Critical CritiqueThe three books I will critically critique are Red by Michael Hall, Rescue & Jessica by Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes, and Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena. The book Red is about a red crayon that draws blue marks instead of red. Everyone tries to help Red draw red, however, red couldn't get the hang of it. This book is about the journey of a red crayon finding itself. The Last Stop on Market Street book is about a grandma and a young boy's trip to a place in Market street. Through this trip, the boy questions the things he has in life, and the grandma always responds with words of wisdom to him. At the end, he was glad that they had made the trip to the last stop on market street. This book is about finding the beauty in life no matter what or where you are. The last book I am going to discuss is Rescue & Jessica which is a book about a girl who suffers from an injury that caused her to lose both of her legs. She struggles to relearn everything by herself and feels lost within her world. On the other hand, the story shows a dog going through training and how it was worried it wouldn't live up to its name "Rescue" and be able to help others in need. This book is about the friendship and story of how these two characters met and helped each other through tough times. ThemesThe themes that ran across these three books were beauty, identity, friendships, and acceptance. Within each of these three books, beauty was a common theme. In the book Red, red was able to find beauty in itself when others were not, and when they perceived it as "different" or "not good enough". Once that happened, others, too, were able to find beauty within Red. In the book Last Stop on Market Street, the grandma pointed out and talked about the beauty that surrounds them when the boy didn't notice it. This theme resonated throughout the book. In one scene, the boy asks the grandma "how come we gotta wait for the bus in all this wet?" and the grandma replied with, "Trees get thirsty , too...Don't you see that big one drinking through a straw?" She's turning his perspective to see the beauty within the "wet rain" which we may perceive as a "yucky" or "muddy" day. Not just that, but another favorite scene where beauty is illustrated in this book was when CJ tells his grandma that he sure wishes he had one of those (referring to a phone/digital player), which his grandma responds by having him close his eyes and listen to the live music that is being played by a man on the bus. CJ was able to visualize scenes of a beautiful "sunset swirling over crashing waves, a family of hawks slicing through the sky, and he saw the old woman's butterflies dancing free int he light of the moon". Again, he saw the beauty of the world that surrounded him. In Rescue & Jessica, beauty was a more subtle, but apparent theme. Even through their dark times, they were both able to find beauty in the world again by being together. The colors also changed from the beginning to the end. The colors at the beginning were dark and depressing, however, towards the end, you notice a lot of green and bright colors representing beauty in their lives again. This theme ties in with acceptance as well. Once Red was able to find beauty in himself, he learned how to accept himself and with that others learned to accept him as well. The same goes for Jessica. Once Jessica was able to accept herself and realized the value of friendship that she had developed with Rescue, her perspective of the world changed. Accepting one self for who they are is very empowering and leads to self love/happiness. I think it's also fair to say that this acceptance of oneself is definitely a sense of discovering your identity in the world, which was another theme that was important for all of these books. Through finding beauty in the world and in yourself and accepting you for who you are, it leads to discovering your identity. In the book Last Stop on Market Street, CJ, in some sort of way, found beauty in his world and in what he has along with accepting their trip to the soup kitchen. I think that's important because he realized then that within these "dirty" buildings/ place, there was beauty. Beauty of not just the rainbow that they saw, but beauty in the people who relied on their soup kitchen, beauty in their soup kitchen, and beauty from doing kindness. This acceptance leads to being a part of who CJ is as a person. It became part of his identity. Even though it doesn't say it directly, but I think it's fair to say that this trip has definitely help "shaped" him as an individual as he was exposed to different perspective throughout. One last thing I want to note about the theme "identity" in the book Red, is that it can be used to dig in deep about different identities. For example, after reading this book, I thought about how it could be a good way-in book to talk about accepting different race, ethnicity, or even genders. Genders especially stood out to me because Red is labeled as a "red crayon", but Red is blue. The same kind of with gender. Someone may be marked as "female" or "male", but want to be perceived as the opposite such as female to male or male to female. Even though that is an awkward or uncomfortable topic that we, as educators, tend to avoid, it may be the reality for our students. Therefore, I think instead of avoiding it, we should get students to talk, discuss, and share freely about topics such as this in order to promote an unbiased education for EVERYONE, especially if our goal as teachers is to meet the needs of ALL diverse students. I think it's also worthy to note the use of language that Matt de la Pena used in his book Last Stop on Market Street. In his acceptance speech he said, "When I finished the seventieth draft of the text, I was proud of CJ's journey, both inside and out. And I was proud of the music of the language." I think it's important to have students focus on the things that the author and/or illustrator felt very proud about because it was their work. So, asking students to think "what part of the story or why did the author or illustrator felt proud?" would help gear them to start thinking critically about the literacy that they stumble upon. For example, talking about what images do they see or what they feel as they are reading certain parts in the story such as "the bus creaked to a stop...it sighed and sagged and the doors opened". Why do you think the authors used those words to describe the bus? Or why did the author used the verb "freckled" in the sentence "the rain freckled CJ's shirt"? Analyzing and discussing the use of language that Matt de la Pena decided to use can help students critically think more and engage with the author and story. Hall, M. (2018). Red: a crayons story. Vienna, VA: Library Ideas, LLC. Kensky, J., Downes, P., & Magoon, S. (2018). Rescue & Jessica: a life-changing friendship. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press. Peña Matt De la, & Robinson, C. (2017). Last stop on Market Street. New York: Penguin Random House LLC. Peña, M. de la. (2016, June). Newbery Caldecott-Wilder Banquet. Newbery Caldecott-Wilder Banquet. Critical Literacy PracticesSo what does "critical literacy" mean or may look like in a classroom setting? I think it's a hard concept to really implement into classrooms if you have not seen a model of it, or have learned about it. I agree that it can be a hard thing to do in a classroom. Critical literacy can be defined as "the ability to engage critically and analytically with ways in which knowledge, and ways of thinking about and valuing this knowledge, are constructed in and through written texts" (Hammond & Macken-Horarik, 1999). In other words, it's engaging with the text in critical ways that allows students to unfold the text into their own understandings and connections. With that being said, an example of how to engage students critically in literacy is teaching them a critical literacy strategy that they can implement into texts. For example, a strategy that can be used in the book Red is "Theme Switch". Theme switch is to make up a different story with the opposite theme or a different but closely related theme as a way to perceive the story in a different way (McLaughlin &DeVoogd, 2004). In the story Red: a crayon's story, we have Red struggle in being who it "should be" instead of what it wants to be. However, in the end Red accepts and says "I'm blue!", which demonstrates finding oneself or identity in this story. Therefore, having what we already know of that theme, we can have students switch the theme to "losing oneself or identity". What would that look like? How would that change the perspective or story? What changes? What doesn't get changed? I think this would be interesting because it forces students to change perspectives that is being shown through the author and to critically think about how that makes an impact on the story or the character. So this theme switch may be something like Red was red, but now it's turning blue, and no matter what it does, or what people say or do to help Red, it couldn't get the hang of it. Red couldn't go back to being who it was. Then the rest is where the students' interpretation, knowledge, and experiences take charge and turns it into something marvelously. Then students can share and engage in a discussion about what they did. How does losing ones' identity look like or feel like? What aspect of it is missing that you may or may not have included? What connections were made to create this? I think it's also important, as the educators, to model this and model how the critical questions can help guide or facilitate us into engaging critically in the text other than "What is the main idea?" Another lesson or strategy is using the Alternative Mind Portrait to get a different perspective of the story and its meaning in the book Last Stop on Market Street. This strategy is examining the two points of view represented in one story. Students will pick the two points of view portrayed in the book to examine. Then they will sketch silhouettes of two heads representing the two points of view. Inside each of those head, they can write words, draw, or make a collage to represent each perspective being shown in the book. Then coming together as a class or group, students can share what they have created as a starting point in critical discussions. In this case, the two points of view can be the grandma and the little boy. What do you think the boy sees the world as? What about the grandma? What is beauty to the boy? What is beauty to the grandma? Having critical questions to help guide students into understanding this and digging deep is important as the teacher. Some good critical questions can be found here: Critical questions. After my readings, I realize how important it is to critically engage students into any literature that they may stumble upon. If we don't teach them to be critical thinkers about their world, then how do we expect them to critically be engaged in their world as they continue to grow? I, myself, am always learning different ways and strategies that I can get my students to be interested and engaged with the text that we are reading, not because they have to read it, but because reading has a purpose. If we model to them and show them the importance of reading for purpose and reading critically, then ALL students will have that ability to read and engage into texts in a whole new, different level. I believe students deserves more credit than we give them when it comes to critically thinking. Anyone can do it as long as they are taught those strategies, and given the opportunity to practice them in real life situations. Therefore, as a future teacher, I will definitely include how I will teach critical literacy to ALL students in my class to challenge them in different ways. Hammond, J., & Macken-Horarik, M. (1999). Critical Literacy: Challenges and Questions for ESL Classrooms. TESOL Quarterly,33(3), 528-544. doi:10.2307/3587678 McLaughlin, M., & DeVoogd, G.L. (2004). Critical literacy: Enhancing students’ comprehension of text. New York: Scholastic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI love books, writing, and music. Life's too dull without books. Archives
November 2019
Categories |