[English] Text Selection 7 - 9

[Smith, David M]

I think this may be the same as my reply this time last year, but still relevant so here goes ...
 
Parvana - more than teen angst, very accesible on a personal drama level, the challenges of survivng under the Taliban without a male in the house, kids also respond well to the issues of repression, democracy vs theocracy, resilience, adaptability, etc.
 
Holes - not too deep, kids like it, an intriguing puzzle of three different stories spread across 200 years interacting and all coming together at the end.
 
Market Blues - a bit of teen angst, divorce, relationships, etc - sorry about that - but the travel through time, influencing your own destiny is not bad - good potential for studying the history of Melbourne and street kids at the start of the 20th century.
 
Hatchet - out of fashion now, but I still like it - resilience, persistence, adaptability.
 
Surfing Mr Petrovic - alright, it's all about teen angst, finding yourself, bullying and belonging but it's done well and easy to read - I like this one too
 
regards
 
David

________________________________

From: english-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of James Craig
Sent: Wed 13/08/2008 2:48 PM
To: english at edulists.com.au
Subject: [English] Text Selection 7 - 9



Hello,

Obviously this topic gets a fair working over in this forum, but we're 
at that juncture of the year where we are dissatisfied with our 
current text choices and have to spend the budget.  So, if you've come 
across any ...

Novels for 7 - 9.   We're a little tired of teen stories for 
entertainment masquerading as novels of ideas that are suitable for 
study.  How many texts on teen crushes, bullying, loneliness, 
isolation etc. can be written for kids? Great in the library, 
sometimes hard to get a satisfying angle on when teaching. As an 
example, we love The Boy In The Striped Pajamas.  Any thoughts?

Likewise short story collections?

Any inspiration would be greatly appreciated. By hell we need it!

Cheers!

James Craig

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