Throwback Thursday: The Poisonwood Bible

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books. We choose a book we remember fondly and recommend to our adoring readers to add to their To Read Pile. Plus, we get to link up and all give our fellow bloggers some comment love. Win-Win! This week, I’m continuing my hypothesis about required reading for high school English, and it is this:

If you go back and read it as an adult, you will probably like it.

Today, we are continuing my favorite books to teach series, featuring The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver is one of my favorite writers. I love her rich descriptions. She takes her time to tell a story, diving deep into the characters’ minds. I would recommend any of her novels.

The Poisonwood Bible chronicles the lives of a Southern Baptist missionary family, the Prices, as they journey into the Belgian Congo in 1959. Nathan Price, the patriarch of the family, uproots his family to preach to the tribes in Africa, yet the family arrives just at the time of rebellion and strife. Spanning about 30 years, Kingsolver uses the women of the family, Price’s wife and four daughters, to narrate this comedy of errors.

More than a commentary on Americans or missionaries or African unrest, this novel shows the resiliency of these very different women, how they adapt to cultures, religion, their own faith, and eventually, their escape. When I taught AP English, my students used this novel in their illustrations and essays more than any of the other novels we read from the year. Now, this could have been solely because this was the last novel we read before the test. But I like to think they related to Poisonwood the most or enjoyed it the most. No, you’re right. It was probably the time thing. Anyway, you should check it out.

Throwback Thursday: Jane Eyre

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books. We choose a book we remember fondly and recommend to our adoring readers to add to their To Read Pile. Plus, we get to link up and all give our fellow bloggers some comment love. Win-Win! This week, I’m continuing my hypothesis about required reading for high school English, and it is this:

If you go back and read it as an adult, you will probably like it.

This week, I urge you to grab a copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I actually never had to read this book in high school, but the first time I did read it was required reading in college. I loved it. I honestly think all women should have to read this book.

Why should all women have to read this book, you ask?

1. Jane Eyre is not pretty. She’s the narrator and main character of this book, and she’s not pretty. Not the “She thinks she’s not pretty, but everyone else thinks she’s drop dead gorgeous” variety so prevalent in modern day romance novels. Nope. On the whole, everyone thinks she’s ugly. If Jane were to trip and fall down the stairs, no one would think it adorable. If she wore only Chuck Taylors and t-shirts everywhere she went, no one would see it as quirky or cute. Granted, in 1847, she would be seen as a boy in those clothes. A bizzarre one at that. You get my drift. Jane Eyre is a plain and modest girl, and she’s totally cool with it. No pining away for beauty or fancy clothes.

2. Jane Eyre falls in love with a man who is not tall or handsome. He’s powerful in character. He’s witty. Mysterious. Smoldering. I mean, we are talking the Bronte sisters, here. They invented the smolder. He’s moody and brooding. But, we don’t have to read descriptions of his “statuesque” features in at-length detail. Fewer body part adjectives. It’s the little things, friends.

3. Jane Eyre desperately loves Mr. Rochester, but she doesn’t let her emotions completely control her decisions. In fact, she’s rather infuriating with her upstanding morals sometimes. However, you can’t help but respect her for sticking to her beliefs.

4. Jane Eyre is one of the best examples of a first-person female narrator. Sometimes I think we should go BACK to the 19th century for some better examples of women in literature. Jane’s got spunk and a good head on her shoulders. She fights a battle with her passion and her conscience, and it’s always a fair fight. Plus, almost every guy she encounters tries to control her, and she doesn’t allow it. If only she had some sort of martial arts training, the novel would have the whole package.

Along with this wonderful narrator and main character, Jane Eyre also has all the elements of a Gothic novel:

Spooky old house with a hidden secret wing/room/attic? CHECK!

Supernatural occurrences via landscape, turbulent weather, bumps in the night, etc.? YOU GOT IT!

Love interest with a concealed past and gloomy disposition yet on occasion explodes in passionate anger enough to keep you on your toes? RIGHTY-O ROCHESTER!

Scary monster with pseudo-vampirish traits (think actual vampires, not sparkly vampires)? ABSOLUTELY!

Granted, the book drags in places. Jane takes FOREVER to decide something and she gets a bit preachy and she’s way more forgiving than I could ever be (St. John, I would have disowned you). Still, the book has passion and character and depth and beauty. Also, as an added bonus, it’s a free download on your Kindle. So now you have no excuse!

Throwback Thursday: The House on Mango Street

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books. We choose a book we remember fondly and recommend to our adoring readers to add to their To Read Pile. Plus, we get to link up and all give our fellow bloggers some comment love. Win-Win! This week, and for several weeks following, I am going to test my hypothesis about required reading for high school English, and it is this:

If you go back and read it as an adult, you will probably like it.

I encourage you to return to the classroom with fresh eyes and read the classics for the pure joy of reading. You might actually like the novel without having to think about the homework.

This week, I am featuring Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. This book gets a bad rap from students because it slips in between genres – it’s not really a novel, not really poetry, mostly fiction, notably autobiographical. It’s a tiny little slip of a book, but it contains a powerful punch.

The House on Mango Street is a series of vignettes, detailing the life of Esperanza Cordero and her life on Mango Street in her Chicago neighborhood. The vignettes can almost all be read separately, each providing a vivid sketch of one moment in Esperanza’s life. Students complain about this book, saying there’s no plot or timeline. They don’t like that “nothing happens.” This is because the vignettes offer insight into Esperanza’s life, yet they can seem unconnected at first. However, the beauty of the language wins the readers over. Every time. Cisneros is funny, honest, engaging, colorful.

In the first vignette, Esperanza describes the actual house on Mango Street and how she and her family came to live there. They hastily moved out from their old place because their landlord refused to fix the pipes. The house on Mango Street was not the house of her dreams, the one her parents described with their hopeful wishing, one with real stairs, “like the houses on T.V.” No, instead, her new house is “small and red with tight steps in front and the windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath.” Seriously, can’t you just see that house, the windows holding their breath?

These sketches capture life on Mango Street with vivid character descriptions for everyone in Esperanza’s life: her mother’s hair smelled “like the warm smell of bread before you bake it.” Esperanza and her sister laughing “like a pile of dishes breaking.” Other chapters offer poignant insights into Esperanza’s thoughts, “In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting.” Overall, the book is about belonging, finding home, dreaming, family.

You need to read it soon, and please take your time reading it.

Throwback Thursday: To Kill a Mockingbird

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books. We choose a book we remember fondly and recommend to our adoring readers to add to their To Read Pile. Plus, we get to link up and all give our fellow bloggers some comment love. Win-Win! This week, and for several weeks following, I am going to test my hypothesis about required reading for high school English, and it is this:

If you go back and read it as an adult, you will probably like it.

I encourage you to return to the classroom with fresh eyes and read the classics for the pure joy of reading. You might actually like the novel without having to think about the homework.

I’m going to start this series of throwbacks with my favorite book ever to read or teach – To Kill a Mockingbird.

Harper Lee’s masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird (often heard by my students as Tequila Mockingbird – what is with that?) opens up the world of Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s through the eyes of a beloved narrator, Jean Louise Finch. We all call her Scout. The novel seamlessly ties together the hilarious childhood antics of Scout, her brother Jem, and their neighbor Dill with the highly-charged racial tensions in the American South, played out in the town streets, church society meetings, the school yard, a small town courtroom, and finally Scout’s own neighborhood. Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, one of the greatest heroes in all literature, shows his children how to “climb in a man’s skin and walk around in it,” and everyone is better for it. The novel bursts with character and charm. Harper Lee captures the nuances of speech and mannerisms in each of her characters, revealing their courage, weakness, and humanity. It’s simply a beautiful, beautiful book. If you hated this book as a high school student, please give it another shot (not of tequila).

Throwback Thursday: Fahrenheit 451

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books. We choose a book we remember fondly and recommend to our adoring readers to add to their To Read Pile. Plus, we get to link up and all give our fellow bloggers some comment love. Win-Win! This week, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to write about Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, who passed away this week at the age of 91.

First, please, before you turn off your computer today, go read this post by Peter Sagal about Bradbury. It’s poignant and perfect. Thank you.

Now, on to the book. As most of you know, I taught high school English for five years before capping my grading pen and heading home to play with my babies. I loved teaching Ray Bradbury, his short stories and especially Fahrenheit 451 – if for no other reason than to tell my students,

“THIS!! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T READ FOR MY CLASS!!”

Why? Well, because Fahrenheit 451 shows what happens when you stop caring about reading or thinking for yourself or forming critical opinions based on what other people have written – essentially an English teacher’s diatribe in novel form.

The novel follows Guy Montag, a fireman, who starts fires rather than extinguishes them. Montag and his unit work to burn all books they find along with the houses where the books are found. The book starts out with a great first line, “It was a pleasure to burn.”

And he did. That is Montag enjoyed his job and life as far as he could tell until he meets a 17-year-old girl named Clarisse who asks him questions about his life, and she shows a concern for nature and the world around her – more than anyone else Montag has ever encountered. Montag tried to talk to his wife about his new questions, but she spends more time interacting with “families” on their “wall.” (Think flat screen television and social networking combined). Plus, anytime his wife felt distressed or nervous, she would take a pill to make those concerns go away.

Montag starts to wonder if books might actually hold some importance, maybe he is missing something in his life. After meeting Clarisse, Montag faces significant and disturbing events that send him on a hunt for information. His mind fills with questions: Why do we really burn books? Should life mean something else?

Why would someone risk death over words on a page?

This novel, in many ways, reflects the current climate of America, and Bradbury wrote it in 1950. At first glance, most quickly sum up Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship and its consequences. Actually, Fahrenheit 451 is more about what happens to a society when it stops reading. When society would rather be entertained than learn. When people stop questioning and just accept the facts handed to them. When it’s easier to watch semi-reality rather than live a real life.

Sound familiar? The details in Montag’s society offer an almost eerie familiarity: flat screen televisions, televised high speed car chases, social networking, a version of the iPod, fast cars, pills for everything, overly busy society with nothing really to do.

Bradbury’s book serves as a warning to never quit thinking for yourself and to welcome individuality and freedom of thought. It’s worth the fight.

Throwback Thursday: The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White

Throwback Thursday is a new weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books.

With Throwback Thursdays, we choose a book we remember fondly and recommend it to our adoring readers, featuring books not currently on the best seller list. I made a list of books I might want to feature on here, and I noticed I kept picking books I want my kids to read, so I think I might focus my Thursdays on kids’ novels or picture books. Last week, I featured Charlotte’s Web, and today I want to talk about another E.B. White favorite, The Trumpet of the Swan.

The Trumpet of the Swan tells of an unlikely friendship between a young boy, Sam Beaver, and a family of trumpeter swans in the wilds of Canada. Upon watching a pair of the beautiful birds make a nest and start their family, Sam saves the mother swan from certain death by throwing a stick at a fox, hitting it square on the nose before it could attack. This heroic effort labels Sam a friend to the swans, and they eventually introduce him to their children, including one who couldn’t trumpet – Louis.

Louis struggles early in life to find his voice. He cannot say, “Ko-hoh!” like all of his peers, and he wants desperately for a beautiful swan named Serena to notice him. Louis’s father decides to find him a trumpet. His father risks life and limb to steal a trumpet from a music shop in Billings, Montana, and slowly, Louis learns to play. Louis travels across the country playing his trumpet and trying to make enough money to pay back his father’s debt. He enlists help from Sam Beaver along the way, even learning to read and write.

The Trumpet of the Swan is such an endearing tale of heroism, friendship, and stewardship. Louis shows an earnestness to do the right thing, and Sam is one of the sweetest, nature-loving boys in all of literature. His curiosity of nature and its creatures does not detract from his gentleness. I love the other characters, too. Louis’s father, the cobb, is noble to the point of absurdity, giving over-the-top dramatic monologues. And his wife, gentle and loving, deals with his grandiose speeches in stride.

E.B. White, one of my favorite authors, writes directly and simply so that children can understand each and every word, but the language is dense and rich at the same time. His books beg to be read aloud. Over and over again.

Throwback Thursdays: Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

Throwback Thursday is a new weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books.

With Throwback Thursdays, we choose a book we remember fondly and recommend it to our adoring readers, featuring books not currently on the best seller list. I made a list of books I might want to feature on here, and I noticed I kept picking books I want my kids to read, so I think I might focus my Thursdays on kids’ novels or picture books. I’ve talked before about how much I love to read my beloved childhood books to my children. It’s just so fun! We are currently reading Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.

In Charlotte’s Web, Wilbur, a baby pig faces certain death by the ax of Mr. Arable when Fern, his eight-year-old daughter steps in. As the runt of the litter, Wilbur would only cause trouble in the eyes of Mr. Arable, but Fern saves his life and quickly makes him her pet. After spending a few months under the care of Fern, Wilbur must be sold and sent away, so Fern sells Wilbur to her Uncle Homer Zuckerman, who runs a farm down the road. Wilbur moves to Zuckerman’s farm and spends his first days in loneliness, wishing more than anything to find a friend. One day, when all hope seems to be lost, Wilbur hears a small voice who assures him with, “I’ll be your friend.” The kind words come from Charlotte who will become Wilbur’s most loyal and most unlikely of friends.

I love Charlotte’s Web for so many reasons. The story captures the essence of childhood. It paints the realities of life clearly, yet it adds imagination, wonder and the possibility of miracles. The language is simple and beautiful and made to be read aloud. My kids and I listened to part of this book on CD with E.B. White narrating. (Alas, some of the CDs had scratches, so I checked out the book to finish reading it to them myself.) If you can get a copy of the audio version, you really should hear it. E.B. White takes his time with the language, and it rolls effortlessly from his voice. It’s so great.

My kids love the different characters and their crazy voices. They especially love the goose who constantly repeats herself with phrases like, “Probably -abably” “Appromimately-oximately” and “dirty-little dirty-little dirty-little yard.”

My husband loves the gander because of this conversation with Charlotte:

Charlotte, “Does anybody here know how to spell ‘terrific’?”

“I think,” said the gander, “it’s tee double ee double rr double rr double eye double ff double eye double see see see see see.”

I even love Templeton, who may not be likable, but is certainly true to himself: “I am a glutton, but no merrymaker.”

Please share this wonderful book with the children in your life. If you’ve never read it, go get a copy and rekindle the magic of childhood. It’s delicious.

The back cover captures it best:

“What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time. As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done.” – Eudora Welty, The New York Times Book Review.