Literature and Life

LEAP is getting very excited about our upcoming summer program, Changing the World!  Many a sobbing teenager has equated her anguish with Juliet's or felt her parents were as unfeeling as Matilda's.  Our hope is to link literature to larger social issues, while encouraging the kids to take action and to feel that they can make a difference.

For example, the rising fourth graders will read The One and Only Ivan, a poetic Newbery Award winning novel about a noble gorilla who has been put on display at a run-down mall and flea market.  Ivan struggles to understand himself and the humans around him -- some helpful, some cruel -- using art to express his feelings and to champion the rights of little Ruby, the baby elephant who shares his fate.  As the children read and discuss the novel, they will be encouraged to consider one issue that the book raises for them.  It could be animal cruelty; it could be the role of art in social change; it could be issues of identity.  Once the kids agree on a topic, they will research the issue and develop a response.  They will then choose an audience (the local zoo? their peers?  their teachers?) and a medium (a letter?  a report?  a PowerPoint presentation?) appropriate to how they want to change the world.  Last, they will present that final product to the appropriate person(s).  This is literacy in action -- being moved by what you read, reading more to learn about an issue, writing to express a reasoned opinion and to communicate with others your plans, dreams, hopes.

Other literature we will be using include Nate the Great and Junie B. Jones for the younger children.  The oldest kids will be reading S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders, Judy Blume's Blubber and Walter Dean Myers' Scorpions.  (Maybe they will think about the gun violence that plagues our nation -- especially after the shootings on Mothers' Day in New Orleans!)

Stay tuned to this blog for updates on how the summer is going (the program runs from June 10 - July 12).  And please donate (there's a link above) to help us buy all these lovely books for the children.  We want every kid to go home with a piece of literature that she or he has read, and dog-earred, and loved!