Wild Readers Show Preferences:

In Chapter 5 in Reading in the Wild, Miller presented me with information and ideas that I didn’t consider before reading the chapter. While reading I was interested in how on she created and examined student progress so that she incorporate different book genres in her lesson plan that would require her students to be exposed to genres that are out of their comfort zones. Introducing students to a wide range of genres aids to their development because they begin to have an understanding of what type of book they are interested in and find answers to why they dislike other books. When a classroom works and has open discussions about books they are reading they are given a chance to talk about their favorite books and which books they’d recommend to their classmates.

After finishing the Reading in the Wild book, I noticed that I need to read more books outside of my prefered genres. Reading more books makes it easier to be able to provide students with recommendations that are worth their time and books they’d enjoy. I wasn’t always a fan of reading because I wasn’t able to sit in one place for a long period of time without being distracted, but once I began to test other reading methods then I began to read more and find books that are challenging but enjoyable. To improve my reading habits I began to create goals for when I’d finish books and create time so I can  go to the library and browse the newly released books.

 

The Hate U Give:

In the novel The Hate U Give we are presented with different characters who have different outlooks on life due to childhood experiences. One character I want to look at is Starr’s Maverick Carter (aka Big Mav). Maverick is a prideful black, tall, and muscular male with gang tattoos. As a child Maverick lived in an area that was full of injustice and violence that would make him join a local gang. Due to thing he did while in the gang Maverick would be forced to spend three years in a prison while his wife Lisa was pregnant and would later give birth to Starr. Seeing that he was missing important times of Starr’s life he changed his ways, he left the gang and went on to open a grocery store in Garden Heights. Maverick is a supportive father who wanted the best for his kids and only want to keep them away from the gang life because he knows it isn’t the best life. In the beginning of the story Starr and her friend Khalil were stopped by a police officer and then during the traffic stop the officer would draw his gun and kill Khalil who was unarmed. The news and some police officers said that Khalil was a gangster and drug dealer to make it seem like the police officer did the right thing. Her father Maverick wants justice for Khalil murder and encourages Starr to tell her community what really happened the night of Khalil’s death. Maverick is aware of the evils that black communities are faced with and he wanted to change that and make it right, he tells his daughter that when giving her side of the story to make that “nobody’s going to twist her words around…we want the truth to come out.”

I’m really enjoying this novel and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to see how perspective change the outcome of an event. What one person sees/says isn’t always what really happened, Angie Thomas wrote a perfect novel for young adults. When you begin reading it you see how Starr and her community are step out to look like gangsters and drug dealers. The Hate U Give is currently my favorite book that I’ve read this semester, after completing it I’d like to watch the movie that recently released.

 

From the list of links that was provided in the recourse guide I selected the website, Comic Book Resources (CBR). After spending some time looking through the list I felt that CBR could be the most useful resources to understand which comic book are currently relevant to what young students are actually reading. CBR provides an abundance of different information like comic book forums, comic reviews and previews on comics are will be released at a later time. One thing that the CBR website provides that many be helpful to a teacher or student is that it features blogs that focus on a certain genres and authors. As a future teacher I would use this website as a way to get insight on popular comic books so that I have the ability to recommend good comics to students who enjoy them. I would also encourage students to post their own reviews on comic books they’ve already read and explain what they liked/disliked about the book.  

 

The Best We Could Do was a story about the journey Thi Bui and her family took in order to resettle and find an area they could call home. Thi story is actually quite sad, as a child she craved attention and love from her parents. In her eyes her parents weren’t always there and as supportive as they should have been so as she got older she began looking at her family’s history. With her curiosity she began looking back at her father and mothers past to see why they were there and why they weren’t as loving. As the story progresses we learn that as a child her father experienced heartbreaking events that left him scarred and scared, while her mother would have been much happier if she had gone through with her plan of studying abroad and living the life she had planned for if she wasn’t married. I really enjoyed the novel and like how Thi used visuals to give the reader a look at the types of emotions that she felt. As a future teacher, recommending graphic novels to students who aren’t very fond of reading would be a good idea. Since the panels in comic books are lines of conversations/ideas it doesn’t seem like you’re actually reading a book but by the end of it you’ve learned the story of Thi Bui.

 

Before I answer the question I should admit that this is the first time I’ve read and completed a graphic novel. When I first opened the book I looked through the pages to see the art and get an idea of what I was going to read. Without actually reading the pages I was able develop an idea of what the novel was going to be about and how the emotions would change through the chapters. Once I looked through the artwork I began my first attempt to read it, at first I was confused and uninterested. After some attempts I began by looking at each panel and reading the text and looking at the picture related to it to make sense of it all. By the second chapter of The Best We Could Do, I began to enjoy how comics provide visuals for the conversations that were happening. The visuals showed the sadness, heartbreak, pain, and joy that Thi was feeling throughout the book. I liked the support it offered and was something different than the pictures my mind was creating. When comparing the way I read The Best We Could Do their to how someone reading a different graphic novel nothing changed, the only thing that was different is how the author wrote and used the visuals to support their words.

 

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Two parts to the blog this week:

• For my free verse book I selected The Crossover by Kwame Alexander. The Crossover is about a young basketball player named Josh Bell (aka Filthy McNasty) that’s explaining his life the only way he knows how, which is through rhymes and playing ball. This book would work as a great example to show students different examples of poem styles. One thing that I’m enjoying about this book is the way Kwame brought together popular culture, sports, and poems together so smoothly. The rhyme scheme and overall structure of the book had an entertaining effect on how one should read the book and which lines to add extra emphasis on. The way Kwame structure his sentences is different because he uses different fonts . A part in the book that I enjoyed was:

Filthy McNasty

is a MYTHical MANchild

Of rather dubious distinction

Always AGITATING

COMBINATING

and ELEVATING his game

He dribles

fakes

then takes

the ROCK to the

glass, fast and on BLAST…

 

• so much depends

upon

 

power and wealth

that

 

some have lost

themselves

 

It’s sad but

true