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My sixth grade reading lab students just finished Esperanza Rising and Out of the Dust in their general reading
classes. We were discussing those two books in class on Friday, and the general
consensus was that most of them preferred Out
of the Dust to Esperanza Rising.
During the course of the conversation, one boy spoke up and
asked, “How come someone dies in every book we read?” (Previously they had read
Among the Hidden and Tuck Everlasting.) We stopped to try and
answer that question, and I shared with them that, once upon a time, when I was
teaching The Outsiders, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,
and Bud, Not Buddy to seventh
graders, one of them had voice a similar question, “Why don’t any of these kids
have parents?”
I read a lot of middle grade and young adult fiction, and in
a large majority of it, you will find a character with deceased parents or
siblings, or losing a friend or family member during the course of the book. In
middle grade books, this tends to be grandparents or parents, or an occasional
friend or sibling. In young adult novels for the more mature readers, friends
seem to be the most common casualties. And forget about fantasy…the battles in
those novels almost always leave more than a few people dead. This is not a new
trend. Six people die in three days in Romeo
and Juliet, and let’s not even start to number the casualties in Hamlet and Macbeth.
What my sixth graders came up with, when it was all said and
done, was that death is a part of life, and the death of someone we love can
cause such a deep hurt that sometimes it feels like you are all alone. Books
are a way to connect to someone on the page who might be going through the same
thing, which is easier sometimes than reaching out to someone real.
They are going to start reading The Breadwinner soon as part of a cross-curricular unit with social
studies. I didn't have the heart to tell them to brace themselves...they have
one more dead person to go this year.
This post makes me smile....such truthful comments. My daughter said once to me...I'm not reading any more 'dead dog' books....ever. It seems that she'd rather see people die than animals.
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