Smoky Night

Bunting, Eve. (1994). Smoky Night. 

This is a story about cats -- and people -- who couldn't get along until a smoky and fearful night brings them together.

The Los Angeles riots made author Eve Bunting wonder about what riots meant to the children who live through them -- and what we can all learn from such upheavals. She has written more than 100 books for children and young adults, including Night Tree and Summer Wheels, and many deal thoughtfully with difficult issues.

Smoky Night was the winner of the 1995 Caldecott Medal; an American Library Association Notable Children's Book; a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year; and a Parent's Choice Award.

This book is fantastic for its illustrations. They paint the words on each page. I really like this book for imagery. Simply reading the book out loud but not showing the pictures to the kids, but allowing them time to make their own pictures. Then they can compare it to the illustrations. I like that idea for a way to implement this book. 

Night

Wiesel, E., (2006). Night. New York: Hill and Wang. 

A story of a Jewish teenager, Eliezer, who lives in Hungarian Transylvania.  He studies the Torah and his education is cut short when his teacher Mosche the Beadle is deported.  He returns and tells everyone about the horrid things he’d seen, noone believes him and label him insane.  At the time, 1944 the Nazis occupy Hungary and a mass amount of measures are taken against the Jews of Eliezer’s town and forced into small ghettos.  They are then deported from the ghettos into the deathcamp Auschwitz.  The book shows the truth about the death camps and how they were stripped, shaved, disinfected and treated with unimaginable cruelty.  The main character is forced to endure not only harsh treatment from the Gstapo as well as the fellow Jews who turn to self-survival mode rather than the betterment of the group.  Eliezer and his father help one another until his unfortunate death to abuse from the Gstapo until Eliezer is liberated by Americans.


This book is eye opening and scary to most. It gives a perspective not seen in textbooks. I would love to use it in a social studies classroom as a way to paint the picture of the Holocaust to the students. It's also a good way to teach historical non-fiction to students. It defines that genre. 

To Kill A Mockingbird

Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: HarperCollins, 1960. Print. ISBN: 0-446-31078-6 

The story takes place during three years of the Great Depression in the fictional "tired old town" of Maycomb, Alabama. The narrator, six-year-old Scout Finch, lives with her older brother Jem and their widowed father Atticus, a middle-aged lawyer. Jem and Scout befriend a boy named Dill who visits Maycomb to stay with his aunt for the summer. The three children are terrified of, and fascinated by, their neighbor, the reclusive "Boo" Radley. The adults of Maycomb are hesitant to talk about Boo and, for many years, few have seen him. The children feed each other's imagination with rumors about his appearance and reasons for remaining hidden, and they fantasize about how to get him out of his house. Following two summers of friendship with Dill, Scout and Jem find that someone is leaving them small gifts in a tree outside the Radley place. Several times, the mysterious Boo makes gestures of affection to the children, but, to their disappointment, never appears in person.
Atticus is appointed by the court to defend a black man named Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white woman. Although many of Maycomb's citizens disapprove, Atticus agrees to defend Tom to the best of his ability. Other children taunt Jem and Scout for Atticus' actions, calling him a "nigger-lover". Scout is tempted to stand up for her father's honor by fighting, even though he has told her not to. For his part, Atticus faces a group of men intent on lynching Tom. This danger is averted when Scout, Jem, and Dill shame the mob into dispersing by forcing them to view the situation from Atticus' and Tom's points of view.
Because Atticus does not want them to be present at Tom Robinson's trial, Scout, Jem, and Dill watch in secret from the colored balcony. Atticus establishes that the accusers—Mayella and her father, Bob Ewell, the town drunk—are lying. It also becomes clear that the friendless Mayella was making sexual advances towards Tom and her father caught her in the act. Despite significant evidence of Tom's innocence, the jury convicts him. Jem's faith in justice is badly shaken, as is Atticus', when a hopeless Tom is shot and killed while trying to escape from prison.
Humiliated by the trial, Bob Ewell vows revenge. He spits in Atticus' face on the street, tries to break into the presiding judge's house, and menaces Tom Robinson's widow. Finally, he attacks the defenseless Jem and Scout as they walk home from the school Halloween pageant. Jem's arm is broken in the struggle, but amid the confusion, someone comes to the children's rescue. The mysterious man carries Jem home, where Scout realizes that he is the reclusive Boo Radley.
Maycomb's sheriff arrives and discovers that Bob Ewell has been killed in the struggle. The sheriff argues with Atticus about the prudence and ethics of holding Jem or Boo responsible. Atticus eventually accepts the sheriff's story that Ewell simply fell on his own knife. Boo asks Scout to walk him home, and after she says goodbye to him at his front door, he disappears again. While standing on the Radley porch, Scout imagines life from Boo's perspective and regrets that they never repaid him for the gifts he had given them.

When You Reach Me

Stead, Rebecca. (2009). When You Reach Me. New York: Wendy Lamb Books. 197 pp. ISBN: 978-0-385-90664-7. 

This was the winner of the 2010 John Newbery book. Miranda is a very independent sixth grader in New York City. She knows her way around her neighborhood and takes care of herself most of the time until her mother gets home from work. Miranda and Sal have been best friends ever since they were little. However, one day Sal got punched by Marcus, for what seems like no reason. He shuts Miranda out of his life after this incident. Miranda begins to find mysterious notes that talk about things that haven’t even happened yet. Miranda is puzzled by these notes and what they mean. Miranda becomes closer with Colin and Annemarie and is constantly having conflicts with Julia, Annemarie’s friend. All the characters and the story are tied together by a strange man who was writing the notes. There are many issues throughout this book involving race, ethnicity, social economic status, and many others.  This is a great story about friendship, conflict, and finding one’s self  in a middle school setting, where that can sometimes be a difficult endeavor. This book is a good read for junior high students who are somewhat advanced in their reading level. It can become a bit confusing when A Wrinkle in Time is referenced and it is sort of hard to follow. 


I like this book to be used as a classroom read. It has good potential for making predictions and character analysis. It's not controversial or edgy. Those seem to be good criteria for a classroom read. I would not use it as in class time. It is a good book for them to experience alone and discuss in groups. Any strategies for Beers text would be cool to use with this book. 

The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela

Shulevitz, Uri. (2005). The Travels of Benjamim on Tudela. USA: Berryville Graphics. ISBN: 0-374-37754-5

Benjamin, a Spanish Jew, left his native town of Tudela in 1159 to embark on a 14-year journey across the Middle East. His Book of Travels, written in Hebrew, recounts his grueling, often-dangerous journey through what is modern-day France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Egypt. Encounters with warring Crusaders and Muslims, rapacious pirates, and bandits added to his hardships. Shulevitz re-creates this epic journey in a picture book of epic proportions, adapting Benjamin's account into a detailed, first-person narrative, accompanied by large, ambitious illustrations that evoke the landscapes, people, architecture, and history of the places that Benjamin saw. Darker, freer, and more impressionistic than Shulevitz's familiar work, the art is often indebted to medieval manuscript painting and Persian miniatures. Meticulously researched, with a long bibliography, lengthy author's note, and brief insets containing information that complements Benjamin's descriptions, this oversize picture book is obviously a labor of love. Wherever he went, Benjamin visited Jewish communities. Shulevitz's retelling stands as a testimony to the history, wisdom, and fortitude of those medieval Jews living precariously under Christian or Muslim rule. Both art and text will help readers imagine life during that time and, perhaps, provide a context for the contemporary turmoil in the lands Benjamin visited so long ago.–Margaret A. Chang, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 

This book is good for its writing. I was impressed with how well it was done for being a children book.  It is also a unique look at  culture not many know about.

Tree of Cranes

Say, Allen. (1991). Tree of Cranes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. 32 pp. ISBN: 0-395-52024-X

Heedless of Mama's warnings, a Japanese boy cannot resist playing at an ice-cold pond "filled with carp of bright colors." When he comes home, he is immediately treated for a cold, with a hot bath and rice gruel. His mother's attitude chills him more than the weather, though; he cannot understand why she seems to be ignoring him. Hearing a noise in the garden, the boy spies Mama digging up the pine tree that was planted when he was born. She brings it inside and decorates it with paper cranes and candles. It is a Christmas tree, the first for the boy, and the first in many years for his mother, who tells her son she comes from "a warm place called Ca-li-for-ni-a." The story is a poignant one, illuminated with finely drawn illustrations reflecting the serenity of a Japanese home and the quiet love between mother and son. Say ( The Bicycle Man ; El Chino ), who came to this country from Japan when he was a teenager, again exhibits a laudable sensitivity to Eastern and Western cultures--and to both the differences and the similarities between them. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. 

Allen Say is wonderful for introducing the Japanese culture to students. It can be taken several different ways, whether it's teaching the culture or teaching ethnocentrism. 

Home of the Brave

Say, Allen. (2002). Home of the Brave. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. 32pp. ISBN: 0-618-21223-X

During World War II, more than 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent living in America were incarcerated in internment camps by the United States government. Now, sixty years later, Caldecott medalist Allen Say eloquently depicts this dark moment in history with Home of the Brave. This timely and provocative book is the story of one man's confrontation of his own family's imprisonment in these remote and inhospitable sites. Say's paintings capture the bewilderment of the young man on a surreal journey and the desolation and loneliness of the children residing in the camps. His prose is haunting and provokes the reader to reflect on what these camps mean in the scope of American history. 
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/authors/allensay/

As a potential social studies teacher, I see this book as a great way to introduce a unit on concentration camps. It could be used either at the beginning or end of a unit. It is relatively abstract so it may require some prior knowledge to understand. 

Tea with Milk by Allen Say

Say, Allen. (1999). Tea with Milk. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 32 pp.

Tea with Milk is the story of a teenage girl's transition from American culture to Japanese, her family's native land. She must adjust to the physical changes regarding clothing and etiquette. But she must also adjust to society's expectation of her as a woman. She wants to drive, work, and find her own husband. This book gives a solid insight to Japanese culture and gives us a clear comparison with the American culture.

This would be a great read aloud to introduce a unit based around culture.