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Archives For November 30, 1999

Newbery Award Winning Books Are Not “To Tame”

July 17, 2012 — 4 Comments

With one broad sweep of a word-processing program, NY Times Columnist David Brooks brushed off the Newbery Award collection of the best children’s novels as containing some “exquisitely sensitive novellas” in his essay Honor Code (July 5, 2012). He should reconsider this judgment on several counts.

The premise of his editorial was to bring attention to recent statistics that suggest young boys are falling behind in the American education system. First, he compared the contemporary American schoolboy to the rambunctious Prince Hal of William Shakespeare’s history plays, Henry IV parts I and II and Henry V. This comparison proved an apt metaphor, although Brookes failed to call attention to the irony of his allusion; Prince Hal and the American schoolboy are both out of place in their respective educational institutions. Unfortunately, he over- stepped his position when he mischaracterized the  prestigious Newbery Award given to excellence in children’s literature by stating: “If schools want to educate a fiercely rambunctious girl, they can’t pretend they will successfully tame her by assigning some of those exquisitely sensitive Newbery award-winning novellas.”

Simply because a book is  written for young audiences (elementary through middle school) and is shorter in length than an adult novel does not mean the book is a novella; the Newbery Award books are novels. However, on several occasions the Newbery has been awarded to books of poetry (1989 Medal Winner: Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman) or short stories, songs and poems (2008 Medal Winner: Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz).

As to the charge that some of the Newbrry novels are “exquisitely sensitive,” well, yes, some are. I am “exquisitely sensitive” myself when I remember my reading the 1963 Medal Winner: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. However, while I can only comfortably include those titles that I have read or recommended to my students, there are fewer “sensitive” novels than one might suspect, in fact, some of the Newbery Award novels are brash, outrageous, or disturbingly violent. More than a few of them have been banned.

Consider that Mr. Brookes began reading Newbery books in 1969; he would be eight or nine years old.  The “exquisitely sensitive” 1967 Medal Winner: Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt would be available to him as would 1947 Medal Winner: Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey However, during a 10 year school reading career, ages 8-18, he could have also encountered:

  • 1969 Medal Winner: The High King by Lloyd Alexander
  • 1970 Medal Winner: Sounder by William H. Armstrong
  • 1972 Medal Winner: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien
  • 1974 Medal Winner: The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox
  • 1976 Medal Winner: The Grey King by Susan Cooper
  • 1977 Medal Winner: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
  • 1979 Medal Winner: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

These are seven books that do not qualify as “exquisitely sensitive” books “to tame” rambunctious students. If Brooks had continued to read the canon of Newbery award winning novels as an adult, he would have encountered the following “definitely NOT exquisitely sensitive” books as well:

  • 1987 Medal Winner: The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman
  • 1991 Medal Winner: Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
  • 1990 Medal Winner: Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
  • 1994 Medal Winner:  The Giver by Lois Lowry
  • 1999 Medal Winner:  Holes by Louis Sachar
  • 2000 Medal Winner: Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
  • 2003 Medal Winner:  Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
  • 2009 Medal Winner: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I would also like to give a shout out to the one book that was read by every “rambunctious” boy I ever taught, the  1988 Newbery Honor book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. For many boys, this is the ONLY book they remember.

Newbery authors do not write in order “to tame” rambunctious youth, boys or girls, and I would suspect that several would take great offense to that statement.  Authors for children and adults alike write to tell an extraordinary story, to share an experience, or to give voice to a character or person from the “margin”, an outsider who has a voice through the written word.

Many authors are not “tame” themselves, in fact, this year’s Newbery Award winning writer was Jack Gantos for Dead End in Norvelt. Gantos has a fascinating back story. He  was convicted as a young man of smuggling drugs and spent time in a federal prison. His behavior, in fact , was very much like the  behavior of Prince Hal of Shakespeare’s plays. However,Gantos was a reader and found great literature to guide him during times of trouble. While in prison, he was without a notebook and wrote in the margins of The Brothers Karamazov, intertwining his words with Dostoevsky . His memoir of his felonious behavior  is called A Hole in My Life, and we teach the text as a required read in our Grade 12 Memoir class.

The Newbery Award winners reflect the rich diversity of literature that is available to students, rambunctious or not. These novels are not assigned “to tame” , but they are assigned, or recommended, to comfort a reader, to entertain a reader, to challenge a reader’s beliefs, or to incite a reader to action. They may be short, but they are not novellas, and no teacher “pretends” they are the solution to educating a fiercely rambunctious student.  Most teachers know that these Newbery Award novels, and their Newbery Award honorees companions, may be the  only solution for educating that fiercely rambunctious student.

In Education, Independent Student Reads, Reading, Young Adult YA literature , ,
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What am I Missing with ‘A Separate Peace”?

July 6, 2012 — 7 Comments

The Simpson’s creator Matt Groening is a great satirist. In one episode in an exchange between the cartoon character Lisa Simpson and her Grandmother, he also demonstrates his ability to be a great literary critic:

Grandma Simpson: Don’t be bashful. When I was your age, kids made fun of me because I read at the 9th grade level.
Lisa: Me too!
Grandma Simpson: Although I hardly consider A Separate Peace the ninth-grade level.
Lisa: Yeah, more like preschool.
Grandma Simpson: I hate John Knowles.
Lisa: Me too.

I value Lisa Simpson’s opinion on literature, after all, this is a character who has been seen clutching copies of  The Bell Jar, Ethan Frome, Man and Superman, The Corrections, and the more age appropriate Pippi Longstocking. So when she says she hates John Knowles, I feel validated. I have always disliked John Knowles’s A Separate Peace.
However, there are others who call this same book  “A masterpiece”(National Review) or ” deeply felt and beautifully written” (The Observer) or “Intense, mesmerizing, and compelling” (School Library Journal). The English Language Arts Common Core State Standards gives its recommendation since the novel has been, “Hailed as a literary masterpiece,” and that ” A Separate Peace is a classic novel with numerous teaching resources available.” The CCSS analysis of the text complexity reads:
“When considering the qualitative measures and the reader-task considerations, this novel is well placed at the 9th-10th grade complexity band. The complex themes, use of first person narrative—but with multiple flash backs and flash forward indicate higher level reading skills are needed by the reader. The Common Core Standards Text Exemplars also place the novel in the 9th -10th grade complexity band.”
 In a  2004 study titled A SeparatePeace:Four Decades of Critical Response, Lois Rauch Gibson writes:

“Rejected at first by American publishers, John Knowles’ A SeparatePeace appeared in England in 1959, where critics admiringly compared it to Salinger’s writings. American critics, responding in 1960 to the American edition, generally noted its depth, sensitivity, and ‘disturbing allegories'(Aitken 754). They did not entirely agree about what the allegories might be, nor have the four decades of critics since.”

I would argue there are no allegories in this short story “Phineas” that was expanded (unnecessarily) by Knowles into a full length novel. This is a fairly straightforward story of young white males at an exclusive prep school and their conflicts and competition during a last summer before entering the very grown up world of competition and World War II. I found the story dated when I read it in 1973, but Gibson felt the novel could  speak to today’s readers:

“As we approach the forty-fifth anniversary of the American edition of A Separate Peace,in a world where the all-male, all-white prep school environment has become exceedingly rare, John Knowles’ novel nonetheless continues to speak to adolescents. Once we fought wars against fascism, then against communism, now against terrorism. Before this background, teenagers attend school, bond with peers, lose their innocence, encounter hate and ignorance and what Knowles calls blind impulses; and each one inevitably struggles to develop an identity-sexual and otherwise. As the world continues to change, no doubt the next four decades of critics will have much to say about this resilient and compelling novel.”

I have always considered A Separate Peace to be the poorer literary cousin to J.D. Salinger’s 1951 classic Catcher in the Rye. Unfortunately, I like A Separate Peace’s  Gene less than I like the deluded Holden from Catcher in the Rye, and I like the object of Gene’s angst, Phineas or Finny, even less. This is a critical problem in the novel according to Slate Magazine’s Dec 2009 review The Secret of A Separate Peace by Stephen Metcalf:

“We do not love Phineas as Gene does. His charm for Gene exceeds his charm for us. The less we are seduced by Phineas, the more we experience him not as an Apollonian boy-god lacking the normal ratio of ill-character but as a love object for Gene, and Gene alone.”
I remember reading the climatic moment of the novel, when Gene reflects back on the accident in the tree:
 “He [Phineas/Finny] had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he. I couldn’t stand this. . . . Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud. It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him make. With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten.”
“What the heck?” I distinctly remember thinking, “He intentionally caused him to fall! What kind of friend is that?” He lost me at “forgotten.” I considered the final “apology” of the novel a fraud:
“I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there. Only Phineas never was afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone.”
It’s a lie. Gene was responsible (indirectly) for the death of Phineas, and in this statement he is contradictory about killing his “enemy.” Apologetically glorifying Phineas at the end is probably meant to be sincere, but to me the conclusion reeks of Freudian dishonesty. Gene could never really know Phineas, so he destroyed him and then made him a god.
 Still, our 9th grade honors classes read A Separate Peace.
When I asked the teacher why she replied casually, “Well, they can read it in a weekend. They like it.”
“Do you do any real lessons with it?” I pressed her.
“No. They generally get it.”
“Get what?”
“Friendship, betrayal. Teenage angst.”
Ah, yes. A Separate Peace is awash in teenage angst. So is high school, which probably is the reason the book remains in the high school canon. That and the accumulated hundreds of copies available in English Department libraries. Of course, this wallowing in the imposed angst of teenagers reminds me of another brilliant Matt Groening observation, this time provided by Lisa’s brother Bart. Heading into an alternative rock and roll concert, Bart is heard commenting, “Lisa, making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel.” Which explains why Lisa hates John Knowles.
Me too.
In 9th Grade, Coming of Age, Education, Reading, Young Adult YA literature , , , , , , , , ,
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Reading and Travel: Companions of the Imagination

June 29, 2012 — 3 Comments

Certainly, I am not the first to notice the direct correlation between the act of travel and the act of reading. One need only perform a quick web search for quotes about books and travel to find literally hundreds of writers who have written specifically about this connection:

“My grandfather says that’s what books are for,” Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. “To travel without moving an inch.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

In fact, there are some quotations by writers about travel where I could replace the word “travel” with “read” in order and still make an interesting valid sentiment:

“We travel (or we read), some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7

“Through travel (or reading) I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel (or reading)  that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.”
― Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings

While the experience of reading allows readers to imagine places they do not know, the sensory experiences of travel improves their imaginations. For example, a reader who has traveled outdoors in  frigid climates has a more accurate appreciation for Jack London’s To Build a Fire. One could travel on a ferry crossing Lake Michigan or shuttling between the Virgin Islands or cruising up the Bosphorus Strait; the rumble underfoot of a boat engine pulling and out of port, the sensations of crosswinds, and the smell of the diesel combine for a sensory impression, quite literally a “motor memory” ready for recall when one reads about maritime travel.

Perhaps it is the often demanding physical elements of travel that strengthen the link between the tangible experience and a reader’s imagination: the lugging of  personal belongings in suitcases, shopping bags, handbags, backpacks; the laboring over uneven terrains, rural and urban; or the push against a crush of people for transport on a subway, bus, boat, train. The traveler has these physical sensations cognitively recorded as salient memories to be used in imagining how the character(s) march, trudge, slog, plod, trail or trek in, on, or through unfamiliar territory.

The other advantage to travel is the “ah-ha” moment when the reader confronts first-hand the “real setting” of fictional lives. There is a greater understanding of author’s purpose when a reader can place a character within an author’s context, say Dickens’s London, Conrad’s Congo, Tolstoy’s Russia, or any one of Hemingway’s haunts: Paris, Spain, Cuba, South America, Africa. Cathedrals, rose-covered-cottages, pubs, palaces, mosques are better appreciated in their cultural contexts. Similarly, walking the landscape of a historical event that has been recounted in non-fiction allows for a greater comprehension of the significance of a rampart, fort, bastion, jetty or beachhead. One need only add the cacophony of sounds, say the calls from street vendors, the resonance of folk instruments, the chatter of foreign languages combined with the taste of exotic fruits or perfumed sweets in order to complete an immersion in a culture. The reader, standing in the authentic setting of a book, fiction or non-fiction, is connected to the author in a full sensory bond. The well-travelled reader’s imagination can then pluck the strands of travel memory, as if from Dumbledore’s pensive, in creating mental pictures of books already read or books to be read in the future. The traveler cannot help but be a better reader.

There are numerous books written to aid in a traveler who desires this cultural experience.  I have been traveling this past week through Istanbul, Turkey, and by far the most popular book carried by travelers is the Rick Steves’s  Guide to Istanbul, a travel writer who wholeheartedly advocates for a cultural emersion for travelers. On his website, he has a webpage dedicated to “travel as a political act,” which later became the title to his book.

In the introductory paragraph to this webpage, Steves emphasizes the the importance of travel in much the same way that I try to proselytize the importance of reading to my students:

Lessons learned from our travels can better equip us to address and help resolve the challenges facing our world. We travelers are both America’s ambassadors to the world…and the world’s ambassadors to America. Whether you’re a mom, a schoolteacher, a celebrity, a realtor, or a travel writer, it’s wrong to stop paying attention and let others (generally with a vested interest in the situation) make the political decisions for us. Our founding fathers didn’t envision career politicians and professional talking heads doing our political thinking for us. All are welcome in the political discourse that guides this nation. Thoughtful travelers know that we’re all citizens of the world and members of a global family. Spinning from Scotland to Sri Lanka, from Tacoma to Tehran, travelers experience the world like whirling dervishes: We keep one foot planted in our homeland, while acknowledging the diversity of our vast world. We celebrate the abundant and good life we’ve been given and work to help those blessings shower equitably upon all.

Steves’s philosophy of travel is an echo to a great writer from a different century, Samuel Clemens. Clemens was heavily influenced by his trips to Europe and the Middle East (1867-69) before he wrote his greatest contribution to American literature, Huckleberry Finn (1885). One these trips, he wrote a series of travel letters which were later compiled into the popular book The Innocents Abroad. In one letter he wrote:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
-Mark Twain

Readers, get up and pack! Seek out a different world! Improve your imagination and travel, because even the Ancient World’s Augustine of Hippo knew, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

In Reading , , , , , , ,
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