Book Review: Newbery 2012 Honors Winner Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin

I had not read this prior to the announcement of the Newbery 2012 Awards, but I immediately requested it from the library (along with the winner, Dead End in Norvelt, which I also hadn't read).  So this review is looking at the book not only on its own, but as one of the Honor winners of this year's Newbery Awards.

Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin

I'm much more torn about this book, having read it knowing it was a Newbery Honors winner, than I think I would have been had I just read it straight.  It is definitely a good book on a really important topic that I don't believe is covered much in American children's literature--namely, the Great Purge, Joseph Stalin's campaign of terror and repression of the Soviet people during the years of 1936-1938.

It is estimated that over 20 million people were killed, imprisoned, or exiled during Stalin's reign, and almost no one could rest confidently in the knowledge that he or she would not be next.   Even the low estimates of actual deaths during that period believe that Stalin's purges killed at least as many people as the Nazis did in the holocaust (not even including the six to seven million who starved to death in the Ukraine from a famine that Stalin basically created).  Yet few students are aware of the fact that Stalin was on par with Hitler in terms of genocide.

So it is definitely an important subject to be covered, and one that is difficult to cover in a way appropriate to early adolescents.  I sympathicize with the author on how difficult it must be to try to walk that narrow path.  Yelchin, who was born and raised in the Soviet Union and whose father survived Stalin's regime, tells the story from the point of view of a young boy who idolizes Stalin and is a true believer in communism.  It is a tale of a dramatic 24 hour period in which several people he knows get caught up in the betrayal, bigotry, denunciation, and disappearance that was so common at that time, and he must figure out what path is right for him.   It is a powerful and affective way for students who are learning about the Stalin purges to experience them through the eyes of someone their own age.

My issue about the book, though, is whether students reading it on their own can really "get"a lot of the messages that are packed into the story.   Since we are studying 20th century history this year, and have been reading about Lenin and Stalin and such, it is a perfect adjunct to the histories and biographies my son has been reading.  But without that context, I don't know that students would understand some of the things that are implied, but not stated.

The problem is enhanced, I think, by Yelchin's writing style.  It is a short book--only 160 pages--and they are little pages, many of which are actually illustrations (Yelchin is a children's book illustrator).  Plus it is pretty simple vocabulary, without a lot of exposition or interior dialogue and such.  This makes it a very quick read.  I read it in under an hour; my son said it took him 20 minutes.  So I think there is a tendency to read through it quickly and to not really consider what the book is suggesting about the Soviet system at that time.  The simple style makes it seem like it is geared to the younger end of the Newbery spectrum--nine or ten year olds--but I don't think many children study anything about Stalin until at least middle school, and sometimes not until high school.    But without some background, I just don't think students are going to pick up on what I think the book is really saying.

In short, I think it is a wonderful resource to have on hand when studying this awful period of history.  But I'm not sure it works as a stand-alone book for this age.  I think it suffers in comparison to a book like Words in the Dust, which did such a masterful job of conveying an alien world that most middle schoolers know nothing about, but feel they understand after completing the book.  I don't think middle schoolers feel that way about Stalin's USSR after reading this book.  So, personally, I don't think I would have given this book a Newbery Honor award.

But I do honor Yelchin for trying to write a book on such a difficult topic for this age, but one that definitely needs more visibility.  And I do think it is a marvelous novel to read in conjunction with studying this period.  With some historical knowledge, it can help students understand what that time must have felt like for kids their age, without it becoming too depressing or overwhelming for this stage of development.

Book Review: Second Fiddle by Rosanne Parry

Second Fiddle by Rosanne Parry

This book combines a lot of themes. One is the life of displacement that it is to be a child of a military family--something I was familiar with, although my father was in government service in international finance, rather than the military. But I could relate to the three girls who are the protagonists of the book, all used to a life of moving every few years and losing the friends and connections built up in previous locations. Then there is the call of music--the joy, the striving, the competitions, and the way it can bring people together.

Another familiar strand of the book is the typical adolescent belief that “I’m not as ______ as....” Not as pretty, not as popular, not as rich, not as smart, not as whatever quality we are sure that we lack in middle and high school (and beyond, if we don’t mature). In this case, the narrator, Jody Field, is sure that she isn’t as smart, beautiful, fashionable, confident, or talented as her two best friends, Giselle and Vivian, who are other American daughters of military or diplomatic families stationed in Berlin. But that is OK--she is used to playing second fiddle behind Vivian’s lead and Giselle’s cello.

However, the girls aren’t just living in Berlin--they are living there during the turbulent times of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of East Germany with West Germany. They get caught up trying to save a Soviet soldier who is trying to return to his native Estonia and to pass important information to the West about a toxic weapon the Russians want him to transport.

All these leads to a clandestine trip to Paris, an international music competition, foreign spies, playing music with Spanish gypsies, finding a refuge in a socialist bookstore, and other such adventures. But at the heart, the story is about playing music, being with your friends, and trying to do the right thing. So even though the circumstances are far removed from what most middle schoolers who read this book are familiar with, the underlying messages are ones that almost everyone has experienced in their lives, no matter where that might be.

Hanukkah Blog 2011: The US Holocaust Museum

Since tonight will be the last night of Hanukkah, I thought I should post one other Jewish-related item we did when we were in DC:  visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  The museum is operated as part of a public-private partnership, where the federal government donated the space, just off the National Mall next to the Building of Printing and Engraving, and private funds paid for the construction costs of the museum.  As well as being a free resource that people can visit to learn about the Holocaust, the museum maintains an active role in education and prevention advocacy about genocide in general, not just a remembrance of the actions of Nazi Germany.

This was the first time I had taken my son to this museum, because it is a grim topic, and the displays can be quite horrific.  So I didn't want to take him until he was old enough to understand and process what he was seeing.  And even though now he is 12, he is still sensitive, particularly to visual images because he is such a visually-oriented person.  So even as a middle schooler, I didn't really want him to focus on the main exhibition of the museum, which is a timeline of the Holocaust of Jewish and other non-Aryan or non-perfect people by the Nazis.

However, there are currently two other exhibits there that I ABSOLUTELY recommend for middle schoolers.  One is called Remember the Children: Daniel's Story, and has been specifically designed for children age 8 and up.  In it, you follow the life of a Jewish boy named Daniel through displays of his life.  He begins life as the son of a shopkeeper, and you visit the home of a typical middle class German family.  Daniel then begins to talk about the increasing discrimination against Jews, then finally their forced relocation, first to a Jewish ghetto, and finally to a concentration camp.  All of this takes place in displays of the various settings, so visitors can see what first a home, then a ghetto, then a concentration camp looks like.  So it does an excellent job of demonstrating what Jewish families went through during those years, but without becoming too depressing or overwhelming for children (apparently, three child pyschologists were involved in developing the exhibit to keep that fine balance).

This exhibit is very well done, and really conveys to children the seriousness of the Holocaust in an age-appropriate way.

The other exhibit we saw was not  designed for children, but was an EXCELLENT way to cover the material with a sensitive middle school.  It was State of Deception:  The Power of Nazi Propaganda.  I can't say enough about this exhibit!  It began with a discussion of what is propaganda, as opposed to, say, advertising or biased journalism or political persuasion.  It then goes through the entire timeline of the Nazi rise to power, control of Germany, war and Holocaust, and eventual defeat--as far as I could tell, it covers the same historical events as the main Holocaust exhibit upstairs.  However, instead of horribly upsetting pictures of tortured, imaceated, or dead families, it uses images from the Nazi propaganda machine.  It basically tells the story of HOW Hitler was able to achieve all that he did....which is fascinating, and in the end, perhaps the most important lesson to be taken from that whole bleak period in our world's history (that is, to make sure it doesn't happen again).   Plus it was the perfect solution for my image-sensitive son--a great way to learn about the entire Nazi regime without having nightmares afterwards.

I learned a lot myself.  For example, I never realized before that Hitler learned all about propaganda from his experience as a World War I soldier at the receiving end of the Allies, particularly American, propaganda.  Hilter believed that it was the propaganda that defeated Germany, not the military resources, and he took everything he learned from the Americans--and more--in molding Germany opinion in line with his goals.

It is an incredibly powerful and insightful exhibit.  So if you happen to be in DC, I highly recommend it.

Christmas 2011 Blog: Happy Boxing Day

When it comes to the day after Christmas, we prefer the English tradition of Boxing Day to the American tradition of going out and spending more money on after-Christmas sales.  We like to lounge around, enjoying our gifts, and then cooking and eating a British Christmas meal of roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding and such.  This year, one of my sister-in-laws gave us a mincemeat pie she made, and we made some English shortbread, so we're set for desserts!

I always thought the name came from the boxes of leftovers that English aristocracy gave their servants for their day off to celebrate Christmas with their own families a day late, but according to this article from Time, there is disagreement about where the term boxing day came from.  But it is a nice description of both the history and present-day permutations of Boxing Day around the world, so click here to read more.

I hope you are enjoying however it is that you spend the day.  Here in the Cary/Raleigh area, it looks like it is going to be a sunny, cool day, perfect for walking off some of those Christmas calories.

Curriculum Resource: Discovering Music with Carol Reynolds

Today my son and I broke out some new curriculum I bought recently for this academic year.  It is a 13-hour DVD course entitled Discovering Music:  300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Arts, History, and Culture.  It is a middle school/high school level course that relates music history to the political, religious, scientific, artistic, technological, and other cultural developments that shaped the composers and musicians of each succeeding era.

This is exactly how I like to study subjects.  I don't believe in examining each discipline in isolation; rather, I think you can understand them best when you cover them in relation to the other developments going on at the same time that effected them.  However, music history is one of my personal weaker points--I can do a much better job explaining literature and art, for example, in terms of what was going on in other realms at that historical period than I can do with music.  So I am glad to have this opportunity to fill in some of my ignorance as I take this course along with my son.

We did the first unit, which I think is a lot more "talky" and theoretical than the bulk of the course, because it is laying the foundations and explaining why we should study history via music and study music via history, etc.  But my son enjoyed it enough that he wanted to move onto the second unit right away.  This one also was setting up the big picture, rather than getting into the music itself too much, but we both learned quite a bit and are looking forward to the next session.

The course was developed by, and features, Dr. Carol Reynolds, an enthusiastic and experienced music history educator from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX.  She does a good job as a lively but easy to follow narrator of the course material, as well as playing a grand organ herself to demonstrate a piece of music written by Martin Luther (I never knew he wrote music along with all the other stuff he was up to in revolutionizing European Christianity).

This class is also perfect for us because it begins in the 15th century, but really focuses on Western history from the early 1600s to World War 1.  We have already studied World history up to that date, so I'm hoping we will have at least touched on all the major political, scientific, and large artistic movements covered in the DVDs.  That will allow him to concentrate on the new information about the music and hang that onto what we have already covered, as well as helping him get a better understanding of that history.

The curriculum isn't cheap, but you get a lot for it.  In addition to eight DVDs that contain over 13 hours of instruction, you receive a 236 page workbook and three professional quality CDs that contain the works discussed in the course to listen to on their own.

We've only gotten started, but I'm impressed with the quality of the materials we've looked at so far.  My son is enjoying it, and I'm already learning stuff I never knew....so what else could you ask for from a curriculum?  But I'll give a more informed review of the curriculum in a future blog post once we have completed more of it.

Happy Bastille Day!

Happy Bastille Day!  Bastille Day is, of course, French National Day, observed every July 14th as the anniversary of the storming of the infamous French prison, the Bastille.  In line with our general philosophy of celebrating every holiday that we can, we had marked this day previously in years past.  However, since we actually studied the French Revolution this past year, it seemed appropriate to make an even bigger occasion of Bastille Day then usual.

Yesterday we invited some friends over to help prepare a French meal with us.  We started by munching on apples and a French baguette while we chopped up food for our main dish.

We then had meat fondue, cooking our steak, chicken, or sausage (consumed along with some fresh raw vegetables) in boiling broth rather than the more traditional, but less healthy or safe, boiling oil.

We concluded the meal with home made cream puffs--home made puff pastries filled with hand-whipped cream and blackberry curd homemade from berries our friends had picked themselves.

Delicious!  They were consumed almost immediately, of course....

Today I'm trying a less traditional dish.  I'm making what I am calling Lasagna Provencal--kind of a cross between traditional Lasagna and Ratatouille, accompanied by baguette once again.

If nothing else, you should at least mark the occasion by watching this video about the French Revolution from the History Teachers series that I've mentioned before:




Enjoy!

History Teachers Meet Bollywood!

OK, so that title might be a bit of an exaggeration.

However, a few months ago a had a post about these wonderful history teachers who are posting free music videos on YouTube of history topics set to popular music (check out the link for more background and some of my favorites of their videos).

They have done a couple more since my post, but my favorite is a video about the Mahabharata, the epic Indian morality tales that includes the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred text for Hinduism.  It is done Indian style, with the video of the lead singer demonstrating her use of four arms.




It is great to seem them expanding from basic Western Civilization history.  We are doing Hinduism in the fall, so I'm definitely saving this for my coming classes.

Curriculum Resource: Muhammad

Our World Religion class is now studying Islam, and, of course, a central topic in Islam is the prophet Muhammad.  I found two books that are great for this age range in helping to understand this important man.

The first is the picture book Muhammad by Demi.  Demi, a children's author and illustrator whose work mostly centers on ethnic folk tales and/or religious stories or people, has another winner with this book.  As with all of Demi's work, the pictures are gorgeous and reflect the style of the culture of the person/story (in this case, Arabic).  For example, in deference to the Muslim prohibition against having pictures of Muhammad (it constitutes a "false idol" in their religion), Demi puts him in the picture only as an outline, usually filled in with gold leaf.

But while it is a picture book, it also has plenty of substance for the middle school student.  The book provides a good overview of Muhammad's life and role in Islam and Arabic culture.  In our case, we read the book aloud, which kept the students absorbed in the story and left time in a single class for some good discussion as well (in our case, we also did a Venn diagram to discuss the similarities and difference between Jesus--the last prophet we studied--and Muhammad).

For more depth, however, I recommend the book Muhammad of Mecca:  Prophet of Islam by Elsa Marston.   This book goes into more depth about the events in Muhammad's life and tries to keep an even-handed approach about what is known and what is more conjecture.   It does not deal with spiritual issues at all, but merely reports the best facts as we know them.  However, I thought it was very helpful in explaining the culture of the times, which I think helps explain some of the practices in Islam that can be most confusing or difficult for students to understand (or even Christians/Americans in general).  And it is geared toward the middle school level of reading/understanding.

We are using this two books as major building blocks as we try to create our foundation for our study of Islam.

Discussing the Death of Osama bin Laden with Middle Schoolers

It can be difficult for us as parents and teachers to know how to approach emotional but potentially controversial current events, such as the recent raid and death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, with our middle schoolers and teenagers.  However, at least in the case of the Osama bin Laden case, the White House has some online resources to help us out.

On May 5, 2011, the White House sponsored a webinar on this topic for middle school and high school students.  The person officiating the event was Ben Rhodes, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor.  Rhodes spent 10 minutes of the 30 minute webinar giving the White House perspective on the history and reasons why President Obama felt this course was necessary, and giving some fact about the attack itself.  Rhodes then spent the next 20 minutes answering questions from the 1,700 inquiries sent him by middle and high school students.

I think Rhodes did a good job presenting the Administration's perspective in a pretty straight-forward way, and his responses answer a lot of questions that may be in your children's minds, even if they can't verbalize them.  So I think this can be a useful resource in discussing this issue with them.  While the webinar is obviously over, you can access the recordings at the Discovery Education website under the heading A Discussion on Osama bin Laden.

Lesson Plan: 19th Century Japanese Game (Kai Awase)

In our 19th Century World History coop, we always have student presentations, then five stations prepared by the adults:  timeline, maps, craft, game, and food (although, after typing that, I have to admit that the student preference is in exactly the opposite order).  This week we were studying later 19th century Asian history---basically, what happened once Admiral Perry and company broke the Asian barriers to dealing with the West.

My assignment was to do a game.  We are great fans of the book Heart of a Samurai, which I reviewed in a previous post, so I focused on Japan.  My research showed that the Japanese played many games similar to our American card games, but they didn't use the paper cards like we did until well after they had been exposed to them by Portuguese traders.  Rather, they used something that was prevalent in that island nation--they used shells.  But in that Japanese way of only using things of beauty, they painted their shells and made them into incredible art pieces.  These had been used for many centuries, but most of the example for which I could find photographs had been made during the 19th century, so they were still the rage at that time among the upper class Japanese.

I found that they played a game that was similar to our game of Concentration.  Entitled Kai Awase (which the web tells me is based on "kai" meaning "shell" and "awase" meaning "joining" or "matching"),  the point of this game is to find shells with the same picture inside.  The shells have been painted in a beautiful Japanese style, often using gold plate and other expensive paints, with the inside/concave side having a scene from Japanese literature, poetry, or nature scenes.  The shells are placed facing down, and players have to select the matching pair.  However, this was particularly difficult because a full set of traditional kai awase shells contained 360 pairs of shells, all contained in a box called a "kaioke."

Based on this information, I tried making my own set of WAY faux kai awase.  First, I bought some shells at Michaels (using my 40% discount coupon, of course).  I covered the outside with origami paper, which I used Sparkle Mod Podge to adfix to the the shell.   I know the Japanese scene was supposed to be inside the shell, but knowing the difficulties in adhering paper to shell, I was afraid I couldn't get exactly the same part of the origami paper to fit inside the shell, and thus might throw the students off in their match-seeking.  However, although not the way the real items are, the students found them quite beautiful, which was a lesson I was trying to teach them about the Japanese culture.

Kai Awase shell

On the inside, instead of a Japanese scene or a poem that I thought wouldn't be significant for our students, I stuck on pairs of kamons, or Japanese family crests.  I found a website with copyright-free kamon images, and selected some animals symbols that I thought the students would enjoy.  So the inside of the shells looked like this:

Butterfly Kamon on inside of Kai Awase shell 

While a full set contained 720 shells, I'm afraid my set only had 16.  However, that was sufficient to sustain the interest of our students, who played in groups of 3 or 4.  I did make my version of a kaioki by adding some origami paper to a wooden cigar box that I had:

Kaioke for Kai Awase game

Kai Awase game pieces in Kaioke box

So, just like Concentration, the shells are placed kamon-side down, and students took turns picking two shells.  If they matched, they got to keep them and score points from them.  If they didn't match, they put them back, kamon-side down, and the next player got a chance to play.

I think the game worked out very well.  While really nothing like their Japanese ancestors, my shells were shiny and pretty and the kids liked playing with them.  They learned about kamons, and part of the game was trying to figure out what animals were displayed in the graphic images.  At the end, I also gave them a chance to choose which of the images they would select for their family crest, and their choices were wide-ranging and somewhat revealing.

So if you are doing a unit on Japan, I recommend including something like this.  I think it works because it contains some familiar elements--I think every middle schooler has played a matching game like this--but also illustrates some important aspects of Japanese culture in a way that is more interesting to kids than the usual lecture.

Geography Fair

One of the things that our homeschooling community does each year is sponsor a Geography Fair, in which each participating family puts up a table about a particular country, with a Science Fair-type board, display items, and our favorite item--FOOD!  This is a multi-age thing, rather than just a middle school age thing.  However, it is something that we have done for years, and which I think I still valuable.  It is one of those things that is interesting to do over time, because it does really demonstrate the evolution of our  children over time.

I can't remember all the countries we've done, but I know the last two ones we did--Congo and Chile---were chosen by my son based on animals or environmental factors.  However, this year we did Ethiopia.  My son chose that country because he did a report on Ethiopia for his 19th Century History Coop, and discovered that among all the nations in Africa, Ethiopia was the only one that really was able to remain independent in the 19th Century after the Berlin Conference of 1884, when Europe decided to divide up Africa between them as European colonies (disregarding what the Africans might have thought about the idea, of course).  So I see that as a middle school development--no longer choosing his country on the basis of animals or rain forests, etc., but on the basis of a historical/political fact.

However, it did break the rule I had set after our experience with the Congo, which was NO MORE GEOGRAPHY FAIR PROJECTS FROM AFRICA!  Now, this is not because Africa is not interesting nor valuable, because it is.  But a big component of these displays is food for people to sample, and African food is....well, let's just call it challenging.  (For the Congo, it was not just challenging, it was the pits.   Believe me, we tried, but every Congo recipe we made that didn't have things in it that we were allergic to was pretty much inedible. )

Ethiopian food, however, is quite spicy and enjoyable.  Unfortunately, it is quite hard to fix at home, especially in the South.  The food is made in a barbare sauce, which requires about $50 to buy about 12 spices....which I reduced to $8 and two spices, especially because I didn't want to make it really spicy for all the children who would be attending.  It is served on a large sourdough and spongy flatbread called injera, which is made out of a type of wheat that is only grown in Africa,   So instead, I just used tortillas.

So, really, it wasn't anything like real Ethiopian food.  But I did explain about how the Ethiopians eat without utensils, but just tear off bits of their platter bread (the food is served on top of a piece of injera that can cover the entire table) and scoop up the stew-like food.  Thus, the students got to have an experience of eating kind of like the traditional Ethiopians.

Here is our dish, which is an Anglosized version of Doro Wat:

Of course, much of the evening is spent going to the other tables and learning from the other displays (this year, each child had a "passport" where they wrote done relevent facts and got a stamp to demonstrate that they had visited).  Below is a selection of the wonderful table displays:

It was a really fun and educational night.  We appreciate everyone who put so much time into their displays and their food.

Curriculum Resource: Fling the Teacher

One of the fun free educational software programs that you can use to check your students' knowledge on a subject is "Fling the Teacher."  In this software, students get to change the look of the "teacher"--hair and skin color, hair style, mouth/teeth, accessories (glasses and earrings), etc.--stick him in a barrel, and fling him through the air using a trebuchet they construct by answering 15 questions correctly.  It is pretty much just a fact recall quiz, but it is kind of cute and the students enjoy building up their equipment until it is ready to toss the digital professor into the air.

We used this software this week in our 19th Century History Coop to review some of the facts about the Westward Expansion and Industrial Revolution in the US.  The link for this game is: http://www.solpass.org/7ss/Games/WestwardExpansion.html

There is another quiz about this time period as well, which you can see at: http://www.lisd.net/schools/briar/fling/Westward%20Expansion.html

What is nice about these games is that they are quick, so you can complete them in a short enough period of time that the students don't lose interest.  You can do them several times in a role to get enough right answers to complete your trebuchet and fling the teacher; the software scrambles the answers (and sometimes the questions), so the students really learn the questions they answered incorrectly at first on subsequent tries of the problem.  Best of all, the software is open to everyone to create your own quiz using your own questions for whatever subject you are studying.

Here is a website with a list of Fling the Teacher quizzes from American History.

Here is one with questions about World, but mostly European History.

Here is one with other subjects.

And if you want to make your own, here is where you download the software.

Or, even better, get your students to create one to demonstrate how much they have learned!