From: Almagor, Lelac <LAlmagor>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 15:32:41 -0400

I teach a "Holocaust unit" to my fifth graders, connecting both to earlier conversations about utopian and dystopian ideas (A Wrinkle In Time) and to later conversations about individual responsibility and resistance (The Other Side of Truth.)

I do use Number The Stars, even though I know it's overexposed, even though its often transparent "teachability" bothers me, and even though the prose is not the greatest. It works for us partly *because* it doesn't really reflect the full horrors of the Holocaust. It gives my children -- who are after all only ten and eleven -- a way to imagine themselves as good within a world that is sometimes evil.

I think that fifth grade is old enough to contemplate that there is evil in the world, and even to contemplate that it might sometimes be attractive, but not necessarily to feel oneself implicated in it. Near the end, we discuss as a class whether the book accurately reflects the Holocaust; some students do feel that it's too mild, while others are genuinely disturbed by Peter's death.

I do use lots of supplementary materials for historical background before we start the book. But I think that its demands on the imagination are particularly age-appropriate. (Always open to more ideas for extra reading, though!)

Ms. Lelac Almagor Grade Five English Writing Center National Cathedral School for Girls www.ncsforgirls.org/lalmagor/ lalmagor at cathedral.org 202-537-2312
Received on Wed 19 Apr 2006 02:32:41 PM CDT