venice with her best friend Oliver in a quest to find her grandfather. She thinks that only he can help her figure out what's happening with the Silver Bloods who are preying upon the Blue Bloods. The adult vampires are still denying that the Silver Bloods are back but Schuyler knows better. A Silver Blood almost killed her grandmother and has killed several teenagers her age. How then, can the adults be convinced?

Another book that I don’t know exactly what to say about. Did I like it? Yes. I started it last night and finished it early this morning. While it didn’t have the driving plot of the first book, and some elements were confusing, what I liked about it was the vampire world that De La Cruz has created. This very high society world has many cracks and yet it still manages to do at least some good for the Red Bloods (or humans). They aren't painted in such wonderful light -- they are selfish, narcissistic beings who do somehow manage to do good for others, if only to redeem themselves.I also liked the whole theme of ignoring or even denying that a bad thing is happening in an attempt to make that bad thing go away. After all, don't we as humans do that all the time? Another interesting theme is that of sacrifice. There are several sacrifices made in the book, the most poignant when Oliver allows Schuyler to use his blood in order to save herself. This book made me think about the world De La Cruz has created, and I must say I will buy the next volume when it comes out next fall.

Now, if the copy of Eclipse that I ordered for the library would just come in!!!