Book Talk 2- Walk Two Moons

Walk two moons is a story about a 13 year old girl, Sal, who loses her mother in a car accident a year ago and so it’s just her and her dad.  In the story she is on a road trip with her grandparents and they are on their way to visit the grave of Sal’s mother.  On the way Sal and her grandparents exchange stories.  Sal talks about her friend Phoebe, who has family issues of her own.  Sal and Phoebe are best friends and get involved in each other’s stories a great deal.  Walk Two Moons is narrated by Sal who is speaking about what has happened for the last few months.   Her grandparents are also telling her stories about their heritage which Sal is very proud of.  Through Sal’s stories and flashbacks and her grandparents’ stories there are parallels that seem to the link the narratives together.  Sal reflects as she is speaking throughout the story and begins to realize that events and people in her life begin to take on a different meaning for her. 

I think this was a great story over all.  This book would be great for a middle school student, specifically a girl, because Sal deals with issues a real teenage girl does.  She learns her perceptions are not always right and that she is not the only child that has family drama or has suffered loss.  This book also shows that reflection is an important thing to do because it forces you to think and deal with issues that come into your life.   I feel that because of the way Walk Two Moons was written there are many minor lessons in this story that students would be able to apply in their own lives. 

 

Book Talk #1- Sounder

Book Talk #1- Sounder

            Sounders takes place in the 19^th century, but I think it specifically takes place at the beginning of the 19^th century before the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression because the family in the story is a poor and hungry, African American, sharecropper, southern family.  Sharecropping was one of the few agricultural jobs a black man could have after the Reconstruction Era of the Civil War.  The story itself is about the relationship between the boy and his father and the father’s dog named Sounder.  The story is told in 3^rd person mostly from the perspective of the boy and he seems very melancholy and serious.  You can tell in the story that the boy is not educated and is not literate and that is something that he wants to change. 

            The beginning of Sounder talks about the how hard life is for the family.  They are so poor they just eat biscuits and gravy for breakfast, which is cheap to fix.  Life was very hard for them but then life gets harder when the dad is arrested and convicted of stealing.  On the night the father was arrested by the local Sheriff and deputies, the dog, Sounder, tries to help the father but was shot by one of the deputies and ran away.  After losing his father and dog the boy goes to look for the Sounder but doesn’t find him. 

            The boy goes to see his father while he is in jail but the visit didn’t go the way the boy had hoped and his father told him not to come back.  While the father is in jail and working in a camp, the boy and mother take care of the dog and the boy befriends a teacher who takes him under his wing and teaches him to read.  A year later the father comes home.  The father is badly burned and deformed from an accident in the camp.  The family was finally reunited.  One night the father and Sounder go hunting and the family is torn apart once again by an accident.     

            Something that I found interesting was that Sounder was the only character that was given a name especially since the story was mostly told from the boy’s point of view.  I also noticed the boy grows up in the story.  He goes from being a timid uneducated boy to being an educated young man in a rather short period of time.  He loses a sense of innocence because he not only has to live without his father, and the dog temporarily, he goes and visits his father in jail which is something children have to do currently. But he over comes these challenges in life and at the same time he learns to read which is something he really wanted to do.  So even though the boy doesn’t have a name, his character becomes a bigger part of the story as he matures. 

            I think this would be a good book for students to read in a Social Studies class when you are talking about life of American families at the turn of the century.  You can compare life of African Americans, Native Americans and white men and women and see how they lived differently.  This book shows the transition between Reconstruction and the Great Depression in terms of African Americans.  Sounder is a quick read which will help to keep students motivated, but this would be appropriate for a 5^th – 7^th grade student.