LEARNING HISTORY through STORY: MG/YA HISTORICAL FICTION NOVELS
One of the most effective ways to learn about any historical event, and the nuances and effects of those events, is through novel study—the power of story. Every historical event is distinct and affects people and places uniquely—and each is surrounded by misconceptions, misunderstandings, miscommunications, and differing and shifting perspectives. We may learn about history through textbooks and lectures, but we experience history through novels. And when we live it, we learn it; we do not merely learn about it. We discern the complex issues, and we feel empathy for all affected. We bear witness to the events we read and the plights of the people affected by those events.
On July 3, 2019, my guest-blog "Learning History through Story" was posted in Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday. In this blog I reviewed 20 novels and recommended 4 four others that I employed to teach my middle-grade Humanities course.
Since then I have continued to read, and learn from, some amazing novels which can be read as whole-class, book club, or individual texts to learn more about history in English, Language Arts, and Social Studies classes. A suggestion for Social Studies classes would be for Book Clubs to each read a novel from a time period or location studied in class so that groups can present “their” historic event to the class and the class can compare and contrast the novels, the events, and the discerned effects of these events on the characters.
Above the Rim: How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball by Jen F. Bryant
“In one smooth move, like a plane taking off,
He leaped…
Higher and higher and higher--
As if pulled by some invisible wire,
And just when it seemed he’d have to come down,
No!
He’d HANG there, suspended, floating like a bird or a cloud,
Changing direction, shifting the ball to the other side,
Twisting in midair, slashing, crashing,
Gliding past the defense, up—up—above the rim.”
Above the Rim is the story of NBA player Elgin Baylor and how he changed basketball, but it is also the story of Civil Rights in the United States and how Elgin contributed to that movement.
Readers follow Elgin from age 14 when he began playing basketball “in a field down the street” to college ball at the College of Idaho to becoming the #1 draft pick for the Minneapolis Lakers (later the LA Lakers) to being named 1959 NBA Rookie of the Year. At the same time readers follow the peaceful protests of Rosa Parks, the Little Rock Nine, and the African American college students sitting at the “whites only” Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC.
In his first season Baylor sat out a game to protest the hotel and restaurants serving “whites only,” leading the NBA commissioner to make an anti-discrimination rule. “Elgin had already changed the way basketball was played. Now by sitting down and NOT playing, he helped change things off court.”
“Artists [such as Baylor,] change how we see things, how we perceive human limits, and how we define ourselves and our culture.” (Author’s Note)
This picture book, exquisitely illustrated by Frank Morrison, belongs in every classroom and home library for readers of all ages. Lyrically written in free verse by Jen Bryant, it would serve as a mentor text for many writing focus lessons:
Following the story, the author provides a lengthy Author’s Note about Baylor, a bibliography of Further Reading, and a 1934-2018 Timeline of Elgin’s life, black athletes, and Civil Rights highlights.
Allies by Alan Gratz
The Battle of Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlord, began on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control (www.History.com).
In Gratz’s new novel Allies, readers learn about the invasion on D-Day from multiple perspectives.
First, readers meet Dee Carpenter, a soldier from Philadelphia with a secret; his real name is Dietrich Zimmerman and he was born in Germany, his family having fled the Nazis. His best friend Sid is Jewish. Eleven-year-old Samira is French Algerian, and after her mother, a member of the French Resistance, is captured, she joins the Marquis (resistance codename) to find and free her mother. Unfortunately, as one of my favorite characters, she doesn’t reappear until the end of the book. James and his friend Sam, a Cree Indian, are members of the Canadian army, and Bill and Thomas are soldiers from England.
Readers last meet the black medic Henry who calms his patients by asking about their favorite movies and is faced with discrimination even as he saves lives. When he saves the white southern officer Lieutenant Hoyte, the man who had delivered discrimination with “the vilest of racial slurs,” and Hoyte says, “Thank you, corporal…You saved my life,” Henry thinks, “Maybe, just maybe, this was a beginning. Maybe serving together, fighting together, living and suffering together, would make white people see black people as equals.” (194)
Last, readers meet Dorothy, the American reporter disguised as a man so she can cover the battle, and the 13-year-old French Monique, who has an interest in first aid. Together they help save soldiers in the field, Monique soothing them with her singing.
As soldiers storm the beaches and parachute from airplanes, the fighting is described in great detail. “James had seen what happens when IF Day became WHEN Day. ‘Nobody should have to live like this, under the boot of Nazi rule, anywhere in the world,' James thought.” (132)
This novel would appeal to those who are interested in history, battles, artillery, and strategy. It would be a good choice for an author-study, historical-fiction book club, grouped with Gratz's Grenade, Refugee, Projeckt 1065, and Prisoner B-3087 in ELA or History/Social Studies classes.
Flooded: Requiem for Johnstown by Ann E. Burg
On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam collapsed. Twenty million tons of water from Lake Conemaugh poured into Johnstown [Pennsylvania] and neighboring communities. More than 2,200 people died, including 99 entire families and 396 children. [Author’s Note] The flood still stands as the second or third deadliest day in U.S. history resulting from a natural calamity.
Richard Peck wrote, “The bigger the issue, the smaller you write.” And author Ann E. Burg
introduces readers to individual residents of the town.
We read the stories of fifteen-year-old Joe Dixon who wants to run his own newsstand and marry his Maggie; Gertrude Quinn who tells us about her brother, three sisters, Aunt Abbie, and her father who owns the general store. We come to know Daniel and Monica Fagan. Daniel’s friend Willy, the poet, encouraged by his teacher to write, and George with 3 brothers and 4 sisters who wants to leave school and help support them. We watch the town prepare for the Decoration Day ceremony honoring the war dead.
And after the flood, readers hear from Red Cross nurse Clara Barton, and Ann Jenkins and Nancy Little who brought law suits that found no justice, and a few of the 700 unidentified victims of the flood.
And there are the members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club—Andrew Carnegie, Charles J. Clarke, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, Cyrus Elder, and Elias Unger, the wealthy of Pittsburgh who ignored repeated warnings that the dam holding their private lake needed to be repaired so it wouldn't give way. “They don’t care a whit about the likes of us.” (57)
This is a story of class and privilege and those who work tirelessly to make ends meet. As Monica says, “People who have money, who shop at fancy stores and buy pretty things, shouldn’t think they’re better than folks who scrabble and scrounge and go to sleep tired and hungry.” (111)
In free-verse narrative monologues, readers experience the lives of a town and its hard-working, family-oriented inhabitants—people we come to know and love, reluctant to turn the pages leading towards the disaster we know they will encounter. We bear witness to the events as we read and empathy for the plights of the people affected by those events.
This is a book that could be shared across middle grade and high school ELA, social studies, and science classes.
Kent State by Deborah Wiles
“With any story, with any life, with any event whether joyous or tragic, there is so much more to know than the established, inadequate norm: There will be as many versions of the truth as there are persons who lived it.” (Author’s Note, 121)
Deborah Wiles’ historical verse novel does just that. It tells the story of the Vietnam War protest held on the campus of Kent State University and the students who were wounded and killed when the Ohio National Guard opened fire, students who may or may not have been actively involved in the demonstration. The novel chronicles the four days from Friday, May 1 to Monday, May 4, 1970.
But what is unique is that this is the story told by all the voices those involved, in whatever way—those readers may agree with, and those they may not. Author Salman Rushdie has told audiences that anyone who values freedom of expression should recognize that it must apply also to expression of which they disapprove. In Kent State we hear from protestors, faculty, and students, and friends of the four who were killed—Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer, and Bill Schroeder. We also observe the perspectives of the National Guardsmen, the people of the community of Kent, Ohio; and the Black United Students at Kent State. The readers themselves are addressed at times.
Lines of Courage by Jennifer A, Nielsen
“There is a fire within each of us. If you fuel that fire with anger, it will burn all your happiness. But if you fuel it with courage, then the fire will give you strength to do difficult things.” (45-46)
My father once told me the story about how, as a six-year-old, he finally was able to walk to the candy store by himself to buy some penny candy. Imagine his excitement! And imagine his disappointment to discover that the store was closing at that very moment. World War I had been declared. A war which meant nothing to a little boy living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. World War I also had little meaning for me, just more dates and names. In Nielsen’s newest novel, Lines of Courage, I learned more in the first chapter about this war than from my high school history classes, seeing the events which precipitated the war from the up close perspective of a young adolescent.
In Lines of Courage readers experience the war from all perspectives, the Allies and the Central Powers, through the stories of five adolescents: Felix, a young Jew from Austria-Hungary; Kara from Britain whose burning ambition is to earn her Red Cross pin; Juliette from France whose father has been imprisoned; a too-young soldier, Dimitri from Russia; and Elsa from Germany who raises homing pigeons. From June 1914 to November 11, 1918, their stories span the timeline of war. And, as unlikely as it seems, their paths cross as the each find courage to be saved and to save.
“…that is life. Mademoiselle, something will always be in your way. So draw your line around it and keep going. You will find your family again, but it will come at the end of a long and crooked path.” (230)
Jennifer Nielsen has become my history teacher. I learned about the rise of the Berlin Wall from A Night Divided, about the Russian occupation of Lithuania (1795-1918) from Words on Fire, more about Nazi-occupied Poland from reading Resistance, and the French Resistance from Rescue.
Rescue by Jennifer A, Nielsen
“Maman once told me that surviving in an occupied country meant we had to learn to live in the middle—somewhere between accepting our fate and outright resistance. With my next step, I left the middle.” 97
On May 10, 1940 Germany invaded France. On May 11, Meg’s British father left to fight the Germans, working on secret missions for the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.). Almost two years later, 12-year-old Meg is helping the resistance in The Perche. When she is sought for questioning by the Nazis, Meg leaves France. With her are a young boy named Jakob and Arthur and Liesel, who are posing as his parents. Meg is tasked to help them escape to neutral Spain so that Arthur will give orders to free her father who was being hunted as an enemy of the Nazis. All Meg has to go on is a code from her father and a spy book from an injured resistance fighter. As Jakob and Meg work together and try to solve the code, they realize that there may be a traitor among them.
“Jakob stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘I was taught that everyone has three choices in life. To be part of the good, part of the evil, or to try standing in the middle. But I don’t think that’s true anymore. There is no middle. Those who refuse to choose one side or the other only get in the way of those who are doing good, and in that way, end up helping those who wish to do evil.’” (111)
Espionage. Secrecy. Danger. Mystery. Betrayal. Resistance. Heroes. Enemies. Traitors. Spies. This novel has it all and will engage the most reluctant of readers and challenge the more proficient readers.
“This war seemed to me like a chain of dominoes stacked on their ends. With the first invasion, one tile had toppled another, and then another and another. And not only in the destruction of governments and border lines but destroying dreams for the future and traditions of the past. Destroying families.” (147)
Rescue is another well-written history fiction novel with engaging developed characters by Jennifer Nielsen. The Rules of War which title many of the chapters will generate conversations among readers. Rescue would be well-matched for book clubs in ELA/Social Studies classes with Nielsen’s Resistance, Deborah Hopkinson’s How I Became a Spy: A Mystery of WWII London, and Alan Gratz’s Allies or one of his other WWII novels.
Rima’s Rebellion: Courage in the Time of Tyranny by Margarita Engle
I dream of being legitimate
My father would love me,
society could accept me,
strangers might even admire
my short, simple first name
if it were followed
by two surnames
instead of
one. (53)
Twelve-year-old Rima Marin is a natural child, the illegitimate child of a father who will not acknowledge her.
I am a living, breathing secret.
Natural children aren’t supposed to exist.
Our names don’t appear on family trees,
our framed photos never rest affectionately
beside a father’s armchair, and when priests
write about us in official documents,
they follow the single surname of a mother
with the letters SOA,
meaning sin otro apellido,
so that anyone reading
will understand clearly
that without two last names
we have no legal right to money
for school uniforms, books, papers, pencils,
shelter,
or food. (11)
Rima, her Mama, and her abuela live in poverty, squatting in a small building owned by her wealthy father. Her mother is a lacemaker and her abulela—a nurse during the wars for independence from Spain—works as a farrier and founded La Mambisa Voting Club whose members are fighting for voting rights, equality for “natural children,” and the end of the Adultery Law which permits men to kill unfaithful wives and daughters along with their lovers.
Taking place from 1923 to 1936, Rima also joins La Mambisas; becomes friends with her acknowledged, wealthy half-sister, keeping her safe when she defies their father, refusing arranged marriage and becomes pregnant by her boyfriend; falls in love; and becomes trained as a typesetter, printing revolutionary books and posters for suffrage.
Over the thirteen years she grows from a girl who cowers from bullies who call her “bastarda,” finding confidence only in riding Ala, her buttermilk mare,
to an adolescent, living in the city and fighting dictatorship with words—hers and others:
absorb[ing] the strength of female hopes,
wondering if this is how it will be
someday
when women
can finally
vote. (43)
to a young married woman and mother voting in her first election:
Voting rights are our only
Pathway to freedom from fear. (167)
In this new novel of historical fiction, Rima joins author Margarita Engle’s other strong women, real and fictitious, in their fight for the people of Cuba: Liana of Your Heart My Sky; Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda or Tula, The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist; Rosa of The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom; and Paloma of Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba. Perfect reads for International Women’s Day.
We Were the Fire: Birmingham 1963 by Sheila P. Moses
“On May 2, 1963, more than one thousand students skipped classes and gathered at Sixth Street Baptist Church to march to downtown Birmingham, Alabama. As they approached police lines, hundreds were arrested and carried off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. When hundreds more young people gathered the following day for another march, white commissioner, Bull Connor, directed the local police and fire departments to use force to halt the demonstration. Images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, being clubbed by police officers, and being attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers, and triggered outrage throughout the world. Despite the violence, children continued to march and protest in an organizing action now known as the Children’s Crusade.” (National Museum of African American History & Culture)
I am just now learning the history I should have been taught in my years in school, thankful for the novels, memoirs, and authors which have become my guides. One of the most important of these is Sheila P. Moses’ upcoming novel We Were the Fire: Birmingham 1963, a Civil Rights story for upper elementary and middle-grade readers. This is the story of one fictional child crusader and his family and friends, but it is also the story of thousands of other real children on the days from May 2-4, 1963.
Twelve-year-old Rufus Jackson Jones Jr. was born and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, the place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the most segregated place in the country. (1)
His Daddy having died in an accident at the mill when he was 9 year old, Rufus lives with his Mama and his younger sister Georgia in Bull Hill. The neighborhood is run by a slumlord. I knew [Mama] was tired of our house and all that came with it. hauling water from the well. Tired of sharing an outhouse with other families and having to pour bleach and scatter lavender into the toilet hole every day so it would not smell so bad. Tired of our wash freezing outside on the clothesline… (28)
When Mama remarries, they are offered a house by, and next to, the white mill owner, Miss Boone. “Somebody got to be the first or second person to move into these white neighborhoods. Integration is hard, but someone got to do it. We going to be the second to move to Ivy Town, Daddy Paul looked at us. “Do y’all know what integration means?” (22) Every day Miss Boone drives the children to their school and, despite a cross being burned on their yard, manages to keep them (and herself) protected.
Daddy Paul, Uncle Sam, and their friends begin attending meetings at night to organize a peaceful march to City Hall. “We need to change things. I want you and the other children to live in a different kind of Birmingham than the one I was raised in. A free Birmingham.” (53-54)
The children make plans to join the march in Kelly Park We wanted our rights just like the white children. We were young, but we understood that Bull Connor was wrong. We understood that having to walk through the back doors just to get ice cream was wrong. We wanted to walk and live and get educated where we wanted. We wanted to be free. (73) I wanted my little sister to have a doll that looked like her. I wanted her to go to the amusement park one day. (133)
With their teachers’ blessings, the students leave school. “When I turned around, I could see more children behind us than I could count.” (126) And, as the police load up school buses with children to take them to jail, even more arrive. “The children of Birmingham could not be stopped!” (127) Even after being jailed, clubbed, blasted with fire hoses, and bitten by police dogs, the children return to Kelly Park for a second and third days of marching and singing. When the firemen first turn on their hoses, Rufus realizes, “We were the fire!”
On May 4, safe back at home, Rufus wishes on a star, “I wished for a better world for all of us. Where we’re all treated the same.” (152)
This is a novel for all upper elementary and middle grade classrooms and could be read in ELA or Social Studies classes.
Reading this short novel reminds me of the Soweto Riots. “On 16 June 1976 between 3000 and 10 000 students mobilized by the South African Students Movement's Action Committee supported by the BCM marched peacefully to demonstrate and protest against the government’s directive. The march was meant to culminate at a rally in Orlando Stadium. On their pathway they were met by heavily armed police who fired teargas and later live ammunition on demonstrating students. This resulted in a widespread revolt that turned into an uprising against the government. While the uprising began in Soweto, it spread across the country and carried on until the following year.” (South African History Online)
In this way We Were the Fire and other middle-grade Civil Rights novels, such as The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, can be paired with Sheila Gordon’s Waiting for the Rain and Beverly Naidoo‘s novel Journey to Jo’burg and Out of Bounds, her book of short stories that take readers through the decades of Apartheid.
Your Heart—My Sky by Margarita Engle
I began learning about the history of Cuba through Cuban-American poet Margarita Engle’s memoir, Enchanted Sky. I continued my study, learning more Cuban history through the stories of Tula, The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist; though the story of Rosa in The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom; with Daniel, one of the Holocaust refugees in Cuba in Tropical Secrets; and the story of Fefa (based on Engle’s grandmother) in The Wild Book. But there is still more history to learn.
Your Heart—My Sky: Love In The Time Of Hunger introduced me to a different, more contemporary era, “el period especial en tiempos de paz.” The government’s name for the 1990s is “the special period in times of peace,” but in reality is a period of extreme hunger resulting from the loss of Soviet aid, the US trade embargo, and the government prohibition of the growing, buying, and selling of agricultural products. Even though the 1991 Pan Am Games are being held in Havana, where visitors and athletes are sure to find food, the people in the towns face starvation, their food rations reduced even more.
No witnesses.
We are like an outer isle
Off the shore of another island.
Forgotten. (3)
My parents quietly call it tourist apartheid.
Everything for outsiders.
Nothing for islanders.” (Liana, 6)
Readers are introduced to the disastrous effects of these policies on the citizens through the three narrators: Liana, Amado, and the Singing Dog who serves as a matchmaker between, and a guard of, the two adolescents.
Liana and Amado are both rebels in their own ways: Liana skips la escuela al campo “a summer of forced so-called-volunteer farm labor,” possibly giving up college or a government-assigned tolerable job, spending her days looking for food. Amado has made a pact with his brother who is in jail for speaking against the government. He is worried that he won’t be able to keep his promise to avoid the mandatory military service—“men have to serve in the reserves until they’re fifty”—and promote peace, possibly joining his brother in prison.
Maybe I should let myself be trained to kill,
become a soldier, gun-wielding, violent,
a dangerous stranger, no longer
me. (Amado, 24)
In beautiful lyrical verse, lines that caused me to re-read and savor, Liana and Amado meet and fall in love,
The pulse in my mind wanders away
From hunger, toward something I can barely name.
A spark
of wishlight
on the dark horizon’s
oceanic warmth. (Liana, 35)
Liana meets Amado’s grandparents who are growing vegetables and fruits in hidden gardens, and she is given seeds to start her own gardens. She dreams of starting a kitchen restaurant.
Everything has changed inside our minds
So that we are intensely aware of our ability
To seize control of hunger,
Transforming food
Into freedom. (110)
Amado and Liana help fleeing refugees, even though
Leaving the island is forbidden by law
And it is equally illegal
To know that someone is planning to flee. (95)
When Amado receives a note from his brother releasing him from their pact, he secretly plans their rafting escape. But the indecision brought about by the precariousness of the trip cause them to reconsider.
All we have in our shared hearts
is one imaginary raft--
How shall we use it?
Climb aboard or set it loose,
Let that alternate future
drift away? (Liana and Amado, 197)
A beautiful story of a terrible time in Cuban history and two resilient families connected by love (and a singing dog).
One of the most effective ways to learn about any historical event, and the nuances and effects of those events, is through novel study—the power of story. Every historical event is distinct and affects people and places uniquely—and each is surrounded by misconceptions, misunderstandings, miscommunications, and differing and shifting perspectives. We may learn about history through textbooks and lectures, but we experience history through novels. And when we live it, we learn it; we do not merely learn about it. We discern the complex issues, and we feel empathy for all affected. We bear witness to the events we read and the plights of the people affected by those events.
On July 3, 2019, my guest-blog "Learning History through Story" was posted in Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday. In this blog I reviewed 20 novels and recommended 4 four others that I employed to teach my middle-grade Humanities course.
Since then I have continued to read, and learn from, some amazing novels which can be read as whole-class, book club, or individual texts to learn more about history in English, Language Arts, and Social Studies classes. A suggestion for Social Studies classes would be for Book Clubs to each read a novel from a time period or location studied in class so that groups can present “their” historic event to the class and the class can compare and contrast the novels, the events, and the discerned effects of these events on the characters.
Above the Rim: How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball by Jen F. Bryant
“In one smooth move, like a plane taking off,
He leaped…
Higher and higher and higher--
As if pulled by some invisible wire,
And just when it seemed he’d have to come down,
No!
He’d HANG there, suspended, floating like a bird or a cloud,
Changing direction, shifting the ball to the other side,
Twisting in midair, slashing, crashing,
Gliding past the defense, up—up—above the rim.”
Above the Rim is the story of NBA player Elgin Baylor and how he changed basketball, but it is also the story of Civil Rights in the United States and how Elgin contributed to that movement.
Readers follow Elgin from age 14 when he began playing basketball “in a field down the street” to college ball at the College of Idaho to becoming the #1 draft pick for the Minneapolis Lakers (later the LA Lakers) to being named 1959 NBA Rookie of the Year. At the same time readers follow the peaceful protests of Rosa Parks, the Little Rock Nine, and the African American college students sitting at the “whites only” Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC.
In his first season Baylor sat out a game to protest the hotel and restaurants serving “whites only,” leading the NBA commissioner to make an anti-discrimination rule. “Elgin had already changed the way basketball was played. Now by sitting down and NOT playing, he helped change things off court.”
“Artists [such as Baylor,] change how we see things, how we perceive human limits, and how we define ourselves and our culture.” (Author’s Note)
This picture book, exquisitely illustrated by Frank Morrison, belongs in every classroom and home library for readers of all ages. Lyrically written in free verse by Jen Bryant, it would serve as a mentor text for many writing focus lessons:
- repetition, free verse, and rhyming lines for musicality
- technical language (jargon), i.e., hanging jumper, spin-shot, backboard
- active verbs, i.e., gliding, shifting, floating, twisted, reverse dunked
- Figurative language, i.e., floating like a bird or a cloud
- Sensory details, i.e., steamy summer day, padlocked fences, clickety-clack trains, flick of his wrist, beds that were too short, cold food
Following the story, the author provides a lengthy Author’s Note about Baylor, a bibliography of Further Reading, and a 1934-2018 Timeline of Elgin’s life, black athletes, and Civil Rights highlights.
Allies by Alan Gratz
The Battle of Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlord, began on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control (www.History.com).
In Gratz’s new novel Allies, readers learn about the invasion on D-Day from multiple perspectives.
First, readers meet Dee Carpenter, a soldier from Philadelphia with a secret; his real name is Dietrich Zimmerman and he was born in Germany, his family having fled the Nazis. His best friend Sid is Jewish. Eleven-year-old Samira is French Algerian, and after her mother, a member of the French Resistance, is captured, she joins the Marquis (resistance codename) to find and free her mother. Unfortunately, as one of my favorite characters, she doesn’t reappear until the end of the book. James and his friend Sam, a Cree Indian, are members of the Canadian army, and Bill and Thomas are soldiers from England.
Readers last meet the black medic Henry who calms his patients by asking about their favorite movies and is faced with discrimination even as he saves lives. When he saves the white southern officer Lieutenant Hoyte, the man who had delivered discrimination with “the vilest of racial slurs,” and Hoyte says, “Thank you, corporal…You saved my life,” Henry thinks, “Maybe, just maybe, this was a beginning. Maybe serving together, fighting together, living and suffering together, would make white people see black people as equals.” (194)
Last, readers meet Dorothy, the American reporter disguised as a man so she can cover the battle, and the 13-year-old French Monique, who has an interest in first aid. Together they help save soldiers in the field, Monique soothing them with her singing.
As soldiers storm the beaches and parachute from airplanes, the fighting is described in great detail. “James had seen what happens when IF Day became WHEN Day. ‘Nobody should have to live like this, under the boot of Nazi rule, anywhere in the world,' James thought.” (132)
This novel would appeal to those who are interested in history, battles, artillery, and strategy. It would be a good choice for an author-study, historical-fiction book club, grouped with Gratz's Grenade, Refugee, Projeckt 1065, and Prisoner B-3087 in ELA or History/Social Studies classes.
Flooded: Requiem for Johnstown by Ann E. Burg
On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam collapsed. Twenty million tons of water from Lake Conemaugh poured into Johnstown [Pennsylvania] and neighboring communities. More than 2,200 people died, including 99 entire families and 396 children. [Author’s Note] The flood still stands as the second or third deadliest day in U.S. history resulting from a natural calamity.
Richard Peck wrote, “The bigger the issue, the smaller you write.” And author Ann E. Burg
introduces readers to individual residents of the town.
We read the stories of fifteen-year-old Joe Dixon who wants to run his own newsstand and marry his Maggie; Gertrude Quinn who tells us about her brother, three sisters, Aunt Abbie, and her father who owns the general store. We come to know Daniel and Monica Fagan. Daniel’s friend Willy, the poet, encouraged by his teacher to write, and George with 3 brothers and 4 sisters who wants to leave school and help support them. We watch the town prepare for the Decoration Day ceremony honoring the war dead.
And after the flood, readers hear from Red Cross nurse Clara Barton, and Ann Jenkins and Nancy Little who brought law suits that found no justice, and a few of the 700 unidentified victims of the flood.
And there are the members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club—Andrew Carnegie, Charles J. Clarke, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, Cyrus Elder, and Elias Unger, the wealthy of Pittsburgh who ignored repeated warnings that the dam holding their private lake needed to be repaired so it wouldn't give way. “They don’t care a whit about the likes of us.” (57)
This is a story of class and privilege and those who work tirelessly to make ends meet. As Monica says, “People who have money, who shop at fancy stores and buy pretty things, shouldn’t think they’re better than folks who scrabble and scrounge and go to sleep tired and hungry.” (111)
In free-verse narrative monologues, readers experience the lives of a town and its hard-working, family-oriented inhabitants—people we come to know and love, reluctant to turn the pages leading towards the disaster we know they will encounter. We bear witness to the events as we read and empathy for the plights of the people affected by those events.
This is a book that could be shared across middle grade and high school ELA, social studies, and science classes.
Kent State by Deborah Wiles
“With any story, with any life, with any event whether joyous or tragic, there is so much more to know than the established, inadequate norm: There will be as many versions of the truth as there are persons who lived it.” (Author’s Note, 121)
Deborah Wiles’ historical verse novel does just that. It tells the story of the Vietnam War protest held on the campus of Kent State University and the students who were wounded and killed when the Ohio National Guard opened fire, students who may or may not have been actively involved in the demonstration. The novel chronicles the four days from Friday, May 1 to Monday, May 4, 1970.
But what is unique is that this is the story told by all the voices those involved, in whatever way—those readers may agree with, and those they may not. Author Salman Rushdie has told audiences that anyone who values freedom of expression should recognize that it must apply also to expression of which they disapprove. In Kent State we hear from protestors, faculty, and students, and friends of the four who were killed—Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer, and Bill Schroeder. We also observe the perspectives of the National Guardsmen, the people of the community of Kent, Ohio; and the Black United Students at Kent State. The readers themselves are addressed at times.
Lines of Courage by Jennifer A, Nielsen
“There is a fire within each of us. If you fuel that fire with anger, it will burn all your happiness. But if you fuel it with courage, then the fire will give you strength to do difficult things.” (45-46)
My father once told me the story about how, as a six-year-old, he finally was able to walk to the candy store by himself to buy some penny candy. Imagine his excitement! And imagine his disappointment to discover that the store was closing at that very moment. World War I had been declared. A war which meant nothing to a little boy living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. World War I also had little meaning for me, just more dates and names. In Nielsen’s newest novel, Lines of Courage, I learned more in the first chapter about this war than from my high school history classes, seeing the events which precipitated the war from the up close perspective of a young adolescent.
In Lines of Courage readers experience the war from all perspectives, the Allies and the Central Powers, through the stories of five adolescents: Felix, a young Jew from Austria-Hungary; Kara from Britain whose burning ambition is to earn her Red Cross pin; Juliette from France whose father has been imprisoned; a too-young soldier, Dimitri from Russia; and Elsa from Germany who raises homing pigeons. From June 1914 to November 11, 1918, their stories span the timeline of war. And, as unlikely as it seems, their paths cross as the each find courage to be saved and to save.
“…that is life. Mademoiselle, something will always be in your way. So draw your line around it and keep going. You will find your family again, but it will come at the end of a long and crooked path.” (230)
Jennifer Nielsen has become my history teacher. I learned about the rise of the Berlin Wall from A Night Divided, about the Russian occupation of Lithuania (1795-1918) from Words on Fire, more about Nazi-occupied Poland from reading Resistance, and the French Resistance from Rescue.
Rescue by Jennifer A, Nielsen
“Maman once told me that surviving in an occupied country meant we had to learn to live in the middle—somewhere between accepting our fate and outright resistance. With my next step, I left the middle.” 97
On May 10, 1940 Germany invaded France. On May 11, Meg’s British father left to fight the Germans, working on secret missions for the Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.). Almost two years later, 12-year-old Meg is helping the resistance in The Perche. When she is sought for questioning by the Nazis, Meg leaves France. With her are a young boy named Jakob and Arthur and Liesel, who are posing as his parents. Meg is tasked to help them escape to neutral Spain so that Arthur will give orders to free her father who was being hunted as an enemy of the Nazis. All Meg has to go on is a code from her father and a spy book from an injured resistance fighter. As Jakob and Meg work together and try to solve the code, they realize that there may be a traitor among them.
“Jakob stuffed his hands in his pockets. ‘I was taught that everyone has three choices in life. To be part of the good, part of the evil, or to try standing in the middle. But I don’t think that’s true anymore. There is no middle. Those who refuse to choose one side or the other only get in the way of those who are doing good, and in that way, end up helping those who wish to do evil.’” (111)
Espionage. Secrecy. Danger. Mystery. Betrayal. Resistance. Heroes. Enemies. Traitors. Spies. This novel has it all and will engage the most reluctant of readers and challenge the more proficient readers.
“This war seemed to me like a chain of dominoes stacked on their ends. With the first invasion, one tile had toppled another, and then another and another. And not only in the destruction of governments and border lines but destroying dreams for the future and traditions of the past. Destroying families.” (147)
Rescue is another well-written history fiction novel with engaging developed characters by Jennifer Nielsen. The Rules of War which title many of the chapters will generate conversations among readers. Rescue would be well-matched for book clubs in ELA/Social Studies classes with Nielsen’s Resistance, Deborah Hopkinson’s How I Became a Spy: A Mystery of WWII London, and Alan Gratz’s Allies or one of his other WWII novels.
Rima’s Rebellion: Courage in the Time of Tyranny by Margarita Engle
I dream of being legitimate
My father would love me,
society could accept me,
strangers might even admire
my short, simple first name
if it were followed
by two surnames
instead of
one. (53)
Twelve-year-old Rima Marin is a natural child, the illegitimate child of a father who will not acknowledge her.
I am a living, breathing secret.
Natural children aren’t supposed to exist.
Our names don’t appear on family trees,
our framed photos never rest affectionately
beside a father’s armchair, and when priests
write about us in official documents,
they follow the single surname of a mother
with the letters SOA,
meaning sin otro apellido,
so that anyone reading
will understand clearly
that without two last names
we have no legal right to money
for school uniforms, books, papers, pencils,
shelter,
or food. (11)
Rima, her Mama, and her abuela live in poverty, squatting in a small building owned by her wealthy father. Her mother is a lacemaker and her abulela—a nurse during the wars for independence from Spain—works as a farrier and founded La Mambisa Voting Club whose members are fighting for voting rights, equality for “natural children,” and the end of the Adultery Law which permits men to kill unfaithful wives and daughters along with their lovers.
Taking place from 1923 to 1936, Rima also joins La Mambisas; becomes friends with her acknowledged, wealthy half-sister, keeping her safe when she defies their father, refusing arranged marriage and becomes pregnant by her boyfriend; falls in love; and becomes trained as a typesetter, printing revolutionary books and posters for suffrage.
Over the thirteen years she grows from a girl who cowers from bullies who call her “bastarda,” finding confidence only in riding Ala, her buttermilk mare,
to an adolescent, living in the city and fighting dictatorship with words—hers and others:
absorb[ing] the strength of female hopes,
wondering if this is how it will be
someday
when women
can finally
vote. (43)
to a young married woman and mother voting in her first election:
Voting rights are our only
Pathway to freedom from fear. (167)
In this new novel of historical fiction, Rima joins author Margarita Engle’s other strong women, real and fictitious, in their fight for the people of Cuba: Liana of Your Heart My Sky; Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda or Tula, The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist; Rosa of The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom; and Paloma of Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba. Perfect reads for International Women’s Day.
We Were the Fire: Birmingham 1963 by Sheila P. Moses
“On May 2, 1963, more than one thousand students skipped classes and gathered at Sixth Street Baptist Church to march to downtown Birmingham, Alabama. As they approached police lines, hundreds were arrested and carried off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. When hundreds more young people gathered the following day for another march, white commissioner, Bull Connor, directed the local police and fire departments to use force to halt the demonstration. Images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, being clubbed by police officers, and being attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers, and triggered outrage throughout the world. Despite the violence, children continued to march and protest in an organizing action now known as the Children’s Crusade.” (National Museum of African American History & Culture)
I am just now learning the history I should have been taught in my years in school, thankful for the novels, memoirs, and authors which have become my guides. One of the most important of these is Sheila P. Moses’ upcoming novel We Were the Fire: Birmingham 1963, a Civil Rights story for upper elementary and middle-grade readers. This is the story of one fictional child crusader and his family and friends, but it is also the story of thousands of other real children on the days from May 2-4, 1963.
Twelve-year-old Rufus Jackson Jones Jr. was born and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, the place Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the most segregated place in the country. (1)
His Daddy having died in an accident at the mill when he was 9 year old, Rufus lives with his Mama and his younger sister Georgia in Bull Hill. The neighborhood is run by a slumlord. I knew [Mama] was tired of our house and all that came with it. hauling water from the well. Tired of sharing an outhouse with other families and having to pour bleach and scatter lavender into the toilet hole every day so it would not smell so bad. Tired of our wash freezing outside on the clothesline… (28)
When Mama remarries, they are offered a house by, and next to, the white mill owner, Miss Boone. “Somebody got to be the first or second person to move into these white neighborhoods. Integration is hard, but someone got to do it. We going to be the second to move to Ivy Town, Daddy Paul looked at us. “Do y’all know what integration means?” (22) Every day Miss Boone drives the children to their school and, despite a cross being burned on their yard, manages to keep them (and herself) protected.
Daddy Paul, Uncle Sam, and their friends begin attending meetings at night to organize a peaceful march to City Hall. “We need to change things. I want you and the other children to live in a different kind of Birmingham than the one I was raised in. A free Birmingham.” (53-54)
The children make plans to join the march in Kelly Park We wanted our rights just like the white children. We were young, but we understood that Bull Connor was wrong. We understood that having to walk through the back doors just to get ice cream was wrong. We wanted to walk and live and get educated where we wanted. We wanted to be free. (73) I wanted my little sister to have a doll that looked like her. I wanted her to go to the amusement park one day. (133)
With their teachers’ blessings, the students leave school. “When I turned around, I could see more children behind us than I could count.” (126) And, as the police load up school buses with children to take them to jail, even more arrive. “The children of Birmingham could not be stopped!” (127) Even after being jailed, clubbed, blasted with fire hoses, and bitten by police dogs, the children return to Kelly Park for a second and third days of marching and singing. When the firemen first turn on their hoses, Rufus realizes, “We were the fire!”
On May 4, safe back at home, Rufus wishes on a star, “I wished for a better world for all of us. Where we’re all treated the same.” (152)
This is a novel for all upper elementary and middle grade classrooms and could be read in ELA or Social Studies classes.
Reading this short novel reminds me of the Soweto Riots. “On 16 June 1976 between 3000 and 10 000 students mobilized by the South African Students Movement's Action Committee supported by the BCM marched peacefully to demonstrate and protest against the government’s directive. The march was meant to culminate at a rally in Orlando Stadium. On their pathway they were met by heavily armed police who fired teargas and later live ammunition on demonstrating students. This resulted in a widespread revolt that turned into an uprising against the government. While the uprising began in Soweto, it spread across the country and carried on until the following year.” (South African History Online)
In this way We Were the Fire and other middle-grade Civil Rights novels, such as The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, can be paired with Sheila Gordon’s Waiting for the Rain and Beverly Naidoo‘s novel Journey to Jo’burg and Out of Bounds, her book of short stories that take readers through the decades of Apartheid.
Your Heart—My Sky by Margarita Engle
I began learning about the history of Cuba through Cuban-American poet Margarita Engle’s memoir, Enchanted Sky. I continued my study, learning more Cuban history through the stories of Tula, The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist; though the story of Rosa in The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom; with Daniel, one of the Holocaust refugees in Cuba in Tropical Secrets; and the story of Fefa (based on Engle’s grandmother) in The Wild Book. But there is still more history to learn.
Your Heart—My Sky: Love In The Time Of Hunger introduced me to a different, more contemporary era, “el period especial en tiempos de paz.” The government’s name for the 1990s is “the special period in times of peace,” but in reality is a period of extreme hunger resulting from the loss of Soviet aid, the US trade embargo, and the government prohibition of the growing, buying, and selling of agricultural products. Even though the 1991 Pan Am Games are being held in Havana, where visitors and athletes are sure to find food, the people in the towns face starvation, their food rations reduced even more.
No witnesses.
We are like an outer isle
Off the shore of another island.
Forgotten. (3)
My parents quietly call it tourist apartheid.
Everything for outsiders.
Nothing for islanders.” (Liana, 6)
Readers are introduced to the disastrous effects of these policies on the citizens through the three narrators: Liana, Amado, and the Singing Dog who serves as a matchmaker between, and a guard of, the two adolescents.
Liana and Amado are both rebels in their own ways: Liana skips la escuela al campo “a summer of forced so-called-volunteer farm labor,” possibly giving up college or a government-assigned tolerable job, spending her days looking for food. Amado has made a pact with his brother who is in jail for speaking against the government. He is worried that he won’t be able to keep his promise to avoid the mandatory military service—“men have to serve in the reserves until they’re fifty”—and promote peace, possibly joining his brother in prison.
Maybe I should let myself be trained to kill,
become a soldier, gun-wielding, violent,
a dangerous stranger, no longer
me. (Amado, 24)
In beautiful lyrical verse, lines that caused me to re-read and savor, Liana and Amado meet and fall in love,
The pulse in my mind wanders away
From hunger, toward something I can barely name.
A spark
of wishlight
on the dark horizon’s
oceanic warmth. (Liana, 35)
Liana meets Amado’s grandparents who are growing vegetables and fruits in hidden gardens, and she is given seeds to start her own gardens. She dreams of starting a kitchen restaurant.
Everything has changed inside our minds
So that we are intensely aware of our ability
To seize control of hunger,
Transforming food
Into freedom. (110)
Amado and Liana help fleeing refugees, even though
Leaving the island is forbidden by law
And it is equally illegal
To know that someone is planning to flee. (95)
When Amado receives a note from his brother releasing him from their pact, he secretly plans their rafting escape. But the indecision brought about by the precariousness of the trip cause them to reconsider.
All we have in our shared hearts
is one imaginary raft--
How shall we use it?
Climb aboard or set it loose,
Let that alternate future
drift away? (Liana and Amado, 197)
A beautiful story of a terrible time in Cuban history and two resilient families connected by love (and a singing dog).
These next two novels are not Historical Fiction but contain historical events:
I Can Make This Promise by Christine Day
“I think about Roger. He was the first person to ever say those words to me. ‘You look Native.’ And it didn’t feel presumptuous. It didn’t feel like a wild guess. It was like he recognized me. Like he saw something in me.” (24)
Twelve-year-old Edie Green knows she is half Native American and that her mother was adopted and raised by a white couple at a very young age. But that is all she knows about her heritage, and she has never thought to ask for whom she is named. She discovered that she was “different” on the first day of kindergarten, a day she remembers in great detail, a day when her teacher’s questions about “where she was from” panicked her. But this was something she and her mother never discussed.
The summer before seventh grade, Edie and her friends discover a box in her attic, a box with pictures and letter from a young woman named Edith who looks just like Edie. When she asks her mother about her name, her mother lies, and a few days later they have a fight when Edie wants to see a movie featuring a Native American character. Now Edie doesn’t know how her mother will react when she tells her she has found the box and has read Edith Graham’s letters. Even her mother’s older brother, Uncle Phil, won’t tell her the secret.
When Edie’s mother finally shares her past and the past of her birth family, “I didn’t picture this. I wasn’t ready for this horrific injustice.” (230)
I Can Make This Promise shares a time of intolerance and injustice in U.S. history, a time before the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 became a vital piece of legislation.
Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas
“But…Black people aren’t good at swimming.” (78)
When Bree and her father move from Brooklyn to Florida, she is excited about her first day of school. She has already made a friend, another 7th grader who lives in her apartment complex. Excited about joining the Math Team, Bree finds that the only elective that is still open is Swimming. And even though she tries to think about the things that make her happy—doing homework with her Dad, cooking, reading, and math—frequently “negative thoughts take over. And I think about the things that make me nervous and scared. I second-guess and doubt myself, even when I don’t want to.” (7) And some of the things that Bree doesn’t like are sports, pools, and she worries about not having friends. She is especially worried about Swimming class because she has never learned to swim.
Bree eludes the class, and, when she can no longer avoid it, Ms Etta, her neighbor and a former professional swimmer who happens to have swum on the team at Bree’s middle school back when the team almost won the championship, teaches Bree to swim. Ms Etta also explains the reasons that Bree assumes that Black people aren’t good at swimming. “From ancient Africa to modern Africa, from Chicago to Peru, in seas, rivers, lakes and pools, Black people have always swum and always will.” (80-81) But she also explains the history of segregation and discrimination that limited Blacks’ access to pools, including information about Eugene Williams’ murder (1919), David Isom’s breaking of the color line (1958), and John Lewis’ protest (1962).
Bree becomes quite a good swimmer, and the coach of the school swim team tricks her into trying out. She joins the team with her new best friend Clara, and, with the help of Ms. Etta, the team makes it to the championship. But when a student, Mean-Girl Keisha, transfers from the rival private school and joins the team and the girls find out that Clara has won a swimming scholarship to the same private school for the next year, the team relay threatens to fall apart.
That is when they learn what happened to Ms. Etta’s team years ago that cost them the championship. Reuniting the former Swim Sisters reunites the present team as they learn about relationships. “A team is like a family. Sometimes family shows you how to do a flip turn. Or tells funny jokes—And is a little annoying. (215)
Johnnie Christmas’ new graphic novel tells the story of middle-grade friendships, socioeconomic prejudice and racial discrimination, and swimming through those negative thoughts that hold us back. In the classroom, this novel could lead to some research on Black athletes in sports through history and discrimination.
Learning about the Events of September 11, 2001, through Story
No historical event may be as unique and complicated to discuss and teach as the events of September 11, 2001, the day terrorists crashed planes into, and destroyed, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. At the time of this event no child in our present K-12 educational system was yet born, but, in most cases, their parents and educators would have been old enough to have some knowledge of, and even personal experience with, these events, making this a very difficult historic event for many to teach. However, with the devastation and impact of these events on our past, present, and future and as ingrained a part of history these events are, they need to be discussed and understood as much as possible.
Again, an effective way to learn about these events are through story. There are powerful novels that have been written about this tragedy, for all age levels and, fascinatingly, each presents a different perspective of the events. Some take place during September 11, some following the events, some a few years later or many years later, and a few include two timelines. Many take place from the perspectives of multiple characters.
On September 11, 2021 YA Wednesday posted my guest-blog “Novels, Memoirs, Graphics, and Picture Books to Commemorate September 11th," my 4th blog on novels covering these events. In this blog I interviewed authors and reviewed (or re-reviewed) and recommended 24 texts and six picture books.
Since then I have read two additional texts:
Yusuf Azeem is Not a Hero by Saadia Faruqi
“Suspicion of those unlike us is common human behavior. We don’t trust who we don’t know. But yes, 9/11 was terrible, and it really fueled the fire of hatred in this country.” (184-5)
Sixth grader Yusuf Azeem was born in Texas and is an American; his mother was also born in America and his father was a Pakistani immigrant who runs the popular A to Z Dollar Store in town (and a somewhat a local hero after capturing an intruder threatening his store and customers). The family is Muslim, but, understandably, Yusuf is shocked when sixth grade begins with threatening notes in his locker. When one says, “Go home,” he hurt and confused. Frey is his home. Surely the notes are meant for someone else.
September 11, 2021 is approaching, and when his mother’s younger brother Uncle Rahman comes for a visit, he notes, “The twentieth anniversary of the attacks is coming up soon.” Abba drank some water. “Does it matter? It’s been twenty years.” Uncle Rahman looked stern. “You don’t mean that. You know it still affects us every single day. At work. On the street. At the airport.” (21) Before leaving, Uncle Rahman gives Ausuf the journal he started keeping after the events. “I was your age when 9/11 happened. It was an emotional time for everyone, and it was hard for me to process…. I ended up writing about some of my experiences, trying to figure things out…. My place in the world. How it all changed in an instant, how I became a stranger in my own country.” (23-24)
As the town’s 20th anniversary celebration approaches, Ethan, the sixth grade bully, harasses Yusuf and some of the other Muslim students while his father, leader of the Patriot Sons, makes life difficult for the adult Muslim community, spraying graffiti on the A to Z Dollar Store and trying to halt the construction of the mosque.
Yusuf stands up for other students whom Ethan bullies, and, when Cameron tells him that he shouldn’t “make waves,” that challenging things could be dangerous, Yusuf protests, “I wasn’t being a hero. I had to do that. It was my duty as a Muslim.” (182)
As poorly as his middle school year is going, Yusuf is excited to be captain of the Robotics Club which is preparing for the TRC competition that he has been looking forward to his whole life. Working with his best friend Danial and Cameron, a former friend who Yusuf thought had changed, both members of the Muslim community; his new friend Jared who happens to be Ethan’s cousin; and Madison, the one girl on their team, he forms a circle of allies. As his father tells him, “Life is full of all kinds of people, son. We just have to learn to avoid the bullies and stick with our friends.” (322)
This is a novel that may benefit from some background on the events of September 11, 2001 since the action takes places in 2021 but, read individually, Ausuf’s uncle’s journal will help fill in information. The importance of this particular novel is that is demonstrates that, for some of our citizens and students, “Twenty years. So much time. But things haven’t really changed at all.” (48) One of the major events in the story—when a little computer in his backpack beeped and, instead of questioning him and investigating, Ausuf is thrown in jail for twelve hours—is based on a real event from 2015 where Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim 14-year-old, was arrested at his high school because of a disassembled digital clock he brought to school to show his teachers [https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/16/us/texas-student-ahmed-muslim-clock-bomb].
It is vital that our children learn about 9/11 because, as Yusuf’s mamoo says, “History informs our present and affects our future.” (81)
In the Shadows of the Fallen Towers by Don Brown
Don Brown’s graphic novel recounts events following the 9/11 Attacks on the Towers and the Pentagon from the moment of the “jetliner slamming into the North Tower of the World Trade Center” to the one-year anniversary ceremonies at the Pentagon; in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; and at Ground Zero. It also covers the fighting of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and the capture and interrogation of prisoners from an al-Qaeda hideout in Pakistan.
The drawings allow readers to bear witness to the heroism of the first responders, firefighters, and police as they move from rescue to recovery over the ten months following the attacks and learn the stories of some of the survivors they saved. It is the story of the nameless “strangers [who] help[ed] one another, carrying the injured, offering water to the thirsty, and comforting the weeping.” (23)
We learn and view details that we may have not known, such as “Bullets start to fly when the flames and heat set off ammunition from fallen police officers’ firearms,” (11) the “Pentagon workers [who] plunge[d] into the smoke-filled building to restore water pressure made feeble by pipes broken in the attack,” (36) and former military who donned their old uniforms and “bluff[ed their way] past the roadblocks” to “sneak onto the Pile” to help. (50, 52)
For more mature readers this book adds to the story of 9/11 in a more “graphic” way.
I have taught a unit on NINE ELEVEN through book clubs in multiple schools from grades 5 through 9 in both ELA and Social Studies classes. Children and adolescents have felt comfortable these sensitive and challenging concepts and examining these troubling events, and some of the ensuing difficulties, prejudices, and bullying, through the eyes of characters who are around their ages, some readers sharing personal stories in their small collaborative groups. I am thankful for the authors who have allowed our children to experience these events in a safe and compassionate way. I have presented these novels and strategies and lessons for reading through book clubs at local workshops and national conferences. I included my 9/11 Book Club unit as a chapter in TALKING TEXTS: A Teacher’s Guide To Book Clubs Across The Curriculum.
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