If you dig a hole to China…..

So my new school gave me this book to read!  It is great.  It is a journal/comic format written for middle school students and I will be teaching it to my students at the opening of the year.  I have made a reading guide with skills and activities, so if you want it let me know!

Want a book to demonstrate the concept of teaching adolescents to look within themselves to find strength and courage?  How about a book that teaches humans to not judge people based on what their outer shell looks like?  This is the book for you.

I read this with my 6th graders at the beginning of this year and they loved it.  It is a captivating story that explores family dynamics, overcoming internal and external conflict, and learning to stand up for what you believe in, even when the ones you may be up against are your closest friends and family.

In this memoir, Ji-li, describes what her life was like while growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution.

Written for middle and high school audiences, this book captivated my 6th graders (high readers, 10th/11th grade level) as they explored Ji-li’s “black” past and the discrimination she faced during the 1960s because of her family’s occupational and political history.

There are tons of resources on the web for you to use with this book.  Don’t expect the kids to just pick it up and enjoy it.  I had to do tons of building prior knowledge and vocabulary work, but once they were into the plot and conflict, they couldn’t put it down!  We read several chapters together and had lots of discussion.  I had to do lots of research for myself too, as I didn’t know anything about the Cultural Revolution.  This is a great way to talk about various forms of government and the pros/cons of each too.

I found this book while browsing the shelves of Barnes and Noble in NYC during my Thanksgiving holiday. I bought it, began reading on the subway, and couldn’t put it down! I finished it in 3 days.

The premise of the book is that a journalist from Norway meets a bookseller in Kabul. This man , Sultan Khan, values books so much, but the Taliban has taken over the country and no literature of Afghanistan’s past is allowed to be viewed by the people. He stashes 10,000 volumes all over the city in attics and continues to make literature and sell literature to keep Afghanistan’s history alive.

The journalist, the author, comes across one of his books and meets him for an interview. He invites her into his home and she lives as an Afghani, muslim woman for 3 months, complete with a burka. Her research is the result of this non-fiction book based on this family’s life. Sultan’s family becomes so comfortable with her presence that she accompanies one of Sultan’s sons on a religious pilgrimage and witnesses another buy sex from a beggar girl-then offer her to his brother. This is only one of many equally shocking stories Seierstad uncovers. In another, an adulteress is suffocated by her three brothers as ordered by their mother.

Discussion questions can be found at the back of the book. This book would make a great book club pick! It would be a great book for high schoolers as well.

This was one of the best juvenile fiction books I’ve read in a long, long time. It made me wish I was teaching high school so I could discuss the mature content with a mature audience.

It’s not going to make you feel good. It’s about child prostitution in India and how lack of education leads to this growing problem in the rural areas of the country. It is written from the child’s point of view in letter format.

Great read! This book will make you think about your life and the life of your children and the distinct contrast to our lives with that of those in third world countries.

I have the discussion guide to go along with the book if anyone is looking for support materials.