The threads of family history and interweaving destinies were, for me, the most problematic aspects of Holes. I found myself more interested in the vignettes of family history and lore than in the struggles of the protagonists in the camp, partly because my own preoccupation with family history helped me relate to this one element of the novel. My family traces its major dysfunctions matrilineally to the night my great-great-great-uncle set fire to the plantation of my great-great-grandparents, and left my great-grandmother a penniless orphan. The rest is too long and complicated a story, but there have definitely been many moments of family life in which I could almost smell the smoke of that ancient fire still burning through the surviving descendents. Sufficed to say, I get it when Stanley curses his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!"
However, the fact that Stanley and Zero would not have been able to break the curse without the string of bad luck that led them to Camp Green Lake (and each other) seems curiously circular and self-defeating. Relatedly, the cruelty of the adults who run the camp, and the captivity of the other children seems almost arbitrary in light of this long string of destiny that binds Stanley and Zero (and the warden) to this place. By wrapping up the story so tidily, Sachar makes the day-to-day experiences of the boys in camp, and the themes of racism, bullying, and even revenge all but irrelevant.
I agree with the majority of the class in that I found this book easy, quirky, and fun to read, but I'm perplexed as to why so many of us find the story so satisfying despite the many thematic elements Sachar does not successfully resolve.
I believe Voigt offers powerful insight for our class, especially for those of us who plan to be educators, about the difficulties many children face in reconciling their family life and personal struggles with the rigid anonymity of the classroom. Chapter two finds Dicey in a classroom"just like every other classroom she had ever been in" (38). Necessarily, the classroom must provide students with a level of familiarity that facilitates processing and memorizing new information - if the classroom does not register as familiar, the space may feel less safe and cause anxiety that impedes learning. To a certain extent teachers depend on the classroom to transmit cultural messages about power relationships and appropriate behavior to students, and on students to decode these messages and respond accordingly. However, as Voigt demonstrates, a child may exhibit appropriate classroom behavior while dealing with family and personal situations that distract from the goals of classroom instruction.
The Tillerman children struggle to integrate their personal feelings, family dynamics, peer interactions, and school obligations into coherent and meaningful understandings of themselves as individuals, and school is the site of many of their anxieties. While most children do not have to face the kinds of personal struggles that Dicey and her siblings face, all school-aged children do have to learn how to understand themselves as members of increasingly expanding communities. School-aged children must learn how to function as members of a family (often fraught with complications), members of various peer groups, members of the classroom, the school, the town, the country, etc. and also how to integrate those roles into a single personality. And since children spend over half of their waking hours in the school, most of this work is done in competition (or compliment) to curricular instruction.
Mr. Chapelle misses so many opportunities to help Dicey break through her impatient boredom and become a real member of the classroom. In their discussion about conflict Mina and Dicey each offer valuable insights, but Mr. Chapelle fails to offer Dicey the support she needs to fully think through the idea of conflicts "'between someone and himself'" (44). His biggest mistake is his failure to earn her trust. He publicly accuses her, without proof, of plagiarism or collusion; he embarrasses her, disrespects her, and loses her respect. Even after he apologizes and promises to change her grade "Dicey didn't say anything. She didn't care what he said [...] It didn't make any difference to Dicey what he said" (209-210). Mr. Chapelle's actions drive Dicey further away from school at the institutional level, yet she does find a link to school society through Mina's willingness to defend her. Voigt suggests that the people in the margins are still viable, and often more interesting, entrees to community and shared experience.
Voigt reinforces this perseptive through Mr. Lingerle, who, because his weight puts him in the margins of their society is able to look beyond the assumptions the school makes about Maybeth's potential, and advocate for her success in a way that is meaningful to her. James struggles to climb out of the margins and be accepted by his peer group, but must sacrifice his true talents to achieve acceptance. Sammy struggles to balance his desire to win familial stability through positive peer interactions, and then turns violently on his peers when they insult his family. The specific struggles of the Tillerman children are only representative of the innumerable complications school-aged children face as they attempt to integrate into the larger society. Every child will feel marginalized for some reason at some time, and some children do actually face family situations well beyond their maturity level. The teacher can never know for sure what a child's family life or interior struggles look like, but educators still have a responsibility to advocate for kids' interests, even within a system that doesn't have time or resources to recognize each child individually.
Dicey's Song informs adults' interactions with children, but it is written for children, and has amazing potential for child-readers. It allows some children to look beyond their more sheltered lives, and allows other children to see themselves pulled from the margins and represented as worthwhile characters with stories that matter. It gives voice to kids who don't quite fit in to other story lines.
"The community cloth was drab, all no-color; the formless shifts and trousers worn by the people were woven and stitched for protection against the sudden occasional rain, thorn scratch, or poison berry. The usual village fabric was not decorated" (41).
"'Maybe it it something that artists have,' she said, liking the sound of the word she had just learned. 'A special kind of magic knowledge'" (145).
When reading Number the Stars, I was gratified that Lowry seemed not to endorse exceptionalism as a prerequisite for heroism. Every Dane was heroic in some small way, and any one would perform a larger heroic act, if called to do so. Heroism was rooted in compassion, human solidarity, and respect for difference between and among people. In her dystopian future set of companion books, Lowry introduces readers to a world quite different from Denmark, where compassion and difference are equally scarce.
Kira was born different from the other villagers, and by their custom "should not have been kept" (26). But the guardians assert that "exceptions can be made" (33), provided, as we learn, there is some special reason to warrant an exception. It is only because of her special gift that Kira is saved, because of her talent for embroidery. Lowry chooses to mark Kira exceptional in two ways, first as a cripple, and second as an artist, when either alone would have been sufficient to separate her from the crowd. Yet, although Kira is exceptional, her disability makes her vulnerable to the ordinary townsfolk and her artistry makes her vulnerable to the village guardians. There is at least an echo of concern for the least of society's members in Kira's social positioning.
The imagery of the village cloth, "drab, all no-color" (41), suggests the hard reality of village life, of a people whose only purpose is survival, and who seem to fear continually for their survival. Yet from this community little Jo begins to sing of her own desire, Kira and Thomas learn to thread and to carve, all out of their own power. The artistic impulse is irrepressible, but it threatens to disturb the people's work (and therefore also their survival?), so the guardians capture and contain the little artists to ensure their talents serve the existing power structure. Lowry shows that art and beauty are threatenting to cultures that maintain dominance through fear. Since the guardians found it fitting to situate Annabella far from the rest of the community, I find it perplexing that they allowed Kira's mother to practice "the art of dye" (41) right in the middle of the village. Perhaps they did not think her talent so great as to constitute a threat or an asset. Or perhaps the memory of Kira's mother suggests that small flutters of creativity and individuality are generally tolerated in the village, and only rare flights of genius held captive.
I have not yet read the Messenger, but I suspect it will help clarify some of the questions I was left with after Gathering Blue. I like that Jonas in the Giver (which I have not read in a few years) is made heroic not by some magic ability (not even the special magic knowledge of an artist), but by the kind of cultural knowledge that is common to every young reader who encounters the text. That is something that Jonas and Kira share with Lowry's audience - an appreciation of the injustices taken for granted by other characters in the novels, so that any child can imagine him or herself understanding and accepting the moral responsibilities that Lowry's characters inherit.
The next two books on our syllabus are very dear to me because I read both series with my husband, who is ordinarily not a fiction-reader. I think his opinion of children's literature pre-Harry Potter can be summed up by this clip from the Onion:
When "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" came out, the Starbucks where I work stayed open until 3am to help caffeinate the Barnes and Noble employees and their eager customers. We made a special menu board of magical drinks and dressed up in costumes to celebrate the event. My dear spouse was a little taken aback by all the excitement, particularly in the adults that couldn't wait even one day to get their copy. He resolved to read the series from the beginning so that he too could enjoy the final chapter of the saga. I had only read the first three novels, so we undertook the project together, and spent hours and days in cafes and diners, reading through lunch, coffee, pie, dinner, more coffee, leaving generous tips - anything so that we could keep our comfortable little reading nook to ourselves.
There are two elements in both series that we both found thoroughly engaging: the sustaining friendships in both series (and especially in the Golden Compass, the daemonic suggestion that a person can be his or her own best friend), and the capacity for moral ambiguity in heroes and villains alike. The Deathly Hallows contains my favorite revelation about a morally ambiguous character, SeverisSnape, but the Prisoner of Azkaban offers two very compelling cases in Sirius Black and Remus Lupin.
In Prisoner of Azkaban, the reader learns that Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, the makers of the Marauders Map, are none other than James Potter and his three best friends, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, and Sirius Black. These are the people who meant to James Potter what Ron and Hermione mean to Harry. By identifying these key figures in his father's life, Harry gets to know his father a little better, and also gains insight into the nature of his own friendships. Why does Rowling choose to shroud Professor Lupin in mystery and saddle Sirius Black with such dark suspicions? In the dark times of Voldemort's reign, somehow these friends were wedged apart from one another, at the hands of Wormtail, Peter Pettigrew, or as he is more commonly called in Harry's world, Scabbers the rat! Rowling offers a warning here against cowardice and deceit. Pettigrew is seen with disgust and repulsion, he was unworthy of his friends. Readers see that friendship must be loyal and brave, even against unspeakable evil. It is better to die, to travel life impoverished and alone, or to rot in prison, than to sell out one's friends.
But Harry's friends bear little resemblance to Wormtail. Lupin trusted his friends with the secret that he is a werewolf, and they became animagi to keep him company on lonely full moonlit nights. Similarly, Harry's friends do not judge him for his ability to speak parseltongue, the vilified language of snakes. Sirius found a new family among his friends, as Harry does among his. A hero needs a community, a connection to reality that makes his fight meaningful. He needs to feel that his life means something to someone. Like Ged needs Vetch, or Frodo needs SamwiseGamgee, Harry needs Ron and Hermione around to help him complete his quest. The nature of evil is to obscure, to confuse, to make ambiguous even those things that are essential. The hero fails when his vision is clouded and he no longer knows on what or whom he can rely. In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry begins to see why his parents lost their battle, how their communal bonds were weakened and dissolved from the inside. And he makes that discovery with his best friends by his side, becoming stronger and more aware together.
This is the blog in which I will contribute to my classroom community and share my thoughts about the texts we encounter. Although I hope to reach a level of sophistication in my thought process that reflects a measure of maturity and education appropriate to my age, I also would like to maintain the spirit of the genre by striving always to approach the text from a child's perspective.
Thinking back on the books that affected my own childhood, it is difficult to pinpoint a favorite. My mother purchased the children's illustrated classics collection, which formed the cornerstone of our children's library, while my father read to us every night from a variety of authors from William Shakespeare to Harper Lee to J.D. Salinger. We also read and re-read picture books such as Blueberries For Sal and Ferdinand, and everything we could find by Shel Silverstein. On my own steam I read dozens of Nancy Drew mysteries and Babysitters Club novels, as well as our school's collection of Newberries and Lone Star selections.
The one book that I feel had the greatest impact on my personality and character development is Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I strongly identified with the sister relationships in the novel. I spent most of my childhood attempting to emulate Beth in her charity and patience, while continually finding myself a Jo: a bit too wild (and a bit too literary) to truly fit in. Little Women may be the reason I became an English major at all. Or else it was a major part of the children's library that so captivated my attention that I never much developed any significant hobbies other than reading.
