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.