Literature Circles
What is your role this week? Are you a facilitator? A word detective? A bridge builder? These are just some of the many roles involved with literature circles. Twice a week, members meet to discuss the novel of which they are reading and to give a brief report.
Students are reading many historical fiction novels that coincide with our unit on Anne Frank. The selected titles are : Number of the Stars, written by Lois Lowry, Briar Rose, by Jane Yolen, The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss and both Night and The Accident written by Elie Weisel, and many more.
Below find a brief synposis of each novel:
Number
of the Stars-Ten year old Annemarie Johansen
and her best friend Ellen Rosen think about what life before the war. Ellen
is Jewish and moves in with the Johansen, pretending to be a member of their
family. Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission. What do you think this
mission involves? Read the novel to find out.
Briar
Rose is about this twenty-three year old woman who makes a promise to her dying
grandmother, and is puzzled by her grandmother's last words.' I am Briar Rose...'
Could this statement be connected to her grandmother's favorite fairy tale,
Briar Rose/Sleeping Beauty? Then Rebecca and her family find a mysterious box,
hidden away for years, that belonged to her grandmother. The contents of the
box make Rebecca wonder if her grandmother's dying words have truth in them...
This novel is both dramatic, and historical as well, with a twist of suspense.
I enjoyed this book very much, and I think that you will too.
A Dutch Jewish girl
describes the two-and-one-half years she spent in hiding in the upstairs bedroom
of a farmer's house during World War II. It is a wonderful
account of a young girl and her sister in hiding during WW2. It goes through
all their adventures and troubles, and the best part is that the whole thing
is true. Johanna Reiss also wrote a sequel, The Journey Back.
A terrifying account
of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized
witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death
of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary Of Anne Frank,
Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it
the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.
This
is the story of a woman who spent about seven months in Auschwitz and survived
to tell the tale. She wrote this book shortly after her ordeal, while her horrific
experience was still fresh in her mind. It was definitely a mind numbing, life
changing experience, as it saw the loss of her entire family, her parents, her
children, and her husband. It should be noted that none of them, including Olga,
were Jews.
Grade
4-8-- Daniel, 14 in 1941, describes first his family's sense of belonging in
Germany and their refusal to flee their country despite the initial instances
of anti-Semitism they experience. By the time the family is ready to acknowledge
the seriousness of their situation, no country is willing to accept them. They
are first deported from Frankfurt to the Lodz ghetto in Poland; from Lodz they
are sent to Auschwitz, and finally, Daniel and his father are marched to Buchenwald.
They are the only two members of the family who survive, and are liberated by
the Americans. Daniel tells his story through the "pictures" he has;
at first real photographs, and then the images in his head. He is a courageous,
sensitive, heroic individual who personalizes the events of the Holocaust. His
voice rings true; he is portrayed as an extraordinary youth, but these were
times that demanded an exceptional response to increase the likelihood of survival.
--Susan Kaminow, Arlington County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Born
in 1943 in the Westerbork concentration camp in Holland, Boas here brilliantly
unfolds the history of the Holocaust through poignant excerpts from five teenagers'
wartime diaries, enhanced with skillful commentary. Predictably, Anne Frank
turns up, in the final section, but, as Boas points out, "alongside the
other four diaries, Anne's looks different than when you read it by itself as
the sole voice of the Holocaust." By the time readers encounter Anne Frank,
they will have met Jewish teenagers trapped in equally tragic but even more
violent circumstances in various parts of Europe, from a small Polish village
to the Vilna ghetto to Brussels and Hungary. The young writers relay their hopes
and fears even as they chronicle the disintegration of their daily lives. One
is religious, another politically active, others wrapped up in their families-Boas
points out each writer's sensitivities as he explains the terrible traps into
which the individual teenagers fall. In exploring their fates, he impresses
upon the reader their vitality, and, by extension, implies the enormity of the
Holocaust's losses. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc
