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Lots of chaos in life right now has me turning off media (I ended all my streaming service subscriptions, and the SocMed I do use is mostly becoming unusable -- Twitter -- or clogged with Serious Business, despite my curation) and turning to books. Plus I bought a lot of books in the last few months. I also went to the library! I miss public libraries! I stopped using them as much when I stopped reading a lot. Anxiety and grief really wrecked my concentration a few years back, and it's been a long and slow recovery to get anywhere near my old levels of reading. One of the things I really love about my hometown public library is that they've tried to bulk up their graphic novel section, especially beyond manga and superhero comics. There are a ton of GN and long-form illustrated works that I want to read, but I balk at the price because I read them once, I read them quickly, and I move on. Libraries are such a great way to support the artists and the community.
I also finished reading the two novels I plan to teach in the 2023-2024 school year. They are both new-to-me, and I didn't want to rush through them or read them with the kids (in case there were any surprises in the text). Here's a brief rundown of what I've read in the last few weeks. The links take you to pages with synopses because I don't want a super long post here.
Lesson Books:
The Astonishing Color of After by Emily XR Pan This YA novel with an edge of fantasy is about a girl, Leigh, who loses her mother to suicide and in the aftermath, connects with her mother's Taiwanese family as she tries to find her mother, who Leigh is convinced has turned into a red bird. I plan to swap out The Catcher in the Rye for this novel for a couple of reasons. First, it's contemporary YA, and while my students did make some connections to Catcher last year, I just don't like the novel. Also, there is so much material online to help students cheat through assignments. I wanted to try and avoid some of that. Second, and more importantly, I want to expand my curriculum to include texts that are relevant to the culture in which I am teaching, and next year, that's an international school in Taiwan. The school is a total shitshow, but I'm hoping to introduce literature that will help students develop empathy as they are shoved along the Ivy League track.
The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis I will be teaching 7th grade English next year, and I chose this novel because there is a corresponding CommonLit unit. I should have many of the same students I had last year as 6th graders, and they really need a lot of help developing academic writing and analysis skills. Most of them are still basically ESL students, although their test scores take them out of an official ESL class. The CommonLit units are well-scaffolded, with lots of printable materials (these middle school kids are the most gaming-addicted kiddos I have EVER worked with, although I'm sure it will only get worse). As for the book itself, I think the students will relate to the sibling relationship in the narrative. And while the story doesn't focus too much on the Civil Rights Movement, there are opportunities for students to do some research and learn more about the context of the story. I'm also teaching a research project class, so I might be able to overlap some things.
Displacement by Kiku Hughes This book is based on Hughes's grandmother's story of internment at Topaz Lake during World War II. A fictionalized Hughes finds herself "displaced" and sent to the camp where her grandmother and great-grandparents were interned. She goes back three times and experiences life in the camps. This would be a great book to have in a classroom, along with They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. One of my curriculum dreams is to give the subject of Japanese Internment its due attention in class, through books like this, especially because there is a camp just a twenty-minute drive from my hometown.
The Undertaking of Lily Chen by Danica Novgorodoff This is a spooky little graphic novel about a young man who has to acquire a corpse so his older brother, who died accidentally after scuffling with the young man, can have a ghost marriage.
Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese-American by Laura Gao This has been on my TBR list for a while. Gao is not only an immigrant, coming into adulthood as COVID sets in, but she is also queer, and this memoir covers her childhood through about 2021-ish. I enjoyed reading it.
I also finished reading the two novels I plan to teach in the 2023-2024 school year. They are both new-to-me, and I didn't want to rush through them or read them with the kids (in case there were any surprises in the text). Here's a brief rundown of what I've read in the last few weeks. The links take you to pages with synopses because I don't want a super long post here.
Lesson Books:
The Astonishing Color of After by Emily XR Pan This YA novel with an edge of fantasy is about a girl, Leigh, who loses her mother to suicide and in the aftermath, connects with her mother's Taiwanese family as she tries to find her mother, who Leigh is convinced has turned into a red bird. I plan to swap out The Catcher in the Rye for this novel for a couple of reasons. First, it's contemporary YA, and while my students did make some connections to Catcher last year, I just don't like the novel. Also, there is so much material online to help students cheat through assignments. I wanted to try and avoid some of that. Second, and more importantly, I want to expand my curriculum to include texts that are relevant to the culture in which I am teaching, and next year, that's an international school in Taiwan. The school is a total shitshow, but I'm hoping to introduce literature that will help students develop empathy as they are shoved along the Ivy League track.
The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis I will be teaching 7th grade English next year, and I chose this novel because there is a corresponding CommonLit unit. I should have many of the same students I had last year as 6th graders, and they really need a lot of help developing academic writing and analysis skills. Most of them are still basically ESL students, although their test scores take them out of an official ESL class. The CommonLit units are well-scaffolded, with lots of printable materials (these middle school kids are the most gaming-addicted kiddos I have EVER worked with, although I'm sure it will only get worse). As for the book itself, I think the students will relate to the sibling relationship in the narrative. And while the story doesn't focus too much on the Civil Rights Movement, there are opportunities for students to do some research and learn more about the context of the story. I'm also teaching a research project class, so I might be able to overlap some things.
Library Haul, Part One:
Et Tu, Brute: The Deaths of the Roman Emperors by Jason Novak This book contains a series of sketchy, scribbly-style illustrations of the Roman Emperors and how they died. This book would be a fun gift for a history teacher, something to keep in the classroom (the illustrations aren't too gory, despite the subject matter) for kiddos to flip through instead of being on their phones.
Displacement by Kiku Hughes This book is based on Hughes's grandmother's story of internment at Topaz Lake during World War II. A fictionalized Hughes finds herself "displaced" and sent to the camp where her grandmother and great-grandparents were interned. She goes back three times and experiences life in the camps. This would be a great book to have in a classroom, along with They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. One of my curriculum dreams is to give the subject of Japanese Internment its due attention in class, through books like this, especially because there is a camp just a twenty-minute drive from my hometown.
The Undertaking of Lily Chen by Danica Novgorodoff This is a spooky little graphic novel about a young man who has to acquire a corpse so his older brother, who died accidentally after scuffling with the young man, can have a ghost marriage.
Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese-American by Laura Gao This has been on my TBR list for a while. Gao is not only an immigrant, coming into adulthood as COVID sets in, but she is also queer, and this memoir covers her childhood through about 2021-ish. I enjoyed reading it.
