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engpunk77 's review for:
Towers Falling
by Jewell Parker Rhodes
This book was every teacher's fantasy dramatized in a middle-grade book. It's what I fantasize my lessons are going to be like, what my students will be like, how impactful my teaching will be, and how easy it all will be...THIS year. It is a fantasy land that most certainly doesn't touch reality. Surprise, Rhodes admits that she wrote a book for teachers to teach with.
My question is this. Do children love reading books about effective lesson plans and super studious children taking everything hyper-seriously? Do children cry when they learn about 9/11 or see video footage of the towers being hit by a plane? I'm a very sensitive person who has cried plenty over this national tragedy, but I'd bet that 5th graders would be fascinated, not traumatized, at first. So either I have no idea what kids are like these days (possible) or I and the children I know are total outliers from the average American kid (also possible). I mean, my library kids are fascinated by the gory details of history. Gladiators? Toxic Fashion? Public hangings? The Guillotine? Plagues? Poisons? Pompei? Explosions of all types? Shark attacks? The Titanic? Bring it on. I've never seen a child cry over it. Again, it could be that my 5th grade self and the children I know are all weirdos, but that doesn't help us relate to the characters in this book.
For these reasons, I felt like the children and the lessons that happened in this book were ridiculously unrealistic. However, the book wasn't too bad once there was some action and details about what it was like to be in the towers on 9/11 and what it's like to have PTSD and how PTSD effects the whole family. This part was actually good, effective, memorable. But will students survive the snooze fest of the beginning? I'm not sure, and I hope so. Maybe they'll be reading it as a class read where the teachers make them suffer through this part, an experience in which the vast discrepancy between the real-class responses to the teacher's questions and the actual effort going into the writing prompts and homework assignments and those in the book will be where some other meaningful discussion lies.
I hope this lesson goes well, and I hope that teachers are inspired to use the lesson plans in the back of the book to teach about 9/11 and that it goes as splendidly as it does in this fictional account, but don't be too disappointed when it doesn't.
My question is this. Do children love reading books about effective lesson plans and super studious children taking everything hyper-seriously? Do children cry when they learn about 9/11 or see video footage of the towers being hit by a plane? I'm a very sensitive person who has cried plenty over this national tragedy, but I'd bet that 5th graders would be fascinated, not traumatized, at first. So either I have no idea what kids are like these days (possible) or I and the children I know are total outliers from the average American kid (also possible). I mean, my library kids are fascinated by the gory details of history. Gladiators? Toxic Fashion? Public hangings? The Guillotine? Plagues? Poisons? Pompei? Explosions of all types? Shark attacks? The Titanic? Bring it on. I've never seen a child cry over it. Again, it could be that my 5th grade self and the children I know are all weirdos, but that doesn't help us relate to the characters in this book.
For these reasons, I felt like the children and the lessons that happened in this book were ridiculously unrealistic. However, the book wasn't too bad once there was some action and details about what it was like to be in the towers on 9/11 and what it's like to have PTSD and how PTSD effects the whole family. This part was actually good, effective, memorable. But will students survive the snooze fest of the beginning? I'm not sure, and I hope so. Maybe they'll be reading it as a class read where the teachers make them suffer through this part, an experience in which the vast discrepancy between the real-class responses to the teacher's questions and the actual effort going into the writing prompts and homework assignments and those in the book will be where some other meaningful discussion lies.
I hope this lesson goes well, and I hope that teachers are inspired to use the lesson plans in the back of the book to teach about 9/11 and that it goes as splendidly as it does in this fictional account, but don't be too disappointed when it doesn't.