T4 by Ann Clare LeZotte

1. Title: T4

2. Author: Ann Clare LeZotte

3. Illustrator: N/A

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008

5. Genre: Historical Fiction, WWIII Nazis

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 6-onward

7. A brief statement of what students you believe may like the book:

I think all types of students would like this book because it is an emotionally powerful book. However, I would also think that many of the lower students that struggle would like the book because they could find success with its simple plot line and direct application to history and a larger literature unit.

8. A summary:

This book is written as a poetic memoir from a young girl named Paula. She is deaf and the Nazis have passed the T4 law that will allow doctors to put all disabled children and adults to death, much like they did with the Jewish people. Paula has to leave her home and stay with a friend of father Joseph who protects her until someone tells the Nazi’s that she is staying there because they think she is a Jew. She hides in the pig trough and then goes to live in a homeless shelter where she meets Poor Kurt who we soon find out is a Gypsy in hiding and his real name is Walthar. They go out to the city on an ill-advised trip and end up staying with poor Jews. They come back and finally the law is repealed and they go to her home. They fall in love.

9. Personal Response:

I think this book would be a great book for younger children and high school students studying WWII. I personally liked the book because it was on one of my favorite topics as well as eloquently written. The book brought out many emotions in me as I remembered and lived through the author the events of WWII. This book reminds me of Night by Elie Wesiel and other WWII works.

10. Teaching ideas:

I would teach this book with Night by Elie Wesiel and other WWII works, within a unit in English II. I think this book would be perfect for an inclusion class as well as for an overall understanding of the atrocities of the time period.

I would use this book as a launching board for an Ipoem research project that is centered around research through many genres of writing. I would also have the students create a memoiric poem of their lives like in the novel.

Blues Journey by Walter Dean Myers

1. Title: Blues Journey

2. Author: Walter Dean Myers

3. Illustrator: Christopher A. Myers

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: Holiday House, 2007

5. Genre: Children’s Literature, Blues Renaissance, Black History

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 5-onward

7. A brief statement (2-3 sentences) of what students you believe may like the book.

I think students will really enjoy this book because it is very beautiful and written with even more beautiful poetic language. I also think students will like it because it represents an art form that they love: Blues.

8. A summary:

Blues Journey is a historical fiction book about the lives of African Americans from 1865 to the late 1960’s through the art form that characterizes this group of people up into modern times: the Blues. The book’s central plot looks at the specific events that effected the lives of African Americans, such as the abolishment of slavery and the adjustments made there after by these people; the racial segregation that they felt and often still feel; and political marches that eventually broke them free from the shackles of segregation; into a modern look at the lives of modern Black Americans that still reflect on their cultural heritage through listening to old blues songs. One of the best portions of this book is its focus on how blues was created from a hodgepodge of cultural identities that they were forced to come from and how blues lives on in art and literature through poetry and paintings

9. Personal Response:

I selected this book because it is written by one of my favorite young adult authors, Walter Dean Myers, and his artistic son. It was a very enjoyable read and reminded me of my obsession with classic blues songs. I thought the book was an excellent example of a historical fiction as it is not true, but utilizes the backdrop of the conflicts of African Americans.

10. Teaching ideas:

As this book is focused on the overall concept of slavery and the blues music that sprung up from a group of people, African Americans, that had and have struggled to make it in a world where they were seen as “less than people,” I would teach this book within Eng II during the study of historical America and the slave trade from Kenya, Niger, and what is now South Africa. I would use this book as a preteaching tool to give students a deep understanding of the trials and tribulations that African Americans experienced, paired with the short story “Going to meet the man” by James Baldwin, a historical fiction story that is told through a white supremacist sheriff during the race riots of the early 1900s, which gives a deep reflection on how this monster was made.

Breaking Up by Aimee Friedman and Illustrated by Chistine Norrie

1. Title: Breaking Up

2. Author: Aimee Friedman

3. Illustrator: Christine Norrie

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: Scholastic 2007

5. Genre: Teen Issues

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 10^th grade- onward

7. Students will like this book because it is very easy to read and the illustrations make the story line truly come alive. I also think they will like it because it deals with relationships both sexual and on a friendship level.

8. A summary:

Chloe, the main character, is going into her junior year of high school with her three best friends in the world. They all go to an arts school and they have been friends for years. Mackenzie, one of those friends, has become obsessed with becoming the most popular girl in the school and dating the most popular boy, except the most popular boy is dating the truly most popular girl, Nicola. She does sleep with the boy, but when Nicola finds out she takes her diary and makes copies of it and posts it throughout the school. During all of this the three other girls are dealing with a boyfriend who demands sex when she’s not ready, dealing with controlling parents, and Chloe is dealing with failing in love with a loser that she hides from everyone else. All of this comes together in one big fight that breaks the girls a part, which in the end they settle their differences and come back together again.

9. Personal Response.

Oddly, for a male, I really liked this book and read it cover to cover 191 pages in one sitting. It is interesting because the author does a great job of getting the reader to buy into the drama that is each girl’s life. Also, the antidotal pictures are hilarious because they are what we all feel when going through these types of events. I also enjoyed the book because it was a new format for me and I could see myself writing a novel like this someday.

10. Teaching ideas.

I would use this book to teach to my composition class because it fits the curriculum in that it shows a different form of writing and because it is simply a good book. I would teach this book as a back drop to our own small comic book that we would be writing during class. I would use sections of the book to point out ideas that they could use in their own writing. The final multimedia project would be a comic book and even a film of the students acting it out together.

Terrible Things by Eve Bunting and Illustrated by Stephen Gammell

1. Title: Terrible Things

2. Author: Eve Bunting

3. Illustrator: Stephen Gammell

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: The Jewish Publication Society, 1989

5. Genre: WWII, Nazism, Racism, Multi-Cultural

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 5th grade- onward

7. I think students will like this book because it is very easy to read and has excellent pictures that represent the internal theme and symbolism. Also, they will like it because its deceivingly simple story line will allow them to think on a deeper level.

8. A summary:

This book is an allegory of the atrocities of World War II, specifically how so many people allowed the Jewish people to be killed only because it was not them that had a gun held to their heads. It begins with the narrator telling the readers that everyone in the forest were all different but lived together in peace. Then the terrible things come and say that everything that has feathers must “go with them,” which indicates that that group will be killed. All the other animals do nothing to prevent this happing and only show that they do not have any feathers. The narrator tells the reader that the smallest white bunny wanted to help, but was told, by an older bunny that it did not matter as it was not them who was to die. As the story progresses, each group of animals is taken. Finally, the bunnies are taken and they wish that others were there to protect them but they are all dead. The only bunny that survives is the bunny that wanted to help in the first place. That bunny says he is going out into the world to tell everyone so this does not happen again, which is the central tenet of the book as a whole.

9. Personal Response:

I really enjoyed this book as it brought hope to my mind in that all those that try to stop these atrocities should keep trying. Also, I liked the book because the allegory, while simple, is on a very deep level, and made me think about even the simplest choices I have made in my life when considering that it did not matter because I was different than those being persecuted. For example, kids getting bullied.

10. Teaching ideas:

I would definitely teach this book with the novel Night by Elie Wesiel in English II. This book shows the poor choices and the outright evilness of the people who did nothing and allowed these things to happen. I would use this to illuminate the fact that not only Jews were taken, but also other groups that stood by and did nothing to help them such as homosexuals, blacks, and gypsies. For a multimedia project, I would have students find cartoons in modern culture that depict racist and stereotypical ideas, which will not be hard to find. I would then have them combine those with actual quotes from both texts inside of a PowerPoint that would illuminate the similarities and differences therein.

The Lotus Seed by Sherry Garland and Illustrated by Tatsuro Kiuchi

1. Title: The Lotus Seed

2. Author: Sherry Garland

3. Illustrator: Tatsuro Kiuchi

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: Harcourt, INC 1993

5. Genre: Vietnam Reflection, Multi-Cultural

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 5^th grade-onward

7. I think students would like this book because it deals with a complex theme in such a way that they are able to access it. I think they would also like the book because it is beautiful.

8. This book starts off with the narrator explaining how her grandmother watched the last emperor of Vietnam become nothing more than a name piece after the French invasion. She is given a lotus seed that she takes with her to America when her family flees Vietnam when the war between the south and north begins. Finally, the grandmother’s grandson plants the seed in mud and it grows into a beautiful flower that she shares the seeds with her own family. This is symbolic that Vietnam, their place of origin and a muddy desolate place, created beauty from its people.

9. Personal Response: I very much enjoyed this book because it was very symbolic of a people who was taken advantage of and eventually cast to the side and forced to move to America to reinvent themselves. This book reminds me a lot of the movie “The Golden Dragon” where there is an evil force that is over taking a beautiful peaceful land and peoples out of simple greed. I also connected this work to The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.

10. Teaching ideas: This book would work excellently as an introduction to The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, which is a work on the Vietnam War that is taught as a part of the curriculum in English III. I think this work brings out the subtle nature of the overarching themes of love and the relationship between killing insurgent soldiers, while at the same time watching a group of truly great people be killed when combined with the novel. The multimedia text I would use with this would be the movie Apocalypse Now Redux, and I would have students create a long term project board with a comic strip that combines the novel and the picture book together.

Deadline by Chris Crutcher

1. Title: Deadline

2. Author: Chris Crutcher

3. Illustrator: N/A

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: Green Willow Books 2009

5. Genre: Teen fiction, YAL, Death and loss

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 10^th-onward

7. Students will like this book because it deals with many of the issues that they go through in their own lives. The book deals with death and dying, which is something everyone can relate to and might help students who have recently lost someone. The book also deals with sports so that would interest many of the young male teens.

8. A summary: Deadlines is about a boy named Ben that finds out he is dying from an incurable form of cancer. He chooses not to inform his parents or friends until much later in the book, and one of the main premises of the book is finding the right way and time to tell his family. His doctor agrees to with hold the information and not to treat him if he agrees to go to a psychologist that eventually leaves him because she cannot deal with the pain of watching such a great kid die. Ben decides to find out as much about life as he can in the year he has to live, so he reads and questions his teachers until a point of annoyance trying to find out the subtleties of every piece of knowledge. He also starts dating and has sex with his ideal woman Dallas who also leaves him because she can’t deal with the thought of losing him. He begins playing football and is a star on the team with his brother. Even though he receives a scholarship to go to school, he becomes ill and dies before he can.

9. Personal Response: I did not particularly like the novel because I felt like it was unrealistic. I do not think that he would keep the secret from his family for as long as he did and I think that a normal person would do anything they could to save their own lives, yet I do know of cases where some might choose to follow his path. I connected this book to – because the main character in that book is helping people commit suicide and I truly feel that, in a way, he is making the same choice. Also, the writing style is very similar with a similar main character.

10. Teaching ideas.

I probably wouldn’t teach this book, but if I did I would teach it within my Composition class because of the writing style. It is also a very easy read. I would probably show a media clip on homecoming and focus on the themes of death, loss, and relationships within the novel itself.

Feed by MT Anderson

1. Title: Feed, National Book Award Finalist

2. Author: M.T. Anderson

3. Illustrator: N/A

4. Publisher and Publishing Date: Candlewick Books, 2004

5. Genre: Young adult, multi-media, post cyberpunk

6. Age range for which the book is appropriate: 9^th grade onward

7. Students will like this book because it represents modern ideas about past notions on the fear of excess. Also, they will like this book because the central themes of this book deal with love, technology, and a world that has moved one. Too, they will like it because it has a recycling theme.

8. A summary: Titus, the main character, is like everyone else in the society of his times, obsessed with consumerism and the feed. The feed is basically like the internet, but it is in a chip that is implanted into the persons brain. They use these chips for all experiences, they don’t even experience school, they just feed it. Until Titus meets Violet, who shares her love of real experiences with him. Because her family was too poor and because her father feared the feed, she did not have the feed injected into her brain, so she has a basic headset, which allows her to take off the feed at anytime. She takes him to watch meat grow, to party in a real sense, and experience life instead of just shopping online. Titus also teaches her the benefits of the feed and gets her to go to a club with him where a virus is sent out that messes up her chip, which leads to her death at the end of the novel, which is also symbolic since WWIII begins then as well.

9. Personal Response: I personally love the book. I think it gives a true look into the minds of teenagers in a future that is all too probable. Even now, it is impossible to pull children away from their media devices long enough to have a decent conversation, let alone teach them something. This book also broke my heart as Violet dies at the end with Titus by her side. The book represents to me, something of a warning and gives me an opportunity to teach a work that might also give some hesitation to the overwhelming masses in my school.

10. Teaching ideas:

If I were going to teach this book, and I do, I would first give students a dictionary of terms to help them become more comfortable with the language. Also, I apply that language change to the evolution of language through the website: www.urbandictionary.com. Then I would apply it to language change throughout the history of English language, with a specific focus on the evolution of Creole slave language in the south to modern African American Vernacular English. Additionally, I would teach this book with or before Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Finally, I would make a multimedia connection through the video clip http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/view/ talking about the effects of the internet.