On Private Peaceful

Now, I haven't read this novel yet. It's on my list. I have a student, let's call him WarGuy, that I had to take a minute and talk about.

This week is Red Ribbon Week. In honor, and to reinforce awareness in our students, we had a school-wide assembly during 4th period on Monday. I mention this to my students once they get in the door and get settled, and WarGuy, who's reading Private Peaceful says, "We're not reading today?!?"

From many of my students I'd expect that statement to take a "Hooray! We don't have to read." or "Yes, no Super Sucky Reading today" (and yes, I have one that actually says that for SSR on a regular basis. Of course, she won't tell anyone that she secretly reads at home). WarGuy was genuinely upset that he didn't get to read.

To give you an idea about how fast he's devouring this novel--most of my students will take six weeks to read a 200 page novel. That's about six pages every school day. WarGuy, who said when he was transferred into my class that he really doesn't like reading, is over 3/4 of the way done, and I gave him the novel last Wednesday. He comes in every day and offers his commentary on what he read outside of school, then does the same after our daily SSR.

Other members of the class find WarGuy annoying, but I hope they're picking up on how I react to him, pointing out the things he does that good readers do, and offering suggestions.

Needless to say, this semester, I got one.

On "Summer Wind" by Lee Francis

A little preface for this piece...

It's a reader response to a story from Moccasin Thunder, a collection of American Indian stories. One of the more challenging novels I taught during my student teaching was William Faulkner's A Light in August. I'm actually rather sad that I've managed to lose my annotated copy of this novel. Anyway, one of Faulkner's ways of getting into characters' heads was particularly intriguing to me. That is, he would state what the character was thinking, "and place those thoughts in quotation marks," then tell what the character was thinking ...with subconscious thought in italics. I can't remember whether or not I've employed this particular method in my blog here. If I haven't, it's about time, and if I have, then I'm probably due. My goal was to show the progression of subconscious thought, similar to anyone's the angrier they get.

The actual assignment asked us to rewrite the story in a different point of view, either shifting narrators, type of narrator (e.g. omniscient, limited omniscient, etc.), shifting person (e.g. 1st or 3rd). I chose this character because it's interesting to me to explore one's hatred for another group of people, mainly because it's not something that I comprehend. SO without further ado...

"Summer Wind"

This is totally not where the girl wants to be right now, when all her friends are out cruising and hanging. She's stuck behind that stupid register all day with all those idiot customers who have no idea or respect for how hard it is to work on the front end.

She couldn't believe this one woman the other day. Old lady. Indian. God knows she must be slow. The girl sighs heavily and starts ringing the old woman out. She's there with some boy who the girl thought might be cute if he wasn't so damn dark.

"Twelve dollars and twenty-seven cents." She wonders if her disdain for those natives came out in her voice. When she's tired, things like that are harder to hide.

The girl couldn't believe the audacity of that woman. The girl gave her the total and the woman smiles this saccharine nasty-ass-sweet smile. Damn woman spent five minutes rooting around in her purse trying to find her wallet and the girl's thinking "You best stop grinning at me," …thinking god damn injuns holding up my line, why don't you go back to the reservation we stuck you on…

Then, and then she started counting out all this change. Slowly. Like the molasses the girl's mother talked about when she was late getting out of the bed in the morning. She wanted to say, "Damnit old lady, I know you have some paper in that billfold," thinking "Why couldn't she pay in bills"…thinking the genocide of the Holocaust was wasted on the Jews… But she didn't say any of these things. And then the old woman dropped all the quarters on the floor and had to start over again.

"Could you repeat the total, dear?" Her voice was still sticky.

"Twelve twenty-seven," the girl spat. Literally, though less intentionally than one might believe. She sent a mock-apologetic glance at the people in line behind the old woman who were snickering to themselves at this point. Probably at the retardedness of the lady.

The girl was so angry by the time the old woman got through counting and recounting that when she gave the girl the coins, the girl was so flustered with rage that she dropped them all over everywhere thinking, "Shit,"…thinking I can't believe these goddamn fucking injuns wasted all this fucking time…

"I could count it again." The soft voice penetrated the girl's inner monologue. "Just to make sure it's all there."

The girl shook her head. "That won't be necessary."

"Okay, then dear. You have a nice day." The girl turned shades of red as she watched them walk away.

When they're out of earshot, she said, "Damn, injuns" under her breath thinking "Thank god they're gone," …thinking why didn't the white man wipe them all out when they got here? Would have done the entire world a whole lot of good…

Ugh. "Can I help you?"

In my infinite brilliance...

... I left my copy of House of the Scorpion at school. So I read Am I Blue? last night and started in on Twisted today. But I'm jonesing to find out what's happening to Matt.

Gah. How could I have left it at school...?

As an aside (and I'll really post about it later) but my two favorite stories from Am I Blue? are the title story and the last story "Dancing Backwards." I quoted "Dancing Backwards" twice today.

Educator Appreciation Week

I totally took advantage of Educator Appreciation Week at Barnes & Noble. This week I bought

• Haunted and Choke by Chuck Palahniuk (Note: This is my second copy of Haunted. This is what I get for lending it to a former student. And I totally didn't realize there was a face on the cover that glows in the dark until I talked to one of the guys at the Barnes & Noble in Albuquerque who said it freaked him out when he was closing one night. He also said that the reason they had to start keeping all the Palahniuk behind the counter was because Palahniuk gives tips on how to steal books.)
• Blankets by Craig Thompson (Note: Clearly, I have a thing for graphic novels right now. Expensive obsession. But Flight looks really cool. And I want it.)
  
• Ball Peen Hammer by Adam Rapp and George O'Connor
• House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer (Which I'm going to have to loan to an 8th grader who is not one of my students, but maybe I can get his English teacher to help me keep track of him. He's totally excited about it.)
• Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl (Note: This was for one of my book buddies, who saw it when she was at B&N the other day, surprised that Dahl wrote for adults. For the record, I didn't know that either and Matilda is still my favorite.)
• Tears of a Tiger by Sharon M. Draper (Note: This is my fourth copy of this book. Kids keep keeping it. If they read it, I guess I can't complain.)
• Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson (Note: I bought this one because Anderson wrote in her blog about how people in Kentucky and Indiana are going through the process of having the book removed from the school. I like being defiant in this way.)

So far I've finished Ball Peen Hammer and I'm about a third of the way through House of the Scorpion. And yes, I'm still working on the books that currently appear in my Shelfari list. Sooner or later, I'll get to Hunger Games, which I've heard about a few times in NCTE's Text Messages. I seriously considered picking up Paper Towns and replacing my copy of Looking for Alaska, both by John Green, the latter of which I lent to another teacher in my department and he never returned it.

Hi, my name is Eli and I'm a book addict.
Hi, Eli...

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

In honor of Banned Books Week, I thought I'd finally get around to posting about The Golden Compass, which I finished reading a few weeks ago and referenced in my letter to my students last week.

I am one of those people who will turn around and read the exact thing that someone is told not to read just to wave an emphatic pinky finger in their close-minded faces saying, "Ha! I read that and there's absolutely nothing you can do about." Do understand that I am not about putting a novel like Meg Cabot's Queen of Babble in the hands of one of our seventh graders (this was one of the novels pulled from the shelf at my middle school, and justifiably so). There's a difference between censoring because one disagrees with philosophical content and censoring because of the maturity level of the readers.

My motivation for reading The Golden Compass came from the aunt of one of the students at my middle school. She called up his mom and told her to make sure that he didn't read this novel for religious reasons. I wasn't privy to more details of the conversation--I got the story maybe third or fourth hand from our school librarian. But as with any book challenged (or psuedo-challenged) in our library, I had to find out why.

I'm going to go into the religious issues at a later date, but I do want to comment that I can see how some people would have problems with the novel. I can also say that it's one I'd recommend to some of my reluctant readers, especially those who have already seen the movie (which, by the way, has been cleaned up as far as religious content goes).

I felt the movie was good for what it was, and worked for the medium in which it was presented, but as far as story goes, the novel has it, hands down.

On Monster by Walter Dean Myers

The question concerning this novel is...

Is Steve Harmon guilty of murder?

That's the first question we addressed when discussing the Walter Dean Myers novel Monster on Tuesday in RDG 598. The introductory activity was an interesting one. On a slip of paper, we pretended we were the jury at the end of the novel and cast our vote for guilty or innocent. In my way, I had to point out that while I didn't find Steve guilty, I also could not find him innocent. The best I could come up with is not guilty of the crime for which he was tried.

One of the main reasons I cannot find him innocent has to do with the reliability of the narrator. (We read an article about it, and of course I can't find that article now.) The story is told in script format; the main character is writing the screenplay for a movie. For some reluctant/struggling readers, this can be a little off-putting at first, especially if they have had little exposure to drama. But it's Steve's story, and he reserves the poetic license to change any details he wants to serve his purposes. We see this most clearly in his testimony, which was pointed out by one of my classmates. In his musings that do not belong to the script portion of the story, he reflects on going into the convenience store to buy mints. In his testimony, he says that he'd never been in the store. I don't know if I trust Steve to tell the whole truth now.

But should he be found guilty of murdering the gentleman in the store? I don't think so. Accessory, at best.

What's interesting is I thought about this particular discussion on Wednesday, when a student of mine locked my class in the patio, which caused a ruckus in the hallway during instructional time. I took my class outside to play vocabulary baseball--a nice change from studying in chairs under fluorescent lights. On the way in, one student convinces another to lock the door. The one doing the convincing might have been the one who also caused the ruckus, but I have no witnesses to corroborate that story. What I do have eye-witness testimony of, however, is the student who locked the door. Back in the classroom, one student tries to inflict the consequences of her actions on the other student because the other student told her to do it. Steve Harmon didn't kill the guy in the store. Student 2 didn't lock the class in the patio. They didn't like that answer too much.

Many people thought Steve to be a monster. Do I think he's a monster? No. And the message I hope kids take away from the novel is to think about the consequences of their actions, and keep themselves from becoming monsters.

Here Lies Arthur by Phillip Reeve

This is my response to Here Lies Arthur by Phillip Reeve. Enjoy.

You hear the bard sing tale of my youth and exploits

He told of my play, not deeds

So I return to finish my song

The headless man in reeds.

We return to my story in the midst of battle

As we should far away of Arthur’s men

A rapid chase through wood and pine

With one who destroyed home and killed kin.

He showed and stole a woman

While through the woods he fled

And by some luck of god or goddess

His horse attacked and fell

He got back up and drew his blade

A short and pointed lance

I saw and lowered my shield

But not in time to thwart his glance

Through flesh and bone to flesh and bone

To my steed my leg was stuck

Then both went crashing to the ground

Goddess curse my luck.

I screamed and whimpered like a girl

Pounds of flesh pressed into my flank

Two comrades pulled me from the carcass

And carried me back to town on a plank

In my brother’s house I was kept

Surrounded by he, his woman and babes

And I cried more than the youngest one

When Myrridin said I’d be lame

The wound itself was deep and red

The bones within were shattered

Medwrat said, while holding my head

That god would make me better

Arthur’s wife was there too, Gwenhwyfar

Barely seen in the corner

My cause she took and had me moved

To heal better in her care

Anger seeped from my pores

That I didn’t die that night

What use to Arthur is a man

Who cannot stand and fight?

All the women sent to tend to me

I sent them all away

Even the one I took in a raid

Who came and wept all day

Those who saw me were few

My attitude made them flee

My brother, only would see me after

The only I could stand to see

What he didn’t know was I envied him

Riding with Arthur to war

Confined to this room alone

In bed, an awful bore

Console me, yes, he tried to do

With stories of the past

I’d be up and running by fall of leaf

Sometimes I thought him an ass

But somewhere within his words gave me strength

As did the stories he told

At midsummer I tried walking

Not strong enough on my own

A staff I gave all my weight

Each step filled with pain

But not halfway ‘cross the terrace

I had fallen and was crying again

Gwenhwyfar tried encouragement

Then she held me when I cried

I relaxed there, she stroked my hair

Then something stirred inside

She sent for wine and barley cakes

Then sent her girl away

Over this we spoke of future

And made plans for me to stay

She said, “Bedwyr, you’ll be my champion

When Arthur’s men are gone

When they all ride off to wars

And leave us all alone”

I was excited by this prospect

Being useful once more

But more excited for other things to come

What Gwenhyfar had in store

She told me of a sacred place

Where spring water ran too hot

Where reeds and weeds had overgrown

The bath that time forgot

I was to meet her there

The temple at the heart

There we expressed our love

Never to be torn apart

There’s a heightened sense of something I missed

Being with Gwenhyfar

It’s not the love we share together

But maybe danger, maybe fear

But every morning tending the horses

I think of the moments we share

The touch of her hands, the feel of her skin

The silkyness of her hair

But sooner or later Arthur must return

And what to come of us then?

Though he has never had interest in her

And we both are naught but men

So I ask “what will we do when Arthur comes home?”

And Gwenhwyfar says he may not

That he may be cut down as Valerius once was

And left in the battlefield to rot

I say that Arthur cannot be killed

Warriors like him never can

Not long as he carries Caliburn

He is Britannia’s safest man

We go around in circles

Predicting Arthur’s demise

Suggesting Cei take his place

His rule would be more wise

I told her I’d kill Arthur

Then she’d be mine to wed

We both knew I could barely stand

And that Arthur’d have my head

I told her that I’d treasure her

The way Arthur never did

I never saw her as an aged woman

Though we’d never have a kid

The last night in the darkness

A small voice called out “Lady?”

A girl appeared with startling news

That Arthur was back already

The girl made plans to save us

But it already was too late

We just stared, holding each other

Already sealing our fate

Arthur came in and bellowed

His voice echoed from the stone

Though I knew he was my kinsman

I knew I wouldn’t go home

Lightning flared on Caliburn

Arthur’s sacred blade

And from the hatred flash in his eye

His hand would not be stayed

My head was left in sacred spring

My lady’s shift was sprayed with red

Warrior, lover, champion, now

All I am is dead

You heard my story of youth and play

And now one of my deeds

Now I leave having told my story

The headless man in reeds.