Montana Settings/Montana Authors

Driven to desperation after losing his job at the little airport in Muddy Springs, Texas, and wanting to help his family which is precariously perched on the edge of poverty, seventeen year old Moss Trawnley sets out to find his pa who abandoned the family and is supposedly working on the Fort Peck Dam project in Montana.  So begins Hitch, a historical fiction novel by Montana author Jeanette Ingold.

Initially, Moss hitches a ride on the rails and finds his pa, but disappointed at what his father has become and determined to survive the Depression, Moss moves on, taking his vagrant father along.  When the railroad bulls catch them, they are jailed for illegal trespass and theft of transportation.  With orders to leave his jurisdiction, the justice of the peace gives Moss a newspaper clipping about the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and even though Pa sees that as welfare, Moss betrays his father’s wishes and signs up for a six month hitch.  He ends up at Fort Missoula for training and then in Monroe, Montana.

The camp becomes a testing grounds to strengthen and toughen young men who learn through hard work that those who “have to do everything their own way are a danger to everybody” (12), and “when one thing doesn’t work out, you find another” (29).  Here, Moss learns leadership and meets some good men, but he also encounters corruption and abuse of power in the likes of Compton and Hakes.  Although many times he wants to walk away from the hassle and the turmoil, Moss doesn’t want to abandon his responsibility; he doesn’t want to simply surrender when things go awry.  Moss realizes if he sets his mind to something, if people pull together, accomplishments accrue: “The Depression got to be too much for us and our families to stand up to alone.  Then we came here [to the CCC] and saw how, by working together, we’ve got the power to change things” (252).

This book provides a glimpse into the hardship of the Depression and outlines the goals and achievements of the CCC, which built ponds and parks, fire lookouts, scenic overlooks, and picnic grounds.  It also restored grazing land and assisted farmers with range management and soil conservation methods.  Agriculture scientists taught landowners about “strip farming, contour plowing, and regular rotation of soil-depleting crops with soil-maintaining and soil building ones” (198) so that they would stop wearing out the land and start improving it.  With all of its projects, the CCC left a legacy for this country, their work a memorial to man’s muscle power and ingenuity. 

Since that post was relatively short, I offer this second one:

Double Eagle by Sneed Collard, III is a great book for a webquest.  It provides opportunity to learn geography (locate Dauphin Island—called Shipwreck Island in the book—and Mobile Bay), history (investigate the roles of Fort Gaines—called Fort Henry in the book, Fort Morgan, and the blockade runners in the defense of Mobile Bay during the Civil War), and the value of primary documents in research.  In particular, the book celebrates the role diaries play(ed) in constructing stories about the past.  The book also piques curiosity about invertebrate zoology, hurricanes, and coin collecting, with facts about coin features and mint marks (wheaties, silver Mercury dimes, Franklin halves, buffalo nickels, and double eagles), the New Orleans Mint, Victor D. Brenner, and the Red Book for verifying a coin’s value.

            The book serves another purpose, illustrating how place impacts knowledge.  Kyle Daniels, a 15 year old boy from the south who lives with the residual effects of the past, knows the history of the Civil War; whereas, Mike Gilbert, a fourteen year old from California, doesn’t share that knowledge base (“If you ain’t from the Confederacy, you’re a Yankee, believe me,” Kyle says on page 47).  In conversation, the two boys further illustrate parochial notions that circulate: “I thought everyone from California surfed.”  “And I thought everyone from Alabama made moonshine whiskey.”  From the two characters, readers can begin their own myth-busting.

Besides the opportunities for such scholarly and social knowledge, the book additionally shares insight for teens who cope with divorced parents playing the “divorce shuffle” or with the ravages of war in post traumatic stress syndrome.  This psychological angle adds to the book’s interest level, since all of us deal with anxieties as we work out relationships.

Science Fiction

Uglies  by Scott Westerfeld is the first book in a trilogy about a world in which everyone has an operation when they turn sixteen, making them ultra-beautiful.  Fifteen year old Tally Youngblood, a notorious prankster, eagerly awaits the birthday that will make her eligible for the transformational plastic surgery, a rite of passage to the world of Pretties. 

            Although she yearns to be pretty, when her best friend Shay runs away to the rumored rebel settlement called The Smoke, Tally has second thoughts.  After a series of events, Tally learns the sinister secrets behind becoming pretty, falls in love, and now must escape the authorities. 

            In this futuristic world, contemporary society is portrayed as hopelessly backward—The Rusties, while the glamorous future moves at hyper-pace on hover-boards.  These action packed scenes combine the antics of skateboarding and surfing to create suspense.  And the cliff-hanger ending entices us to read the next in the series.

Teaching Ideas

            Appropriate for ages twelve and up, Westerfeld’s book explores the question: Can we perfect society by taking away the “pretty people factor” that separates us and gives rise to so much discrimination?  Literature circles can also explore other provocative questions about where young people get their images of ideal physical attractiveness and why beauty is such a pervasive social concern.  In addition, they can consider how more and more teenagers are receiving or requesting plastic surgery as birthday or graduation gifts.  One startling statistic reports that more money is spent on breast implants and Viagra than on Alzheimer’s research.  In fact, the book invites discussion about several real life issues that play out in these pages.  Although I penned 22 of these, I share just a half dozen:

Talking Points for Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

1.  While talking to Tally about creating morphos, Shay says, “This whole game is just designed to make us hate ourselves” (44).  Consider the practices of current media—fashion magazines, television shows like The Bachelor or What Not to Wear, the Miss America Pageant, body building advertisements and publications, Barbie dolls, etc. . . .  Are any of these designed to make us hate our body images?  Find an example of an advertisement or other media image that targets body image or forces us to focus on our flaws.

2.  On page 50 and again on page 97, the operation is described, and Tally comments: “It did seem like a lot to go through just to look a certain way” (97).  How much time do you spend in the mornings to “look a certain way”?  Have you ever considered cosmetic surgery, body building, steroids, or other options for improving your performance or appearance?  How much might you consider going through to “look a certain way”?

3.  Many of us look longingly at the lifestyles of the rich and famous.  For them, too, the rules seem to be “Act Stupid, Have Fun, and Make Noise” (12).  Why do many people desire this “life of beauty, glamour, and elegance” (98)?  According to Tally, the answer is “when you’re pretty, people pay more attention” (93) and “put up with your annoying habits” (402).  She also draws a parallel between beauty and confidence.  Do you agree/disagree with these conclusions?

4.  Using the example of the white tiger orchid, Westerfeld suggests that sometimes science allows us to “[succeed] a little too well” (181).  Think of a situation where that seems true.  How does Westerfeld seem to feel about science “messing with genes”?

5.  The white tiger orchid is “one of the most beautiful plants in the world” that “turned into the ultimate weed.  What we call a monoculture” (181).  How is this “biological zero” effect similar to the pretty culture?  Are they “victims of their own success. . . , so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening but [choking] everything around them” (182-183)?

6.  While creating morpho images (44-45) and again in the library in the Smoke while looking at magazines (197-200), Tally and Shay discuss the rationale for the operation: erasing deformities, eliminating imperfections, reversing the signs of aging, ending eating disorders, providing impervious teeth, perfect vision, and disease resistance.  “It’s the only way to make people equal.”  Do you agree that there would be “no more controversies, no disagreements, no people demanding change” if we just created “masses of smiling pretties” (267)?  What parts of this culture seem attractive?

Westerfeld’s book certainly invites us to exercise wisdom: “If only people were smarter, evolved enough to treat everyone the same even if they looked different” (97). 

Historical Fiction

In A Soldier’s Heart, Gary Paulsen writes, even though “war is always, in all ways, appalling, [because] lives are stopped in youth, worlds are ended, and even for those who survive. . . , the mental damage done is often permanent” (xiii), we still persist in such violence. 

Perhaps the violence is all unreal unless you’ve served and seen first hand the carnage.  After all, the songs and slogans and parades paint war with patriotic color.  For a boy wishing to prove himself a man, the temptation is often irresistible, as it is for fifteen year old Charley who has a strong desire to fight with the Union Army during the Civil War, to accept his chance to be a man.  His naiveté is so thick he tells his mother, “I won’t get into any trouble, Ma” (4).  He doesn’t then know that war is as ugly as his father’s death, being “kicked to death by a horse gone mad when a swarm of bees landed on it” (5).

Even in boot camp, the affair feels like “a lot of play acting” (8) for Charley, since all the soldiers do is “drill and sweat and listen to sergeants and corporals bellow” (10).  Former students of mine have used similar lines to describe the boot camps of today, so I trust that not much has changed on this front.  And the lure of never beens is still strong.  Just as Charley has never been on a train ride, never ridden on a steam boat, never seen Wisconsin, never marched in a parade before, many contemporary young men and women are lured by possibility—to travel, serve their country, enjoy a soldier’s honor (“one of the few, the proud”), or earn money for college.  The slogans sell with invitations like “Aim High” or “Be all you can be” and promises that “It’s not just a job. It’s an adventure!” 

Charley is also lured by the desire to “stop the law breakers and wrong thinkers” (15), to teach them a lesson.  Today the words might differ, but the message is the same. 

In reading Charley’s story, I marveled at Paulsen’s stylistic choices.  At the end of Chapter Three, Charley has fallen asleep on a lulling train ride.  Without warning or transition, Chapter Four thrusts us in the midst of the Battle at Bull Run: “Bullets filled the air.  Charley heard them going past his ears like horizontal hail and he decided to lie down.  If he didn’t lie down, he would be hit, ripped, torn to pieces” (24).  Paulsen’s strong verbs and vivid participles intensify and give detail to the scene and its action.  Along with Charley, the reader implores God: “How can you let this happen?” (25).  With his style, Paulsen imitates the war—the waiting, the fear, the inactivity that so abruptly turns to fighting and then to death: the bloated bodies, clouds of flies, and sweet, cloying smells of decaying flesh.  Just like the staccato of gunfire, Paulsen’s sentences clip and declare and then stumble one upon another, like bodies falling—a stroke of syntactic genius.

After his first battle, Charley heaves “until he felt his very soul would leave him” (26).  The world is absent of beauty.  Morbidity even enters the hospital area, where they use bodies of the dead like bricks to build a wall against the wind and the cold.  There are other constants, too:  “There is always fear and always a meadow” (76).

Knowing he must kill or be killed, during his second battle, Charley encounters a savage rage that transforms him into an animal: “He would have been shocked to see himself.  His lips were drawn back showing his teeth, and his face was contorted by a savage rage.  He wanted to kill them. . . . All of them.  Stick and jab and shoot them and murder them and kill them all. . . . He was out of himself, beside himself, an animal” (50-51).  Yet, he did not want to kill the horses; the horses were work animals and did not seek to harm him.  Oh, the compassion that floats amid such muck.

                Paulsen is relentless in his battle scene portrayals: “After that there was no order, no sense, no plan.  Charley became a madman.  He attacked anything and everything that came into his range—slashing, clubbing, hammering, jabbing, cutting,--and always screaming, screaming in fear, in anger and finally in a kind of rabid, insane joy, the joy of battle, the joy of winning, the joy of killing to live” (84).

            When the “butchery” is done, the reader is not only surprised that Charley is alive but that he can still remember “all the sweet things” (97), that beauty can exist for him at all again: “Waving pretty girls, Southern summer mornings, cheering children, dew on a leaf” (97).

Teaching Ideas

Although I consider this book appropriate to the middle school level, the teacher will need to caution students that some of the scenes are quite graphic, the violence horrific, and the images of dead bodies numerous and revolting.

1)     Reread pages 79-80.  How does Paulsen make the scene come to life? 

2)    Paulsen is a master with the absolute phrase and with parallel structure: “He stood with the rifle hanging at his side, his bayonet bent at the tip, the stock shattered, his arms weak, his legs soft, his hest heaving as he sucked air, his throat rasping” (84-85).  Write a sentence of your own that imitates Paulsen’s style.

3)    Examine some military slogans; what do you think of them?  What are their purpose?  How do they work?

4)    What does it mean to have a “soldier’s heart”?

5)     Read the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen.  While Owen’s poem is about World War I, not the Civil War, how is it similar to Paulsen’s theme?

6)    Read Patricia Polacco’s children’s book about the Civil War, Pink and Say.  How is it similar to Paulsen’s story; how is it different?  Do you think children should read books about war?  Why/why not?

Mystery/Sports/Adventure/Survival

Living in Kiowa, California, John Rodgers has grown up loving the giant redwood trees and running to the sound of Thompson’s Creek and the “gossiping of the leaves with the breeze” (9).  But all is not paradise in the Rodgers’ neighborhood.  John struggles to gain acceptance from his father; their differing views and clashing personalities keep the relationship strained.  Just as John struggles to get beyond “second best” in his dad’s favor, he struggles to out pace his track nemesis Tom Kellogg.   Time is also running out for Dad, who is dying of leukemia. 

            John recalls his childhood: “My father had been the volcano in the family, while my mother had hovered gently in the background, cooking dinners and applying Band-Aids and keeping everything running smoothly” (77).  John now wonders whether Mom’s docility is connected to depression or to being suffocated.   Many young readers will probably relate to John’s description of a strained relationship with his dad and his striving to define love: “Surely a son’s love for his father should be a great and ongoing passion—a thing it didn’t take the presence of death to summon out of hiding” (80).

            While trying to out-run his confusion, John falls and discovers an unusually-camouflaged chrysalis on property which belongs to the local mill owners.  He harvests the pupae to hatch in his terrarium at home, and the butterfly, which turns out to be a rare evolutionary link between butterflies and moths, transforms the town. 

            During their metamorphosis, John discovers, “pacifism is a beautiful thing in principle.  I’m sure violence never did a bit of good in the world, that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is a primitive and barbaric code of justice.  But when a bunch of guys set out to stomp on you, there’s a lot to be said for throwing a punch or two back” (146).  When John finally works up the fury to throw a punch, his father is on the receiving end. 

            When John joins the protest march on the mill to save the trees and the butterfly’s habitat in a town where “most of the jobs are the kind that put muscles on arms and calluses on hands,” he encounters an ugly brand of unkindness from a former community of neighbors whose livelihoods are being threatened: “I was caught up in the thrill of the moment—I guess that’s how they get soldiers to march into combat—once you feel that thrill of shared danger and you start marching with a group, you’ll do almost anything before being the one to break away” (166-167).

            Besides being a book about environmental wars and strained parental relationships, California Blue by David Klass features athletes, who endure torture to get their names in a trophy case, who suffer grueling practices and performances, who persist beyond “sidesplitting, stomach cramping, muscle twisting, pure distilled pain and fatigue” (39), who pump and push and call on every source of fury they can conjure up to experience the euphoria that derives from the swell of applause, the exhilaration of victory.

Novel to Film

Book turned movie, Holes by Louis Sachar lends itself to a webquest since it piques interest at several turns—adolescent readers will probably be intrigued by the yellow spotted lizard, as was I, so I immediately satiated my curiosity.  Texas also provides a home to rattlesnakes and tarantulas—more fear-inspiring creatures, and again, many of us may wish to know if rattlesnake venom in a nail polish really will work as a weapon of terror.  According to the web’s Discovery Channel, the answer is yes; the venom is a protein that stays potent for days until bacterial action degrades it.  Another site provides significant facts about rattlesnakes and their venom.  While this creature can pose a safety threat, the tarantula for all its hairiness and power to terrify is actually quite harmless to humans (except for a painful bite—ouch is obviously different than dead), and their mild venom is weaker than a typical bee's.  I get goose bumps and shudder just thinking about these large critters, so I couldn’t stay long at this site which enlightens and works myth-busting magic.    

Leaving zoology, Holes invites us to venture into the mathematics realm.  Students with math acumen will probably relate to Zero, who gives most adults the impression that he is empty headed, when in fact, he simply dislikes answering their questions.  While Hector cannot read and write, he proves to be an able student under Stanley’s tutelage, a quick learner.  His math skill, however, requires no polish.   Rapid with numbers and adept at making the perfect hole, his remarkable math aptitude reminded me of the extraordinary calculator-like abilities of Kim Peek, an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in the 1988 film Rain Man.  While we have no evidence that Zero has such an affliction, such information might still intrigue the inquisitive.  I would certainly use this opportunity to talk about Multiple Intelligences if I haven’t already addressed the idea, and offer a skills assessment with follow-up.  Afterwards, the curious and number savvy can test their math prowess. 

Louis Sachar intrigues those interested in women outlaws or those wondering what concoctions might actually cure foot odor and whether truth resides in Sam’s claims regarding onions and their health benefits. 

I am among those who often conclude that a book is always better than its film version, but each viewer/reader must decide that individually.  Regardless, the book lends itself to a discussion of plot.  Sachar’s plot, progressive and not chronological, contains a historical subplot and various threads that synthesize neatly by the novel’s end.  Other literary elements emerge in the text, providing a natural segue into learning literary terminology.  Stanley says Camp Green Lake is in the middle of no where—hyperbole.  Camp Green Lake is neither a lake nor green—misnomer and irony.  Other misnomers and irony occur in Sachar’s clever naming.  A boy nicknamed X-ray has impaired vision; a boy named Zero is good with numbers; Clyde, “Sweet Feet” Williams has rotten foot odor; and Mr. Pendanski, aka Mom, is not nurturing.  In fact, this novel is set in the ironic mode.  Stanley’s story is that of an ordinary teenager who errs and suddenly faces the unforgiving, complex, and painful world of experience, a world that delivers wrongful justice.

            In additional literary terminology study, it might be appropriate to have students explore the derivations of Hector and Derrick to consider the merits of such allusions.

            Finally, this book invites an exploration of various injustices in the world: a justice system that unjustly incarcerates the innocent; adult bullies like Mr. Sir, Mr. Pendanski, and Warden Walker; the detrimental and often erroneous labeling of ‘misfits’; the frequent, pejorative references to the Girl Scouts; Stanley’s and the other boys’ living on the social margins; social norms that permit bullying and teasing; and social norms of intolerance—Sam and Kate were not “allowed” a romantic relationship.  With all that opportunity for research and critical thinking to offer, one can hardly argue that young adult literature lacks depth.

Nonfiction, Memoir, Autobiography

In his autobiography, Hole in My Life, I found the truth in Jack Gantos’ statement about violence so sad, but some people are “freaks for violence” (4), and not just in prison.  As he writes, “Here we were all of us living in constant, pissy, misery, and instead of trying to feel more human, more free and unchained in their hearts by simply respecting one another and getting along, many of the men found cruel and menacing ways to make each day a walk through a tunnel of fear for others” (4).  Such a statement is a good one for opening conversation about the politics of school, for example, where bullying happens in hall ways, lunchrooms, locker rooms and on playgrounds.  Readers can apply the author’s observation to the social norms that permit children to bully and tease with impunity any vulnerable “others.”  It allows exploration of questions like, why do we push some people to the social margins?  Why do we alienate those who are different?  

            The book also validates the importance of self-communication.  Gantos describes the “bonfires of blame” (156) and the raging fires of guilt and self-loathing.  He shows us we are not alone in our self-abuse but that we need to find the will power to get past self-inflicted violence, to choose productive paths and alternatives, whether we find that escape in reading and writing, as he does, or in some other healthy distraction.  We can’t allow self-doubt and insecurity to conquer us.  We have to “make rules for ourselves and break them and make others until we get it right” (186), until we stop running in the wrong direction, until we find the confidence and the determination.

            Finally, I like his idea for organizing a writer’s notebook, a configuration worth sharing with other writers: Daily Entry Section—“filled with a wild stream of thoughts in a conscious effort to capture my honest feelings, true motivations, and crazed activities of each day.  The writing was kind of a blinding kaleidoscopic view of my life” (21); Golden Lines from Books—“I catalogued the parts that struck me dumb with envy and admiration for their beauty and power and truth” (21); Vocabulary Building—“where I’d write words and definitions I wanted to learn and use” (22); Moments of Inspiration—“devoted to book ideas, full-color flashes, like bits of film remembered, or a forgotten conversation suddenly pulsing to life” (22).  These seed ideas have the potential to grow into stories, essays, and poems.

Native American Literature

           If you haven’t yet read Sherman Alexie’s novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, it is a must read.  However, since this is a book about life, it is not without its disconcerting moments: masturbation, domestic violence, racism, alcohol related deaths, bullying, and the ill effects of poverty all figure into the text.  It also makes readers face the harsh truth: “That reservations were meant to be death camps” (217).

In spite of those moments, this is mostly a book about empowerment and hope.  It dispels some myths: “Hunger is not the worst thing about being poor” (8).  In addition, it helps readers see with new eyes: “The greatest gift is tolerance” (155). 

Through the main character, Arnold Spirit, a Spokane Indian a.k.a. Junior, readers further learn about resilience and about triumphing over handicaps.  Arnold reminds us all that life is laden with pain: “We all have pain.  And we all look for ways to make the pain go away” (107).  Some people turn to addictive behaviors, like alcoholism or eating disorders, but Arnold reminds us not to give up on the world; instead, we should find healthy escapes, like drawing:

I draw all the time. . . .

I draw because words are too unpredictable.

I draw because words are too limited. 

If you speak and write in English or Spanish or Chinese or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning.

But when you draw a picture, everybody can understand it (5).

And for Arnold, a stuttering, lisping, hydroencephaliac, communication is fraught with challenges, but important:

    

     So I draw because I want to talk to the world.  And I want the world to pay attention to me. 

     I feel important with a pen in my hand.  I feel like I might group up to be somebody important.  An artist.  Maybe a famous artist.  Maybe a rich artist (6). 

Thus, Alexie reminds us of the value of nurturing dreams, of paying attention to dreams.  Arnold’s dreams are not only about communication; they are connected to his desire to escape poverty.   Arnold knows his mother, given the chance, would have gone to college, his sister would be a writer of romance novels, and his father would have been a musician, but “nobody paid attention to their dreams” (11):

We reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams.  We don’t get those chances.  Or choices.  We’re just poor.  That is all we are.

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor.  You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly.  And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian.  And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor.  It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance.  No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor (13).

Alexie also talks about anger, about how “volcano mad” or “tsunami mad” is a symptom of poverty.  Many of his characters exhibit such anger: Rowdy, Rowdy’s father, the Andruss brothers, even Arnold, who throws a book at Mr. P when he discovers his reservation school, Wellpinit High, is using books that are 30 years old or more.  His anger leads to his choice to attend the off-reservation school, Reardon.  Thus, Alexie invites readers to think about anger as a life-changing power.  Sometimes, anger provides the first step in making a dream come true; after all, activism has its roots in anger. 

This book also reminds us of the power of laughter as catharsis and the power of affirmation:

Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from an adult?  Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody?  It’s one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they’re the four hugest words in the world when they’re put together.

                        You can do it (189).