Night

A. Title: Night

B. Author: Elie Wiesel - 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Winner

C. Publisher: Bantam

D. Genre: Autobiographical, Historical

E. Reading Level: Grades 6+

F. Summary: The narrator, which is Elie Wiesel, is twelve years old when the book starts. The year is 1941, and Elie lives comfortably in the town of Sighet, Transylvania. A few people try to warn the town of Sighet of their impending doom, but no one really pays much attention. In 1944, German troops entered the town and began to set up ghettos for the Jewish people to live in. Soon after the Jews are forced to live in such horrible, cramped conditions, the Nazi's began to ship them off to concentration camps. The Jewish people of Sighet are forced to squish into cattle-cars on a train; eighty people to one cattle wagon. The conditions are beyond inhumane; there are no bathrooms and the people are given no food or water. On board Elie's cattle wagon there is a woman screaming about fires, furnaces, and people burning, but everyone is the car ignores the woman who seems to have gone insane. When the train ride is finally over, they have arrived at Auschwitz, and all they can smell is burning flesh. Right away Elie and his father are separated from the rest of the family, and they lie about their age in order to keep from being further separated. As Elie walks into the concentration camp he is bombarded by the sight of babies being thrown into a massive ditch on fire. Elie is forced to strip down and shower off, get his head shave, get new work clothes, and to get a number; his number is A-7713. Many of the people that were unable to work due to their physical condition were thrown into the crematory. Elie continuously is witness to many terrible events, especially hangings that were common among the prisoners. While at Auschwitz, Elie suffers a foot injury causing him to be sent to the hospital wing and to receive medical treatment. Soon after he begins to recover, the German's decide to move the prisoners due to the approaching troops. The people are forced to walk from one concentration camp to the other in the dead of winter; many do not survive this long, physically draining trip. Both Elie and his father survive the trek by helping each other through it step-by-step. The trek takes them to another train ride where Elie sees a young boy kill his father for his bread and is completely horrified. The new concentration camp he is at is called Buchenweld, and here he watches his father fall ill and eventually die. On April 11, 1945, American tanks roll into Buchenweld to free the remaining prisoners. Elie is transported to a hospital to recover; when he sees himself in the mirror, he swears a corpse is staring back at him.

G. Response: I love any literature that has to do with the holocaust. Night is incredibly vivid, scary, and shocking. I think it has an excellent mixture of story-telling abilities and real-life horror and shock. There is no sugar-coating the horrible things that happened to the Jewish people during World War II and this book doesn't even attempt to. The images are so shockingly real that this book leaves a lasting impression on every one that reads it. Just the thought of throwing babies into a burning ditch is horrific, but imagine if you're a teenager or a young child; how does one even begin to handle that type of emotional trauma. The most realistic and eye-opening part of the whole book is when the boy kills his father for his bread. The simple idea seems ridiculous, but in the situation those people were placed under how ridiculous was it? I'm sure that type of behavior was common due to the living conditions forced upon these people. Every day was a struggle to survive and Night does an amazing job at bringing that reality into the light it deserves. It's so easy to remember something terrible for a generation or two, but this book will leave a mark on every generation that reads it. I will be teaching in a grade that most likely will not be mature enough to handle this book, but regardless of what grade I teach, I think this book should be a requirement for all fifty states curriculum. Plain and simply, this book has the ability to make a difference in this world and those are rare to come across.

H. Teaching Ideas: Obviously, Night is the perfect candidate when it comes to teaching about World War II and/or the Holocaust. The Web English Teacher website has so many Night and Holocaust resources that you may not even need to find other ideas. There are website links that deal with background information regarding the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp from History.com's "This Day in History" site, a collection of links from the Nobel Archives. Be sure to scroll to the bottom, and an extensive list of links to online sources about several aspects of the Holocaust. Lesson plan links include an entire Holocaust unit project (includes assessment), a project where students create their own Holocaust website, and a poetry unit to remember the Holocaust through poetry. The Holocaust Teacher Resource Center online has a great lesson plan with a pre-reading activity, many discussion questions, additional information about Elie Wiesel, vocabulary, writing topics, and more. A general search in Google produced many great lesson plan ideas; Night is clearly a very classroom friendly novel and an amazing piece of literature on a dark time in human history.

Becoming Naomi Leon

A. Title: Becoming Naomi Leon

B. Author: Pam Munoz Ryan

C. Publisher: Scholastic Press

D. Genre: Realistic Fiction Novel, Multicultural

E. Reading Level: Grades 4-8

G.. Summary: Naomi Leon is an average upper elementary age girl who is half Mexican and half American; the mother was American and the father Mexican. She has a younger brother, named Owen, that has some physical deformities but who is very intelligent. Both Naomi and Owen live with their great-grandmother, who they call Gram. The three of them live happily at Lemon Tree trailer park in their camper, Baby Baluga. Out of no where, Naomi and Owen's mother, Skyla, shows up; Naomi barely remembers her mother and Owen doesn't have any memories of her. She left the two of them with Gram years ago to "go find her own life." Skyla brings Naomi lots of gifts but falls shy when it comes to giving Owen gifts. Skyla has a boyfriend named Clive, who is a tattoo artist in training, and he has been giving Skyla all the money to buy her children presents. Skyla is a drunk and has been in and out rehab for most of her adult life, and after awhile it becomes clear that Skyla is back for her own purposes and not those of her children. First, Skyla promises to go to after school conferences with Naomi and Owen, but instead she leaves them at the school until after dark when Gram goes to pick them up. Naomi, who at first is thrilled that her mother is back, soon realizes that her mother only really wants her and doesn't really want Owen. It even becomes clear that Naomi is only important to her mother because she can get money from the state for having her and so that she can babysit Clive's daughter. One day while Gram is sewing at the neighbors (who are also very close friends of theirs), Skyla takes Owen and Naomi to Owen's doctor visit. The whole time Naomi and Skyla are waiting for Owen, Skyla keeps sneaking off to the bathroom to drink. By the time Owen is through, Skyla is drunk and yells at the doctors for telling her there is nothing they can do for his physical appearance until he grows up a little more. When the three arrive home, Clive calls and tells Skyla they're reading to move away to Las Vegas. Skyla orders Naomi to pack her things and come, but she refuses. Naomi instinctively protects Owen by making sure that she is in between Skyla and him at all times. Skyla hits Naomi for not obeying her and even threatens to hurt Gram if she doesn't listen. Naomi tricks her mother and gets her to go into the other room while Naomi and Owen run through the avocado fields to where Gram and their neighbors are sewing. They protect the children and get her to leave, but Skyla swears that her and Clive will be back the next day to pick her up. Immediately, Gram goes to the court house to get temporary custody of the children in writing, and then before Owen and Naomi know it, they're driving down to Mexico for a little vacation! In Oaxaca, Mexico, there is an annual soap carving festival that a Leon has been entering for the past one hundred years, every year. Not only are they in Mexico to escape Skyla until the custody trial, but they are also there to try and find Naomi and Owen's father, Santiago. While in Mexico, Naomi realizes where she has come from and finally begins to find out who she is as a person. In the end, they find Santiago, who is beyond happy to be reunited with his children, and establish contact for future visits. Santiago can't drop his life and just move to the US, but now at least Naomi and Owen have an established, healthy relationship with their biological father. When it came time for the trial, the judge almost granted full custody to Skyla until she realized that Skyla only wanted Naomi and not Owen. Naomi got on the stand and found enough courage to speak out against her mother and tell the judge everything that had happened. As soon as the judge realized that Skyla had to intent on taking or raising Owen, she awarded Gram custody. By the end of the book, Naomi was back in the same place she started, but with a whole new outlook on life and herself!

H. Response: I have to start off by telling everyone how much I love this book. It is my absolute favorite book that I have read in a long time. Pam Munoz Ryan does an amazing job of capturing the innocence of children forced into adult-like situations. The author does such an amazing job that I showed real emotion while reading this book. I was on an airplane flying to Pennsylvania when I read the book, and I started to cry while I was reading the confrontation of Skyla and her children. I've known people like Skyla, so right from the beginning I had little sympathy with her. I think Skyla's character is a relatively dead-on, stereo-typical deadbeat mother, which makes the book that much easier to relate to for children. When I first set out to read this book, I had a slight prejudice because it just didn't seem like it would be that entertaining, but I stand completely corrected. The story itself was amazing and heartwarming, but from the first page to the last page I was glued to the book; I just felt like I was looking out through Naomi's eyes. Becoming Naomi Leon will absolutely be a book in my classroom, but I will also do everything I can to try and find a curriculum reason for the whole class to read it. This book has the opportunity to bring hope and love to so many children whose lives are in shambles or are experiencing the same things as Owen and Naomi. This type of literature can help children get through really difficult times; imagine how this book could help a quiet student, who never reaches out for help, going through this type of situation (just like Naomi).

I. Teaching Ideas: The first lesson plan that I found online for Becoming Naomi Leon was on Scholastic's website; the lesson even has a printable worksheet. The worksheet included with this lesson plan helps to match the same words in Spanish and English. The lesson plan itself starts off with general discussion questions such as why do you think the author chose to let Naomi tell the story instead of some other character or an outside person?; why did Naomi think that Mr. Marble was the best person at Buena Vista Elementary School?; Naomi thinks it is good and bad that Skyla came back into their lives. What did she mean by this?; and Naomi took Blanca to see Mr. Marble and then to the library to eat lunch. Naomi thought of it as a place where all the leftover kids came. Blanca thought it was some sort of club. What does Naomi mean by being a leftover kid?. The majority of the lesson is for the students to learn about Mexican culture and its language. Other lesson ideas include exploring Naomi's soap carving hobby, general character discussions, list creating, and creating an alter-ending. Another fun, creative, and interactive lesson plan would be to do a soap carving project. Off the top of my head, students could create a soap carving that they thought best captured the book, or maybe even a soap scene with multiple soap carvings.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Sone

A. Title: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone


B. Author: J.K. Rowling

C. Pulisher: Scholastic Press

D. Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction

E. Reading Level: Grades 3+

F. Characters:
Harry Potter is a twelve year old boy attending school at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is an orphan due to the unfortunate death of his parents by Lord Voldemort when he was just a baby; the result of the event left Harry with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightening bolt. He has a wild mop of brown hair and glasses. In the wizarding world, Harry is a bit of a celebrity because he is the boy who lived and forced Voldemort from power all because his killing curse backfired onto himself, though Lord Voldemort didn't exactly die.

Ron Weasley is Harry's best friend. The two meet on the Hogwart's Express, the train that takes all the students to Hogwarts for the school year. Ron is also in Gryffindor with Harry, and he is tall, skinny, pale, full of freckles, and one of many children. The Weasley clan of children include Bill, Charlie, Percy, the twins Fred and George, Ron, and the only girl Ginny; the parents are Arthur and Molly. One giant wizard family of flaming redheads!

Hermione Granger becomes friends with both Ron and Harry after a dangerous run in with a mountain troll that was let loose in the Hogwart's castle. She is very into school and grades; she has brown, thick, wavy hair and a cat named Crookshanks. The two didn't previously get alone with Hermione because she was a bit bossy and ended up saying some mean things to make Hermione upset. She was crying in the girls bathroom and was unaware of the troll, which happened to be in the same bathroom as her, and Ron and Harry came to her rescue. The three just barely managed to beat the troll and ultimately save the day. The three have been friends ever since.

Albus Dumbledore is the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He has long, thin, wispy, silver hair and a long, silver beard. He wears half-moon glasses and has a certain connection with Harry that he doesn't have with other students. He is an amazing wizard and the only one that Lord Voldemort is scared of. Harry loves Dumbledore and really looks up to him.

Lord Voldemort is the evil that is present in this novel. He uses dark magic to control and kill people to make them do what they want. His original plan was to take over the wizarding world, but Harry and his mother destroyed his plan when he was at his strongest. In this book, he is not even human, but part of what remains, a wispy, ghost like creature. He overtakes Professor Quirrel and uses him for his body. Ultimately, Voldemort and Professor Quirrel are beaten by Harry at the end of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and the wispy, ghost like Voldemort escape out into the woods once again.

Professor Quirrel is the unfortunate professor that was overtaken by Lord Voldemort. He wore a turban on his head to cover the face of Voldemort and was always very nervous and twitchy. Everyone thought his days out in the field working against the dark arts made him go a little crazy. He is the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts, but that clearly didn't help him against the dark lord's power. Most of the book, Harry didn't even suspect professor Quirrel but rather Snape instead.

The Dursleys are Harry's aunt, uncle, and cousin. Aunt Petunia is Harry's mother's sister, her husband Vernon, and their son Dudley. Petunia is skinny, frail looking, pursed lips, dark hair, and a clean freak. Vernon is a large, porky man with bulging eyes and a red face. Dudley is a spoiled rotten, extremely overweight bully. Harry has been living with them since his parents died when he was a baby until the day he goes to Hogwarts, and now he lives there during the summer when Hogwarts is out of school.

Hagrid is the grounds and gamekeeper of Hogwarts. He is a half man, half giant who is very tall in height and large in size with big bushy, brown hair and beard. He has a massive dog named Fang. Hagrid is the one that came to hand deliver Harry's acceptance letter to Hogwarts and officially escort Harry to the train station to ensure he got to school. Hagrid becomes best friends with Harry, Ron, and Hermione over the school year.

Draco Malfoy is Harry Potter's rival and enemy from Slytherin. He is pasty and pale with almost white blond hair. Draco is constantly looking for a reason to pick on or both Harry, Hermione, and Ron.


G. Summary: Harry Potter is ten going on eleven living with the Dursleys: his aunt, uncle, and cousin. He has a scar in the shape of a lightening bolt on his forehead, an out of control mop of brown hair, and glasses. All of his life they have treated horribly and like an outcast. Harry's room was the closet under the stairs with spiders, and he wore his fat cousin Dudley's hand-me-down clothes that were far too big. They constantly belittled Harry and said nasty things about his parents. A few days before his eleventh birthday, owls started to hangout around the Dursley's and letters began to arrive for him. Uncle Vernon didn't want Harry to read the letters so he did everything possible to keep them away from them; he nailed the mail slot shut, took his family to a hotel, they even went so far as rowing out into the middle of the sea and hiding out in a lighthouse surrounded by the violent ocean. A half giant, half man named Hagrid came to visit them and hand deliver Harry's letter, which happened to be his eleventh birthday. Hagrid told Harry all about how he was a special boy, that he was a wizard. Hagrid also reveals to Harry the truth about his parents death, that they were killed by Lord Voldemort, an evil wizard from the past. The Dursleys protested, Hagrid gave Dudley a tail, and Hagrid and Harry left together to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. On the way to Hogwarts, Hagrid and Harry stop at Diagon Alley, the wizarding world's shopping strip, to purchase everything Harry needs for the upcoming school year: robes, a wand, an owl, books, etc. Hagrid explains to Harry why everyone around him seems to know his name, because he's the boy who lived, the boy who beat Lord Voldemort. At Hogwarts, Harry finally found a place where he felt like he belonged, home. When the students first arrive, they are assorted into four houses where they live: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. His best friends are Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger; Ron is a tall, skinny, red haired, and freckled kid in a large family, and Hermione Granger is a brainy, school loving, skinny, brown haired, bossy kind of girl. Harry finds out how great he is at seeker and joins the Gryffindor Quidditch team; the premier sport of the wizarding world that involves flying on brooms, a golden snitch that flies, hurtling bludgers, and three goals on each side to score in. A natural rivalry at the school is between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and Harry's rival is Draco Malfoy, a proud Slytherin. Harry and his potions teacher, Professor Snape, immediately find that they do not like one another, and Harry become suspicious of his loyalty to the good side of the wizarding world. Following Snape, Harry, Ron, and Hermione find a room with a large three-headed dog protecting a trap door. Curiousity and the need to save the day led the three to go on the adventure down the trap door by lulling the three-headed dog to sleep; through devil's snare with sunlight; flying through a mass of swarming, flying keys to find the one and only key to open the door that stood in their way; and an intense game of real wizard's chess, where the pieces move and actually fight one another. Injured from the game of chess Ron and Hermione stay behind while Harry goes to face evil. He finds Professor Quirrel a room with the Mirror of Erised, and Harry soon realizes that Lord Voldemort is part of Professor Quirrel. The professor removes the turban on his head to reveal Lord Voldemort's face. The two are trying to get their hands on the Sorcerer's Stone to restore Lord Voldemort's health. Only a person who would use the stone for good and not evil would be able to receive the stone, and soon Harry realized it is in his pocket. Harry and Professor Quirrel struggle and fight for the stone, but as soon as Harry touches Professor Quirrel's skin he begins to burn in agony; because Lord Voldemort is part of him, and Harry's mother sacrificed herself to save her son, Harry is protected by the spell cast by his mother's love, something Lord Voldemort has no defenses against. Waking up in the hospital wing of the school, Harry is greeted like a hero for foiling Lord Voldemort's plan to return and everything is explained to him by Dumbledore, Hogwart's Headmaster and Harry's role model.

H. Response: I absolutely love the Harry Potter book collection. I have them all, and I have read them all. I often find myself rereading the series over and over again. I can't wait to be able to share this amazing series and world with my children and my future students! Trying to fathom how J.K. Rowling created this fantasy just blows my mind. I want to be a children's literature author some day, and I can only dream of having the imagination and natural writing skills that she has. When you read the Harry Potter series, you are completely submerged in a different world. She weaves in the perfect amount of real world things to make the reader wish that much more that Hogwarts could be a real place. I still read the books and secretly hope and wish that maybe J.K. Rowling got it wrong, maybe the school doesn't start until after high school, or maybe after college. Basically, I want to live in her make-believe world. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, along with the other books in the series, has many opportunities for teaching connections and lesson plans. There are many themes that run throughout this novel that would be very appropriate for classroom application.

I. Teaching Ideas: Some of the themes that run through Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone are good and evil, love, friendship, bullying, bravery, fear and success, and decision making. The Teacher's Resource File on J.K. Rowling has eight website links to biographical information, ten criticism links, and ten lesson plan ideas for varying Harry Potter books in the series. One lesson plan link has coloring pages/worksheets for the students to incorporate their lives into the Harry Potter world. The worksheets include mazes, both simple and more complex, designing a new crest for Gryffindor, a remembral ball to write everything in about the book that you don't want to forget, and a Bernie Bott's Beans container that allows the students to create their own flavors. At TeAchnology's website is a great resource with twenty-one lesson plan ideas for the Harry Potter series. Lesson plan ideas include a day in the life of Harry Potter, creating a Hogwarts floor map, creative writing exercises, two entire unit lesson plans on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, creating Harry Potter character posters, learning settings with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, make a Harry Potter board game, and the list goes on. With these amount of resources from only two online teacher resource pages gives a pretty good impression about the actual number of classroom application ideas that are available out there. The Web English Teacher website a lesson plan suggestion for every book in the series, discussion topics for each book, an idea for a Harry Potter game show, crafting a Harry Potter Haiku, Harry Potter math stories, and also multiple great resources for each book in the series. With how much children and adults both already love Harry Potter, and that includes me, why would you not use that interest that is present? If you can apply classroom skills and objectives needing to be covered according to the NC Standard Curriculum, or any other state curriculum for that matter, to Harry Potter then the outcome and learning experience is most likely going to be positive. I don't know many children that wouldn't be ecstatic to create a Harry Potter board game or movie posters. If reading the novel together in class, the students could pick their favorite character and keep a first person journal throughout the reading of the novel. The students can decorate the journal cover to show personality about their character, and pretend that they are the character with every journal entry. The possibilities are really almost endless for the classroom connections with Harry Potter novels that to not use them seems like a crime to fun and interactive education.

J. The Mirror of Erised - The Mirror Erised is hidden in the castle away from people. The mirror has the ability to allow whomever looks in it the pleasure of seeing what their heart most desires. For Harry, the Mirror of Erised shows him his dead mother and father because what Harry wants the most is to belong to a loving family instead of the cruel and often thoughtless family of the Dursleys. Dumbledore comes to Harry's side in an attempt to comfort him because Harry had become slightly obsessed with the image in the mirror. Harry spent more time than he should have longingly looking into the mirror of what could be. He needed Dumbledore to bring him back to reality, even if that is a sad reality. Voldemort tries to use the mirror to get the Sorcerer's Stone and cannot understand why the Mirror of Erised is not showing/giving him what he wants. The Mirror Erised is an object that has the potential to be dangerous; its purpose is to show the looker what their heart most desires, but often the onlookers find it hard to look away. The mirror causes them to wish and will the conveyed image to be real; Maybe the onlooker is looking at something in their past, something that never happened, or something that they wish might not have happened. Whatever you see in the mirror is a false image though, almost a false premise of hope because what is in the mirror normally cannot come true. If I was to look into the Mirror of Erised, I think it would show me a childhood where I got to stay put in Wilmington, NC and not have to move around. When I was growing up that is all I wanted, even though now I realize the amount moving enabled me to grow as a person. I don't think that I would be who I am today if I hadn't moved around so much growing up.