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April and May Reading

 From Nija:


Hello All,
We will be discussing Sometimes Brave by Trista Wilson.  Trista will join us for our conversation. Meagan Harris is the facilitator for this meeting. 

Our May read is Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds. 




Sometimes Brave

by Trista Wilson

Monday, April 26, 2021
Facilitator:  Meaghan Harris
TimeL 3:30


Ten-year-old Hazel has always had an amazing imagination--a little too amazing her dad sometimes says--but even she can't pretend away the fact that her family has just become homeless, her best friend Jilly isn't speaking to her, and a tornado is on the way. Through friendship, family and the love of a sweet old dog, Hazel will discover there are many different kinds of brave.



Jason Reynolds


“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)


A Newbery Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Printz Honor Book

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award

An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction
Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner
An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017
Vulture Best YA Book of 2017
Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017


An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he?

As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator?

Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator.

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.




Comments

  1. Dolly Parker blogpost for Sometimes Brave by Trista Wilson
    This book brings an easily accessible entry into the difficulties associated with homelessness to younger readers, who might not be aware of the challenges that families face with losing their homes, while trying to maintain some semblance of order and normality to life. Despite the moratoriums on eviction this past year with the pandemic, many people, most poignantly those who reside in mobile home parks, have found themselves without shelters. The setting of Wichita, Kansas brings home that homelessness is not relegated to urban areas and that two-family households in Middle America are equally venerable to the vagaries of economics. Sometimes Brave is gentle homelessness, for there is focus on the strength that comes from community support in the form of food kitchens, housing resources and understanding neighbors. To further connect to young readers are the school friendships, frustrations and misunderstanding between Hazel and her friend Jilly. I found the book engaging, but wonder how relatable this type of homelessness would resonate for some urban students. The plot has an underlying optimism and strength that stems from a traditional family unit, one that has a car to sleep in. The text could be an entryway into deeper discussions that relate to our own population.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Susan Woodhams Blogpost for Sometimes Brave
    I agree with Dolly in that this book provides a doorway into the issues that face many families in our country, including unemployment, homelessness, and the stigmas that go along with these issues. I found the book engaging and easy to read. I especially liked the selflessness and bravery of Hazel. Her dedication to the dog shelter and helping homeless people and their pets added a positive spin to what could have been a heartbreaking story. I do wonder, however, if our students would be able to connect with these characters...many of our students are all too familiar with homelessness and unemployment as it is a daily issue along with food insecurity. I worry that the setting may be a bit hard for our students to connect with. In terms of its use in the classroom, I would definitely label this as a book for our lower-level readers in 7th grade.

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  3. (Long Way Down)
    I'll start with the positive - this book was immensely approachable, and I think the verse would work well for all ages 7-12. Also, while the poems are clearly part of a larger narrative, I think there are many that could stand on their own. Additionally I think the free form verse illustrates the fluidity and versatility of poetry - which would be awesome for our students to see. Also, I find that the subject matter (more on that later) very easy to incorporate into a Social Studies context.
    While acknowledging that I think the book is well written, the subject matter would be easy to incorporate into a Social Studies discussion, and there should be a strong emphasis on incorporating black voice into our curriculum - I am challenged with what I see as a relatively narrow vein of minority voice being incorporated into our curriculum. I don't want to see minority voice being pigeon holed in to some very limited/reductive tropes. I don't know if it's a chicken or an egg problem ... are minority authors being pigeon holed into discussing these narrow topics because that's the only way they'll get published, are those the only topics that an American audience will entertain, or are these the topics that minority authors are choosing to use as vehicles for their voices. I wonder what, if any other options are out there for us to consider with regard to minority authored subject matter.

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