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The Works of Katherine Paterson
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From: Jonathan Hunt <jhunt24>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 15:02:30 PDT
Hello,
I teach fifth grade in the SF Bay Area. I've been lurking and reading the archives for about a month now and wanted to comment on a couple items before I move on to the works of Katherine Paterson.
First, I read a handful of Mildred Taylor novels last month after the discussion ended and just loved them. I'll definitely find a way to incorporate her work into my classroom this year. I've especially got my eye on Mississippi Bridge, with it's great illustrations that seem to tell a story by themselves, for an integrated language arts/social studies lesson.
And second, while there are a handful of juvenile fantasy series that I prefer to Harry Potter at this point (and nary a Diana Wynne Jones series among them), it is beyond me how anyone who works with both books and children can harbor ill feelings toward these books. I read the first one aloud to my class last October before the whole world jumped on the bandwagon and ordered several copies of the sequel from the UK and a couple more when the American edition came out. Seventeen of my 30 students read it, and to think that number could have been higher if only I could have supplied enough copies to meet demand! I know of no other book that has had this kind of effect on children.
And now on to Katherine Paterson . . .
Bridge to Terabithia is core literature for fifth graders in my district. I have taught it right out of the gate for two consecutive years, but will save it for later this year. Also, I missed her books as a child so reading Bridge in preparation to teach it was my first reading experience.
While I can appreciate Bridge to Terabithia, I really don't like it. I find the story slow and the characters unsympathetic. Morever, *I* never would have touched this book as a fifth grader. I realize I'm not so much criticizing the books as confessing my own personal preferences.
Student responses haven't been much better. The first year I expressed my true feelings about the book as we read it. Thinking that I had influenced them too much, I decided to keep quiet the second time around, but it didn't improve matters much. My colleague, who likes the book, typically has better student responses, but last year's students were uniformly unappreciative.
It took me awhile to give her another try. But later I read Lyddie and Jip which I absolutely loved, even though I think they require more patient and mature readers than most of my fifth graders are. I went on to read Flip Flop Girl, The Great Gilly Hopkins, and more recently, Preacher's Boy. I'm glad I got over my hang-ups with Bridge because I have turned into quite a fan.
I have one final comment about Gilly. While reading this book (I read it without reading the back cover first) I found myself asking: Is William Ernest another foster child or actually Trotter's birth son? And if it's the latter, where is the father? I found it interesting that Paterson withheld definitive comments on these until the middle of the novel. The ambiguity only served to make me think all the more about the story.
I look forward to reading other comments about Katherine Paterson and her work.
Jonathan :-)
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Received on Tue 17 Aug 1999 05:02:30 PM CDT
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 15:02:30 PDT
Hello,
I teach fifth grade in the SF Bay Area. I've been lurking and reading the archives for about a month now and wanted to comment on a couple items before I move on to the works of Katherine Paterson.
First, I read a handful of Mildred Taylor novels last month after the discussion ended and just loved them. I'll definitely find a way to incorporate her work into my classroom this year. I've especially got my eye on Mississippi Bridge, with it's great illustrations that seem to tell a story by themselves, for an integrated language arts/social studies lesson.
And second, while there are a handful of juvenile fantasy series that I prefer to Harry Potter at this point (and nary a Diana Wynne Jones series among them), it is beyond me how anyone who works with both books and children can harbor ill feelings toward these books. I read the first one aloud to my class last October before the whole world jumped on the bandwagon and ordered several copies of the sequel from the UK and a couple more when the American edition came out. Seventeen of my 30 students read it, and to think that number could have been higher if only I could have supplied enough copies to meet demand! I know of no other book that has had this kind of effect on children.
And now on to Katherine Paterson . . .
Bridge to Terabithia is core literature for fifth graders in my district. I have taught it right out of the gate for two consecutive years, but will save it for later this year. Also, I missed her books as a child so reading Bridge in preparation to teach it was my first reading experience.
While I can appreciate Bridge to Terabithia, I really don't like it. I find the story slow and the characters unsympathetic. Morever, *I* never would have touched this book as a fifth grader. I realize I'm not so much criticizing the books as confessing my own personal preferences.
Student responses haven't been much better. The first year I expressed my true feelings about the book as we read it. Thinking that I had influenced them too much, I decided to keep quiet the second time around, but it didn't improve matters much. My colleague, who likes the book, typically has better student responses, but last year's students were uniformly unappreciative.
It took me awhile to give her another try. But later I read Lyddie and Jip which I absolutely loved, even though I think they require more patient and mature readers than most of my fifth graders are. I went on to read Flip Flop Girl, The Great Gilly Hopkins, and more recently, Preacher's Boy. I'm glad I got over my hang-ups with Bridge because I have turned into quite a fan.
I have one final comment about Gilly. While reading this book (I read it without reading the back cover first) I found myself asking: Is William Ernest another foster child or actually Trotter's birth son? And if it's the latter, where is the father? I found it interesting that Paterson withheld definitive comments on these until the middle of the novel. The ambiguity only served to make me think all the more about the story.
I look forward to reading other comments about Katherine Paterson and her work.
Jonathan :-)
_______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com
Received on Tue 17 Aug 1999 05:02:30 PM CDT
