Module 15 – The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian

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Alexie, S. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.
   
Summary —

Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian tells the story of a freshman-aged Spokane Indian, Arnold Spirit, Jr.  After acting out at school because he realized his geometry text was a generation old, he’s encouraged by his math teacher to find a place that has hope: there is no hope to be found at the reservation. Junior decides to leave the "rez" school to attend an all-white school in a neighboring town, Reardan.  He faces objections from the Indians on his reservation, who consider him a race-traitor, and he faces some horrible racism in his new school, since he's the only Indian at that school other than the mascot.  But he slowly makes new friends, finds a girlfriend, gets a spot on the varsity basketball team, and in general succeeds in his attempt to find an out from the limited possibilities for a smart kid on the reservation. The narrative is not all joy, as his grandmother is killed by a drunk driver, his father’s best friends is shot to death, and his sister dies in a fire.  Despite the support he receives from his immediate family to try a new school, his father is still an alcoholic who occasionally disappears for days at a time when he goes on a bender. On a more positive note, Junior’s new friends all stand up for him when one of the Reardan teachers mocks him for his number of absences. By the end of the novel, Junior even manages to patch things up with Rowdy, his best friend who had been the most angry when Junior decided to go to school at Reardan. The two spend a day playing basketball one-on-one into the evening, best friends once again, as if nothing had ever happened.

Lucien’s thoughts —

I really enjoyed this book.  It was equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching, as Junior often uses humor to staunch the pain.  His diary doesn’t flinch from pointing out the inequities of living in poverty, starting the novel with a brief story about how they couldn’t afford to takes his dog to the vet when he got sick, but his dad could afford the bullet needed to put him out of his misery. In general, I think this book is a great example of hope and hard work overcoming adversity. This book would be great for any reader who has ever felt like an outsider because of his or her skin color. The book perfectly captures the ambivalent feelings of leaving your community to strive for something better; it's not all positive emotions.  There are real feelings of guilt and betrayal that accompany the feelings of hope. It's a well-written book, full of humor and wit, but also sorrow and pain.
   
Librarian’s use —

This is a great book to use on a social studies unit on Native Americans and modern life on the reservation. The book points out quite starkly how alcohol is both a coping mechanism and seed of destruction for many Native Americans on the reservation.  Arnold uses a lot of humor as his way of dealing with painful subjects, like poverty, racism, depression, and alcoholism, all problems that are plentiful on the reservation. On the other hand, he points out that in some ways, his family is more present to him than the families of some of his white schoolmates, where fathers are too busy to be a part of their kids’ lives. I think the book is a great way to introduce young readers to a voice from a marginalized culture. Alexie plays with cultural stereotypes, fleshing them out to be real people with real problems.

Other reviews —

Sutton, R. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. Horn book magazine, 83 (5), 563-564.
   
The line between dramatic monologue, verse novel, and standup comedy gets unequivocally -- and hilariously and triumphantly -- bent in this novel about coming of age on the rez. Urged on by a math teacher whose nose he has just broken, Junior, fourteen, decides to make the iffy commute from his Spokane Indian reservation to attend high school in Reardan, a small town twenty miles away. He's tired of his impoverished circumstances ("Adam and Eve covered their privates with fig leaves; the first Indians covered their privates with their tiny hands"), but while he hopes his new school will offer him a better education, he knows the odds aren't exactly with him: "What was I doing at Reardan, whose mascot was an Indian, thereby making me the only other Indian in town?" But he makes friends (most notably the class dork Gordy), gets a girlfriend, and even (though short, nearsighted, and slightly disabled from birth defects) lands a spot on the varsity basketball team, which inevitably leads to a showdown with his own home team, led by his former best friend Rowdy. Junior's narration is intensely alive and rat-a-tat-tat with short paragraphs and one-liners ("If God hadn't wanted us to masturbate, then God wouldn't have given us thumbs"). The dominant mode of the novel is comic, even though there's plenty of sadness, as when Junior's sister manages to shake off depression long enough to elope -- only to die, passed out from drinking, in a fire. Junior's spirit, though, is unquenchable, and his style inimitable, not least in the take-no-prisoners cartoons he draws (as expertly depicted by comics artist Forney) from his bicultural experience.

Chipman, I. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. Booklist, 10 (22), 61.

Arnold  Spirit,  a  goofy-looking  dork with  a decent jumpshot, spends his time lamenting life on  the “poor-ass” Spokane  Indian  reservation, drawing cartoons (which accompany, and often provide more insight than, the narrative), and, along with his aptly named pal Rowdy, laughing those laughs over anything and nothing that affix best friends so intricately together. When a teacher pleads with Arnold to want more, to escape the hopelessness of the rez, Arnold switches to a rich white school and immediately becomes as much an outcast in his own community as he is a curiosity in his new one. He weathers the typical teenage indignations and triumphs like a champ but soon faces far more trying ordeals as his home  life begins  to  crumble  and decay amidst  the  suffocating mire  of  alcoholism  on the  reservation. Alexie’s humor and prose are easygoing and well suited to his young audience, and he doesn’t pull many punches as he levels his eye at stereotypes both warranted and inapt. A few of the plotlines fade to gray by the end, but this ultimately affirms the incredible power of best friends to hurt and heal in equal measure. Younger teens looking for the strength to lift themselves out of rough situations would do well to start here.

Module 10 – The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Volume I: The Pox Party.

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Anderson, M. T. (2006) The astonishing life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the nation. Volume I: The pox party. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.

Summary —

The novel recounts the teenage years of Octavian Nothing, a slave born in Boston of the American Colonies and raised by his mother and a collection of scientifically minded gentlemen that comprise the Novanglian College of Lucidity under the watch of Mr. Gitney. Octavian is raised with a formidable classical education, being trained in Latin, Greek, French, philosophy, natural philosophy, mathematics, and violin. Octavian eventually learns that he and his mother are owned property and part of an experiment to determine if the African race is in fact equal or inferior to the European race. Soon after he learns this fact, he devotes himself with greater zeal to his studies.  The financial benefactor to the Novanglian College of Lucidity dies, and his nephew who has inherited his uncle’s title comes to visit Boston and inspect Gitney’s household.  Lord Cheldthorpe become enamored with Cassiopeia, Octavian’s mother, but is eventually rebuffed when it becomes clear he intends for her to be his mistress, not his wife. Cassiopeia and Octavian are bound and whipped, and Cheldthorpe returns to England furious. After this incident, the finances of the Gitney household abruptly change, and the whole enterprise comes under the watchful eye of Mr, Sharpe, who represents the moneyed interest of several colonial businessmen who own slaves and are very much interested in having scientific evidence that supports slavery. Much of the servants, the experimental instruments, and the paintings in the Gitney household are sold off, and Octavian’s duties now involve taking over the duties previously performed by the now-sold slaves; he’s trained in his new duties by Bono, another one of the Gitney slaves who eventually runs away after he is gifted to a Southern benefactor to the College.  Octavian’s learning is also drastically changed, so that Dr. Trefusis now doesn’t offer classical text to read that have historical or philosophical value, but rather he is forced to translate dry and difficult legal documents and other text that have no narrative element. As the colonies grow closer to insurrection, Mr. Gitney decides to move the household out to the country where he invites relatives to join him for a pox party; they will all be inoculated against the pox.  It later comes to light that Gitney is afraid of a slave insurrection, whose efforts are rumored to be supported by the British crown.  Most of the Gitney household have varying degrees of illness, but three in the pox party die, including Cassiopeia.  Octavian finds Mr. Gitney in the process of dissecting his mother and he flies into a rage, running away and joining the Revolutionary forces, hoping to die at the hands of the British redcoats. Octavian, now a runaway slaves, goes by the name Prince, and is eventually recaptured and returned to Mr. Sharpe. He is kept bound in chains and an iron mask, and as Sharpe explains, his actions have helped prove that despite the education he’s been given, his race is obviously inferior to the European race.  While Octavian faces his captors, Dr. Trefusis has poisoned the tea with a sedative and he helps Octavian run away once more.  The book ends with Dr. Trefusus and Octavian fleeing to a besieged Boston.

Lucien’s thoughts —

Most of the book is told as if were the written account of Octavian himself, a smart and dispassionate youth well educated in the best education available at the height of the 18^th century. Several of the passages concerning his mother’s death are made to look as if they’ve been redacted by his own hand, with scratches and smears helping to show how distraught he is.  His time when he had run away is told via epistles from some of the people Octavian meets along the way.  Anderson’s novel is an interesting account of a fictional character and a fictional scientific society, but the fact is that there were several inquiries along the lines of these that were conducted, and often times the results were skewed to support the ideologies of the time that held there were insurmountable differences between the races.  It favorably reminds me of parts of the Neal Stephenson novel Quicksilver. Anderson's book provides a fascinating different lens with which to view the historical birth of a nation, laying bare the hypocrisy of a population that was trying to break free from one set of bondage while simultaneously supporting another set of bondage. It’s a very powerful story and I’m curious to read the sequel, to see what happens to Octavian and Bono.


Librarian’s use —

I think that one of the interesting features of this book is that parts of it are told via letters, scientific journals, and clippings from newspapers, formats that juxtapose very well with the clear and loft prose of Octavian’s writing.  The librarian could perhaps assemble non-fiction books that have transcripts of real primary sources from the time period, and thus use the book as a springboard into real historical research of the epoch.

Perhaps this novel can also be used in conjunction with other historical fiction books about slaves’ roles the American Revolution, like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains and Forge and Ann Rinaldi’s Wolf By The Ears.  Even if these other books are aimed at a slightly lower reading level, they also discuss the role of slaves and freedmen during this period of time.

Other reviews —

Donelson, K. (2007). The astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, traitor to the nation, Volume I. The pox party. English journal, 97 (1), 94-95.

This astonishing mixture of political and social history in the 1760s and 1770s could logically have been called The Education of Octavian.  It is narrated, mostly, by the young Octavia, who lives with the lovely Cassiopeia, who is his mother and the faculty of the Novanglian College of Lucidity.  Mr. Gitney and members of the college divine the secrets of the universe by writing poetry, drawing, and performing sundry experiments, among them taking a dog n, showing affection to it, and then drowning it to see how long the dog takes to die.  While the College may remind readers of Swifts Grand Academy of Lagada with all its madness, their experiments are more cruel… Octavian has no idea who he is, but Mr. Gitney’s valet, Bono, makes the boy see that Octavian is as African as Bono.  With this realization, Octavian understands that he is nothing more than a zoological experiment to the college. Mr. Gitney tells Octavian, “We wish to divine whether you are a separate and distinct species.” Octavian, confused, asks, “You wish to prove I am the equal of any other?” Gitney corrects the boy: “We wish to prove nothing, We simply aim at discovering the truth.” (49, italics in original). Later, money that the College desperately needs come from a consortium eager to prove that Africans are inferior to White people, and at that point, Octavian’s education changes.

Anderson is a born storyteller.  His convoluted plot, full of horrors and, surprisingly enough, humor, will keep reader alert. One episode, “The Pox Party,” is unquestionably the most memorable and most disturbing. The pox contagion is near the college, and Mr. Gitney invites prominent people to dance; play cards; consume great amounts of food, wine, and spirits; and also to be inoculated.  He has secured “from a pest-house in Salem, a glass full of contaminate matter from the pox-sores of the dead” (187). Crude inoculations by Gitney’s scalpel soon begin. Octavian’s mother is not the first to catch the pox, but her death is slowly and surely the most horrible… Much of Octavian departs with her.  Most of Anderson’s readers will follow him through Volume II. Certainly, I will.

The astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, traitor to the nation: Volume 1, The pox party. (2006). Kirkus reviews, 74 (18), 945.

A historical novel of prodigious scope, power and insight, set against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War. Readers are seduced by a gothic introduction to the child Octavian, whose bizarre situation is both lavish and eerie. Octavian is domiciled with a gentleman scholar at the "College of Lucidity." A sentient being, he is a living experiment, from his classical education to the notated measurement of his bodily intake and output; as such, the study will degenerate from earnest scholarly investigation to calculated sociopolitical propaganda. Upon learning that he's a slave, Octavian resolves to prove his excellence. But events force the destitute College to depend on a new benefactor who demands research that proves the inferiority of the black race. Like many Africans, Octavian runs away, joining the Revolutionary army, which fights for "liberty," while ironically never assuring slaves freedom. Written in a richly faithful 18th-century style, the revelations of Octavian's increasingly degraded circumstances slowly, horrifyingly unfold to the reader as they do to Octavian. The cover's gruesomely masked Octavian epitomizes a nation choking on its own hypocrisy. This is the Revolutionary War seen at its intersection with slavery through a disturbingly original lens.

Module 7 – Mockingbird

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Erskine, K. (2011). Mockingbird. New York, NY: The Penguin Group.

Summary —

Caitlin Smith is a young girl who is coping with the recent death of her older brother, Devon, who was killed at a school shooting.  Things are especially difficult for Caitlin, because she has Asperger’s Syndrome. She has a hard time with emotionally charged concepts like closure, empathy, and friendship; her brother was the one person who best helped her make sense of a confusing world. Her father is a widower who now has to handle the grief of losing a child all by himself.  He seems hardly equipped to handle his own emotions, much less help Caitlin come to terms with her brother’s death.  Luckily for Caitlin, the school’s counselor, Mrs. Brooks, is able to reach out to her and help her navigate through her grief.  Caitlin comes across the word closure, and she tries to understand how to achieve it for herself and for her father.  Under Mrs. Brook’s guidance, she spends part of her recess with some of the younger children at her school, where she makes friends with Michael, a little boy whose mother was a teacher killed at the same school shooting as Devon. Devon had been planning to work on his Eagle project by teaching others how to make a mission chest; he and his father had just started working on it before he was killed. Now, the chest is hidden under a sheet, never to be completed.  Caitlin becomes convinced that if her father would teach her how to complete the chest, they could finish Devon’s project and perhaps find some closure.  At first, her dad is can’t bring himself to touch the project, but eventually the two work together and finish the chest.  They then decide to donate it to the school in memory of Devon.  While it doesn’t bring Caitlin back to how things were, working on Devon’s chest helps both her and her father heal. Caitlin starts to understand that Michael is also in need of some closure in his struggle to understand the loss of his mother. Caitlin then recognizes that the whole community was affect by the shooting and they are all looking to find some way to heal.

Lucien’s thoughts —

The whole novel is told from Caitlin’s perspective, and she is often times unaware of the emotional repercussions of her words and actions.  The audience is able to understand her father’s grief in a way that Caitlin can’t quite grasp and the book is that much more painful for it.  I constantly found myself near tears as Caitlin doesn’t quite understand why her father is behaving the way he is.  It’s a poignant account of how a whole community is affected by acts of violence. Caitlin’s disability is an interesting filter and narrative voice for a book that realistically examines how to get past the pain and loss in the face of a random act of violence.  I think this book is an important novel to help students view the world from the perspective of someone who is different in their mental processing.  Erskine obviously has lots of experience and understanding of a person with AS, and the voice of the main protagonist is that much richer for it.  I think this book has the ability to open up readers to look at people with AS as something other than “weird” or “freaky”. As is evident by her actions, Caitlin is intelligent and talented (especially in her art) but her way of understanding the chaos around her is very different than most girls.  In Erskine’s hands, we root for Caitlin to find some comfort and healing, which gladly, she does.

Librarian’s use —

I think that this book’s main topic is how to find ways to cope with grief and it’s something that many readers can relate to.  Many children have lost grandparents or other close relatives; some may have even lost siblings or parents, like in this book.  I think using the book as a way to discuss some of the ways people behave in the days after the loss of a loved one is a great idea. Readers can share about people they have lost, how they felt at first and what they have done since then to accept the grieving process.

Other reviews — Stevenson, D. (2010). Mockingbird (review). Bulletin of the center for children’s books, 63(9), 377.

While autistic-spectrum disorders are a fairly common topic in children's literature at the moment, Caitlin is a distinct personality, and the book allows her some genuinely offputting habits and mannerisms as well as making her sympathetic through her narration; underneath her protagonist's voice, Erskine has a smooth and accessible style that keeps the story flowing. The book is rather overpacked with message, symbolism, and hackneyed emotional journeys, however, straining credulity to get everybody to resolution and to do so in a way that allows readers in on the process, and Caitlin devolves from a character into a sentimental cliché, the innocent vessel through which wisdom is conveyed. For readers who appreciate an emotional family story, however, the book offers some gentle reading on a complicated subject.

Brautigam, F. (2010). Erskine, Kathryn. Mockingbird. School library journal, 56 (4). 154-156.

From inside Caitlin's head, readers see the very personal aftermath of a middle school shooting that took the life of the older brother she adored. Caitlin is a bright fifth grader and a gifted artist. She also has Asperger's syndrome, and her brother, Devon, was the one who helped her interpret the world. Now she has only her father, a widower who is grieving anew and whose ability to relate to his daughter is limited. A compassionate school counselor works with her, trying to teach her the social skills that are so difficult for her. Through her own efforts and her therapy sessions, she begins to come to terms with her loss and makes her first, tentative steps toward friendship. Caitlin's thought processes, including her own brand of logic, are made remarkably clear. The longer readers spend in the child's world, the more understandable her entirely literal and dispassionate interpretations are. Marred slightly by the portrayal of Devon as a perfect being, this is nonetheless a valuable book. After getting to know Caitlin, young people's tendencies to label those around them as either "normal" or "weird" will seem as simplistic and inadequate a system as it truly is.

Mockingbird. (2010). Kirkus reviews, 78 (5), 198.

This heartbreaking story is delivered in the straightforward, often funny voice of a fifth-grade girl with Asperger's syndrome, who is frustrated by her inability to put herself in someone else's shoes. Caitlin's counselor, Mrs. Brook, tries to teach her how to empathize, but Caitlin is used to depending on her big brother Devon for guidance on such matters. Tragically, Devon has been killed in a school shooting. Caitlin, her dad and her schoolmates try to cope, and it is the deep grief they all share that ultimately helps Caitlin get to empathy. As readers celebrate this milestone with Caitlin, they realize that they too have been developing empathy by walking a while in her shoes, experiencing the distinctive way that she sees and interacts with the world. Erskine draws directly and indirectly on To Kill a Mockingbird and riffs on its central theme: The destruction of an innocent is perhaps both the deepest kind of psychosocial wound a community can face and its greatest opportunity for psychological and spiritual growth.

Module 4 – Holes

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Sachar, L.(1998) Holes. New York, NY: Frances Foster Books.

Summary –

In this Newbery Award winning novel by Louis Sachar, we follow the adventures of Stanley Yelnats, an unlucky, overweight teen who has been found guilty of stealing a pair of sneakers. As punishment, he’s sent to Camp Green Lake, a camp for wayward boys. Under the control of the Warden and her counselors, the boys spend all day every day digging up holes in the dry Texas heat.  Digging starts at 5 a.m. so they can avoid the worst of the sun. Stanley, or Caveman as the other kids call him, makes friends with Zero, X-Ray, Armpit, Zigzag, Squid, and Magnet, the other boys in tent D. When Stanley discovers that Zero (Hector Zeroni) doesn’t know how to read, the two make an arrangement: Zero will help Stanley dig his holes, and Stanley will teach him his letters.   Once their arrangement is discovered by the counselor in charge of Tent D, Mom, Zero is embarrassed publicly by his pointed questions.  He smacks Mom with a shovel and runs away from the camp.  A few days later, Stanley decides to run away as well.  As fate would have it, he eventually finds Zero, and the two make their way across the desert toward God’s Thumb, an odd rock formation that turns out to be surrounded by wild onions, kept green by a welcome supply of water.  The two boys recuperate in the shade of the rock formation, surviving on water and onions, until they decide to sneak back to Camp Green. They plan to dig for treasure in the hole where Stanley had earlier found Kissing Kate Barlow’s lipstick container. They find a mysterious suitcase in the bottom of the hole, but are discovered by the Warden and Mom. Mrs. Mornego, the attorney that Stanley’s family had hired to help Stanley, accompanied by the Texas A.G., intercedes at the just the right moment and has the two boys released into her custody. The suitcase, belonging to Stanley’s great-great-grandfather, contained a treasure-trove of stock certificates.  The boys use part of the money to buy Stanley’s parents a house and to find an investigator to track down Hector’s missing mother.

Lucien’s thoughts –

This has been my favorite book we have had on our reading list thus far.  The writing is hilarious in its brilliant use of understatement, inference, and irony.  Even before we meet the characters, we are introduced to Camp Green Lake, a dry lakebed that once had a lake on it, but now is nothing but holes, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and yellow-spotted lizards. Sachar creates funny, rounded characters from the kids in the Tent D to the characters of the novel’s backstory: the original Stanley Yelnats, outlaw Kissing Kate Barlow, and Sam the onion man. It’s uplifting to see how much Stanley grows in character from the beginning of the novel to the end.  In addition, the novel cleverly intertwines the story of present-day Stanley with vignettes from the past; as the story of Stanley’s ancestors and the story of a teacher turned outlaw have profound consequences for the present day action. Sachar deftly interweaves the multiple narrative arcs into one cohesive story that was just nearly impossible to put down. I cannot recommend a book more strongly than I do this one.

Librarian’s use—

One of the topics that is central to the flashback story of Kate and Sam is the fact that he is an African-American and she is a white school-teacher.  In Texas, as in much of the South, it was illegal at that time for them to kiss.  Sam is chased and shot to death by a lynch mob, and the town Sheriff condones the mob’s actions.  The book provides a glimpse into a period in time when Jim Crow laws made it difficult for African-American in the South to lead their lives. This can be a window to a discussion of changes in the laws that allow people of different races to marry each other and how things have changed for the better. The librarian can tie this novel to other books about life in South under Jim Crow laws, selecting from appropriate biographies, non-fiction, and fiction books.

Other Reviews —

Wannamaker, A. (2006) Reading in the gaps and lacks: (De)Constructing Masculinity in Louis Sachar’s Holes. Children’s literature in education, 37 (1), 15-33.

Louis Sachar’s novel Holes (US, 1998; UK, 2000) has received much praise from both critics and child readers, who love the complex tall tale he has woven about two boys whose lives are connected by fate and an almost magical legacy of ancestral curses and obligations. Sachar creates characters and situations that seem realistic, but always teeter over to the side of the magical because they are wonderfully excessive and draw on common motifs from legends, folk tales, and popular culture... The novel does not easily fit into any one genre: while it is often classified as contemporary realism, it could also fit into the categories of fantasy or magical realism... This rich and complex novel – also on the border between children’s and young adult literature – has been awarded the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, the ALA Best Book for Young Adults award, the School Library Journal Best Bookof the Year award, and several other major awards.

Furthermore, at a time when educators, parents, and U.S. policy makers are becoming increasingly concerned about reports of boys’ declining levels of literacy, Holes could be seen as a useful book that can interest boys in reading: it is easy to read, the plot moves quickly, it is adventurous, and it features likeable boy protagonists.

Mollegaard, K. H (2010) Haunting and history in Louis Sachar’s Holes. Western American literature, 45 (2), 139-161.

Many landscapes of the US West, fictional as well as real, are haunted by specters of the past. Jacques Derrida noted in Specters of Marx (1994) that linear history cannot explain how the past saturates the present, nor can it explain how time seems to be out of joint when events from the past reemerge and provoke events in the present... Specters of the past are always part of the present, not merely as revivals of the past, but as crucial cultural and political factors that set in motion events in the present... Since Holes is one of the few books evoking Wild West mythology and frontier history recommended on current junior high/high school reading lists, anyone interested in the literature of the US West should consider how this novel simultaneously deconstructs and infuses the notoriously "empty" landscapes of the West with specters of racial violence, rebellious women, and Wild West legends.