Tenafly Middle School

Critical Reading Unit A One-Marking-Period Course for Grade 6 By Janet Chai, Andrea Florczak, & Juliana Meehan

Second Edition

2012

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Copyrighted Material; for Classroom Use Only

Contents UNIT PLAN .................................................................................................................................................... 4 17 Going on 18 by Anna Quindlen .................................................................................................... 8 A Day at the Zoo by Jack Prelutsky ................................................................................................ 10 The Street That Got Mislaid by Patrick Waddington.............................................................. 11 Dreams by Langston Hughes ........................................................................................................... 14 Nelson, My Dog by Gary Soto........................................................................................................... 15 Abandoned Farmhouse by Ted Kooser ....................................................................................... 17 The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes ................................................................................................ 18 Old Lilacs by Ted Kooser ................................................................................................................... 22 All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury ........................................................................................ 23 Reading Guide #1 for “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury ......................................... 27 Reading Guide #2 for “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury ......................................... 29 Lunch Line Redesign by Brian Wansink, David R. Just and Joe Mckendry .................... 30 Reading Guide for “Lunch Line Redesign” by Ray Bradbury .............................................. 31 Changed by Naomi Shihab Nye ....................................................................................................... 32 Eleven by Sandra Cisneros ............................................................................................................... 33 Failure is a Good Thing by Jon Carroll ......................................................................................... 36 “Failure Is a Good Thing” Reading Guide #1 ............................................................................. 37 “Failure Is a Good Thing”- Reading Guide #2........................................................................... 38 Bad Blood by Will Weaver ................................................................................................................ 39 Reading Guide for “Bad Blood” by Will Weaver ....................................................................... 47 “Bad Blood” - Inferential Discussion Statements .................................................................... 49 “Bad Blood” – What Are Idioms?.................................................................................................... 51 Hope by Gary Soto ............................................................................................................................... 52 I’m Nobody by Emily Dickenson .................................................................................................... 53 In New Jersey Once by Maria Mazziotti Gillan .......................................................................... 54 Aprender el inglés by Luis Alberto Ambroggio ........................................................................ 55 Learning English by Luis Alberto Ambroggio ........................................................................... 55 Meteor Watch by Naomi Shihab Nye ............................................................................................ 56 Momentum by Catherine Doty........................................................................................................ 57 Mr. Entwhistle by Jean Little ........................................................................................................... 58 1

My Dad is Better Than Your Dad by Andy Griffiths ................................................................ 59 Reading Guide - “My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad” ............................................................... 60 Oranges by Gary Soto ......................................................................................................................... 61 More Questions about “Oranges” by Gary Soto ........................................................................ 62 Public School #18: Paterson, New Jersey by Maria Mazziotti Gillan ............................... 64 Reading Guide - “Public School #18: Paterson, New Jersey” .............................................. 65 Purple by Alexis Rotella..................................................................................................................... 66 Writing About Reading – “Public School #18” and “Purple” ............................................... 67 The Lost Art of Building With Your Hands by Mitch Albom ............................................... 69 Reading Guide for “The Lost Art of Building with Your Hands” ........................................ 71 Shells by Cynthia Rylant .................................................................................................................... 72 Smoky Night by Eve Bunting ........................................................................................................... 75 Survival of the Fittest by Soledad O’Brien .................................................................................. 78 Reading Guide for “Survival of the Fittest” by Soledad O’Brien ......................................... 80 Taco Head by Viola Canales ............................................................................................................. 82 Thank You, M’am by Langston Hughes........................................................................................ 84 “Thank You Ma’am” - Student-Created Discussion Statements ......................................... 87 The Candy Bite by Viola Canales .................................................................................................... 88 The Follower by Jack Gantos ........................................................................................................... 90 Vocabulary in “The Follower” by Jack Gantos .......................................................................... 93 What Is an Idiom? ................................................................................................................................ 94 Literal and Inferential Questioning in “The Follower” .......................................................... 95 The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein ................................................................ 98 The Marble Champ by Gary Soto.................................................................................................... 99 The Rider by Naomi Shihab Nye ..................................................................................................102 Reading Guide – “The Rider” .........................................................................................................103 The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.........................................................................................104 They Are My Friends by Margaret Atwood..............................................................................105 Reading Guide #1 “They Are My Friends” ...............................................................................108 Reading Guide #1 “They Are My Friends” – Suggested Answers ....................................109 Reading Guide #2 “They Are My Friends” by Margaret Atwood .....................................110 “They Are My Friends” - Discussion Statements ...................................................................111 Vacation by Rita Dove ......................................................................................................................113 Vocabulary Lesson by Ann Wagner ............................................................................................114 Priscilla and the Wimps by Richard Peck .................................................................................115 Reading Guide #1 - “Priscilla and the Wimps” .......................................................................117 2

Reading Guide #2 for “Priscilla and the Wimps” by Richard Peck .................................118 Verbs List for Open-Ended Response – “Priscilla” ................................................................120 “Priscilla” Student Response Samples .......................................................................................121 I, Too by Langston Hughes .............................................................................................................123 Theme for English B by Langston Hughes................................................................................124 Additional Resources........................................................................................................................125 Active Reading Strategies ...............................................................................................................126 Annotating a Text...............................................................................................................................127 Critical Reading Literacy Survey ..................................................................................................128 Critical Reading – Course Evaluation .........................................................................................130

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UNIT PLAN Tenafly Public Schools Curriculum Continuum Template Mindful Teachers…Mindful Design…Mindful Students Subject Area: Language Arts Grade: 6 Team Members: Janet Chai, Andrea Florczak, Juliana Meehan Created: July, 2011; revised July 2012 Unit Name: Critical Reading (one-marking-period course) Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts: RL.6.1,2,3,4,5,6,9,10 RI.6.1,2,3,4,5,10 W.6.1a-e,4 SL.6.1a-d L.6.4a-d, 5,6 STAGE 1: DESIRED RESULTS Transfer Students will be able to independently use their learning to... Approach texts—fiction and nonfiction, prose and poetry—with a critical eye and uncover perspectives and messages Read for the purpose of stimulating and extending thought Read for enjoyment Uncover layers of meaning in the world by viewing it with a critical eye, extending beyond texts to include issues and people Enduring Understandings (Meaning): Students will understand that... Readers read with particular lenses; shaped by/acquired through personal history, preferences, viewpoints, experiences, and these lenses impact what and how they read and make meaning from a text. Critically analyzing texts uncovers the writer's and the reader's personal lenses, allowing the reader to draw varied meanings from the reading. By comparing and contrasting texts we arrive at deeper understandings of the world and ourselves. The world is fraught with layers of meaning that take a critical eye to uncover. Reading changes the reader. Reading invites interpretation - a text may have several meanings, dependent not only on the writer's perspective but also that of the reader. Reading helps us realize things in the world and gives us new perspectives. Discussing a text leads to greater understandings and insights. Writing about a text leads to greater understandings and insights. 4

Essential Questions (Meaning): Students will keep considering... What particular lenses do you bring to your reading? How do books reshape our understandings? What can we learn from books about ourselves? About each other? About the world? What strategies do active readers use to comprehend text? What is the proper way to conduct a classroom discussion? How can we engage in class discussions around our reading in a way that builds and strengthens us as a reading community? What is the value of a classroom discussion? How do we write about reading in a way that illuminates others about our reading experience? How does writing about our reading lead to greater understanding and insights? Performance Tasks (Acquisition): Students will know… How to make meaning from our reading How to analyze texts through various lenses and uncover deeper, possibly hidden, meanings How to summarize and reflect on a text, verbally and in writing How to write about reading, supporting ideas with evidence from the text How to conduct a classroom discussion in which multiple viewpoints are presented, considered, and respected How to work with peers in uncovering meanings from texts How to compare and contrast texts—verbally and in writing—to gain deeper insights Skills (Acquisition): Students will be skilled at... Composing brief critical responses to their reading on a regular basis Practicing a variety of comprehension strategies, including (but not limited to): drawing inferences; making predictions; visualizing; responding to reading through short and long writing pieces; deciphering figurative language; learning new words through context clues, word roots, and connotation Comparing and contrasting their own viewpoints with those of their classmates Writing critically about ideas found in reading and supporting their ideas with textual evidence Sharing ideas and enhancing understandings through respectful and orderly classroom discussion

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STAGE 2: EVIDENCE Assessments: Students will show that they really understand by evidence of... Formative Formulating questions and observations about whole-class texts in various ways, including but not limited to Post-it responses, T-charts, T/S connections, excerpting key passages, annotation Engaging in orderly discussions of whole-class texts in which all viewpoints are heard, considered, and respected Quick-writes for analysis and discussion Quizzes on selected reading skills, e.g., making inferences, supporting ideas with evidence from text, understanding words in context, interpreting figurative language Frequent practice in writing about reading and supporting ideas through textual evidence Summative Writing about reading through explaining and supporting their inferences with textual evidence Keeping a reading journal according to a rubric Quizzes on selected reading skills, e.g., making inferences, supporting ideas with evidence from text, understanding words in context, interpreting figurative language Engaging in orderly discussions of whole-class texts in which all viewpoints are heard and respected

STAGE 3: LEARNING PLAN Provide a balanced mix of quality short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that can be analyzed by the whole class Ensure silent reading on a daily basis Conduct regular teacher read-alouds Conduct frequent minilessons in discrete reading skills including but not limited to teacher demonstrations followed by student practice in: o Inferential thinking through read-alouds o Word study: puzzling out words using context clues, roots/prefixes/suffixes, connotation o Writing about reading - supporting ideas and inferences with evidence from text o Discussing ideas uncovered through reading Give frequent quizzes (formative and summative) on selected reading skills, e.g., making inferences, supporting ideas with evidence from text, understanding words in context, interpreting figurative language, new words Allow time for sharing of successes at end of selected class periods

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Require frequent writing about reading through explaining and supporting their inferences with textual evidence; support students in how to do this (gradual release of responsibility) Personal dictionary project – students will choose select words from readings that they will commit to memory and put into a personal dictionary, which will be due at the end of the marking period Monitor progress through status-of-the class teacher forms; notes, observations, and conversations; one-on-one conferences; one-on-one reading assessments where indicated Explore the following as appropriate: idioms, the dictionary, the thesaurus, Look for common misconceptions and skill deficits—including skimming rather than reading for meaning, continuing to read inappropriate books (too hard/too easy) or books that do not interest them, thinking that fiction cannot teach truths—and correct them. Use high quality mentor texts for teacher read-alouds, modeling of thinking, and student practice; see attached table of suggested titles. Aim for 20-25 of these texts (or others) in the course of the marking period, averaging 3 texts per week for reading, annotation, discussion, and writing.

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17 Going on 18 by Anna Quindlen December 01, 1994 DEAR GOLDEN Girl, Got a letter from your mom the other day. Her description did you proud: "At seventeen she is at the high end of meeting every parent's expectations, including mine," she wrote. "An A student, captain of the tennis team, president of her high school service organization." But her tone was despondent, disappointed. You've started to smoke, and she wants me to persuade you to stop. That's not the way it works. Seventeen or 70, people quit smoking when they've convinced themselves it's the right thing to do. But there are a few things I can mention. There's the guy you may fall in love with someday who thinks kissing a smoker is as seductive as licking the bottom of a dirty ashtray. There are the babies you might want to have and the damage you could do to them if you are so addicted to smoking that you can't quit when you're pregnant. There are the yellow fingers and the yellow teeth. Your clothes smell. So does your hair. It gets harder to stop every day. In this very newspaper we ran a photograph of two fashion industry types wearing Tshirts that are part of a campaign to combat breast cancer. Each was holding a bottle of designer water in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The mixed messages you receive are confusing. There's nothing confusing about smoking for me. I remember the day of the rehearsal dinner for Jim and Mary's wedding, when my father-in-law picked me up at the bus stop, his voice whittled away to a faint rasp. A cold, he said. Laryngitis. A year later he was dead of lung cancer, still smoking up to the end. Bill Cahan, the surgeon who has been an inveterate foe of the tobacco industry, sent me a photograph of a diseased lung. It looks like an alien life form in a bad sci-fi movie. He says I should remind you that smokers who take the pill face an increased risk of hardening of the arteries, stroke and heart disease. Joe Cherner, who founded an anti-smoking advocacy group, says I should mention that you're being manipulated by the middle-aged. "There's an entire group of adults whose careers depend on getting you to start smoking by deception," he says. More than 400,000 people will die because of cigarettes this year. You're part of the next wave, the new wave, of consumers, patients, fatalities. Welcome to the oncology floor. And meet Janet Sackman, who remembers 17 as if it were yesterday. "When I was 17 I had the world in my hands," she says, and she's not exaggerating. She was a successful model: soap and swimsuit ads, the covers of Life and Look. In 1949 they stood her on skis in a studio with phony mountains in the background and a fan 8

blowing her blond hair and made her the Lucky Strike girl. There was just one catch: "An executive for the tobacco people said to me, 'It would be a good idea for you to learn how to smoke. That way you'll look authentic.' " So at just your age Janet learned to smoke. She went on to do Chesterfield ads on television -- "You know, he's right!" she enthused when the announcer said that Chesterfield left no unpleasant aftertaste -- and to marry and have four children. In 1983 she had her larynx removed and in 1990 she lost part of one lung. She still looks great but she doesn't sound so good. Her voice box gone, she had to learn to talk all over again, burping air through a hole in her esophagus just above the collarbone. It took her about six months to say her first word; now she teaches others the technique. "I cough through that hole, I sneeze through that hole, and I talk through that hole," she says in a mechanical croak. "I can't make any sound when I laugh or cry. I can't be sarcastic and I can't tell a joke. I have the same monotone speech all the time." "And I'm one of the fortunate ones," she added, "because I'm alive. I wish I had realized how important my life was when I was 17. Tell her the single most important thing to do for your looks and your life, is not to smoke. If she could hear me speak, she'd listen." Your mother says you have a birthday coming up. Here's Janet Sackman's suggestion for what you could give yourself as a gift: many many more.

Anna Quindlen is a columnist for the New York Times.

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A Day at the Zoo by Jack Prelutsky Okay... here's a true story from when I was about twelve or maybe fourteen years old. I never told it to my mother, because I'm sure she would have dropped dead on the spot. About a year later, I did tell my father, who rolled his eyes and thought it was sort of funny. It all happened in the Bronx in the early 1950s. The Bronx is where I grew up and hung out with a guy named Bobby. We were great friends, because we had so much in common. Both of us could eat more of anything than anyone else we knew, and we were both experts at drinking milk and making it come out of our noses. We also got beat up by the same bigger kids. The two of us also shared an interest in wild animals, and we were lucky to live just a couple of miles from the Bronx Zoo, one of the most famous zoos in the world. We went there often and always walked, not because we enjoyed walking all that much, but because we didn't have a whole lot of money. By saving on bus fare, we could afford to get a few hamburgers or hot dogs along the way. Then, while still digesting our food, we often worked on our belching technique. Anyhow, it was the summer, and we were at the zoo. Both of us had cheap little cameras. I don't remember what Bobby's was, but mine was an old Kodak Brownie that my father had loaned me. It was a simple camera, good enough for taking close-ups of animals in cages, but practically useless for photographing anything at a distance. We'd spent an hour or so snapping pictures of seals and leopards and keeping our distance from a certain famous monkey. The monkey was famous because he liked to throw his poop at people. His aim was pretty good...that's why we kept our distance. We decided to go over to an area called African Plains, a natural habitat ruled by lions, and without any ugly bars. A deep, very steep moat was the only barrier that kept the lions away from the folks visiting the zoo. I took a few pictures of the lions, but felt frustrated because my little camera made the lions look like featureless clumps of tawny lint. I tried figuring out ways of getting closer...a lot closer. It occurred to me that if I went down into the moat, I'd get really close to the lions. There were numerous signs advising not to do this, but I paid them no attention. Bobby watched, with what I took to be admiration, as I climbed over the short fence, crossed a short level expanse, and slid down a practically vertical wall into the moat. As soon as I was at the bottom, I began snapping photos of the lions. This was great! They were so close now that I was getting some really good pictures, the best I'd ever taken. I was so involved with what I was doing that I failed to notice that several of the lions had taken an interest in me, and were casually inching toward the moat. That's when a zookeeper, on the point of hysteria, suddenly appeared at -the top of the wall. He screamed so loud that he startled me out of my photographic reverie. "What the hell are you doing down there? Are you crazy? Get back up here you idiot, and I mean now!" I looked up at him, and replied innocently, "Why? The lions can't come down here. I'm safe. I'm OK." The zookeeper screamed even louder. "No, you're not. They can't climb up this side, but they can get down to where you are...And they haven't been fed yet!" A chill ran down my spine as I looked behind me and saw one of the lions leisurely sauntering down into the moat, heading in my direction. I wondered if he could smell the burgers on my breath. Suddenly, I was so scared that I began to belch uncontrollably. Still belching, I managed somehow to claw my way up the top of the wall in a fraction of the time it had taken me to get down.... I'd never moved so fast in my life. The zookeeper grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back over the fence. He gave me a dirty look and said, "You've got to be the dumbest kid I've ever seen. Now get out of here.... I don't want to see you again." By way of an exclamation point, he added a not-so-little slap to the side of my head. I took his advice without saying a word and left, noticing that Bobby couldn't stop laughing. On our way home I swore him to secrecy. And that's just one story I never told my mother.

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The Street That Got Mislaid by Patrick Waddington 1

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Marc Girondin had worked in the filing section of the city hall's engineering department for so long that the city was laid out in his mind like a map, full of names and places, intersecting streets and streets that led nowhere, blind alleys and winding lanes. Marc Girondin had worked in the filing section of the city hall's engineering department for so long that the city was laid out in his mind like a map, full of names and places, intersecting streets and streets that led nowhere, blind alleys and winding lanes. In all Montreal no one possessed such knowledge; a dozen policemen and taxi drivers together could not rival him. That is not to say that he actually knew the streets whose names he could recite like a series of incantations, for he did little walking. He knew simply of their existence, where they were, and in what relation they stood to others. But it was enough to make him a specialist. He was undisputed expert of the filing cabinets where all the particulars of all the streets from Abbott to Zotique were indexed, back, forward and across. Those aristocrats, the engineers, the inspectors of water mains and the like, all came to him when they wanted some little particular, some detail, in a hurry. They might despise him as a lowly clerk, but they needed him all the same. Marc much preferred his office, despite the profound lack of excitement of his work, to his room on Oven Street (running north and south from Sherbrooke East to St. Catherine), where his neighbors were noisy and sometimes violent, and his landlady consistently so. He tried to explain the meaning of his existence once to a fellow tenant, Louis, but without much success. Louis, when he got the drift, was apt to sneer. "So Craig latches on to Bleary and Bleary gets to be Park, so who cares? Why the excitement?" "I will show you," said Marc. "Tell me, first, where you live." "Are you crazy? Here on Oven Street. Where else?" "How do you know?" "How do I know? I'm here, ain't I? I pay my rent, don't I? I get my mail here, don't I?" Marc shook his head patiently. "None of that is evidence," he said. "You live here on Oven Street because it says so in my filing cabinet at city hall. The post office sends you mail because my card index tells it to. If my cards didn't say so, you wouldn't exist and Oven Street wouldn't either. That, my friend, is the triumph of bureaucracy." Louis walked away in disgust. "Try telling that to the landlady," he muttered. So Marc continued on his undistinguished career, his fortieth birthday came and went without remark, day after day passed uneventfully. A street was renamed, another constructed, a third widened; it all went carefully into the files, back, forward and across. And then something happened that filled him with amazemant, shocked him beyond measure, and made the world of the filing cabinets tremble to their steel bases. One August afternoon, opening a drawer to its fullest extent, he felt something catch. Exploring farther, he discovered a card stuck at the back between the top and bottom. He drew it out and found it to be an old index card, dirty and torn, but still perfectly decipherable. It was labeled RUE DE LA BOUTEILLE VERTE, or GREEN BOTTLE STREET. Marc stared at it in wonder. He had never heard of the place or of anything resembling so odd a name. Undoubtedly it had been retitled in some other fashion befitting the modern tendency. He checked the listed details and ruffled confidently through the master file of street names. It was not there. He made another search, careful and protracted, through the cabinets. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Once more he examined the card. There was no mistake. The date of the last regular street inspection was exactly fifteen years, five months and fourteen days ago.

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As the awful truth burst upon him, Marc dropped the card in horror, then pounced on it again fearfully, glancing over his shoulder as he did so. It was a lost, a forgotten street. For fifteen years and more it had existed in the heart of Montreal, not half a mile from city hall, and no one had known. It had simply dropped out of sight, a stone in water. In his heart, Marc had sometimes dreamed of such a possibility. There were so many obscure places, twisting lanes and streets jumbled together as intricately as an Egyptian labyrinth. But of course it could not happen, not with the omniscient file at hand. Only it had. And it was dynamite. It would blow the office sky-high. Vaguely, in his consternation, Marc remembered how, some time after he first started to work, his section had been moved to another floor. The old-fashioned files were discarded and all the cards made out afresh. It must have been at that time that Green Bottle Street was stuck between the upper and lower drawers. He put the card in his pocket and went home to reflect. That night he slept badly and monstrous figures flitted through his dreams. Among them appeared a gigantic likeness of his chief going mad and forcing him into a red-hot filing cabinet. The next day he made up his mind. Pleading illness, he took the afternoon off and with beating heart went looking for the street. Although he knew the location perfectly, he passed it twice and had to retrace his steps. Baffled, he closed his eyes, consulted his mind's infallible map and walked directly to the entry. It was so narrow that he could touch the adjoining walls with his outstretched hands. A few feet from the sidewalk was a tall and solid wooden structure, much weather-beaten, with a simple latched door in the center. This he opened and stepped inside. Green Bottle Street lay before him. It was perfectly real, and reassuring as well. On either side of a cobbled pavement were three small houses, six in all, each with a diminutive garden in front, spaced off by low iron palings of a kind that has disappeared except in the oldest quarters. The houses looked extremely neat and well kept and the cobbles appeared to have been recently watered and swept. Windowless brick walls of ancient warehouses encircled the six homes and joined at the farther end of the street. At his first glance, Marc realized how it had gotten its unusual name. It was exactly like a bottle in shape. With the sun shining on the stones and garden plots, and the blue sky overhead, the street gave him a momentary sense of well-being and peace. It was completely charming, a scene from a print of fifty years ago. A woman who Marc guessed was some sixty years of age was watering roses in the garden of the first house to his right. She gazed at him motionless, and the water flowed from her can unheeded to the ground. He took off his hat and announced, "I'm from the city engineering department, madam." The woman recovered herself and set her watering can down. "So you have found out at last," she said. At these words, Marc's reborn belief that after all he had made a harmless and ridiculous error fled precipitately. There was no mistake. "Tell me, please," he said tonelessly. It was a curious story. For several years, she said, the tenants of Green Bottle Street had lived in amity with each other and the landlord, who also resided in one of the little houses. The owner became so attached to them that in a gesture of goodwill he deeded them his property, together with a small sum of money, when he died. "We paid our taxes," the woman said, "and made out a multitude of forms and answered the questions of various officials at regular intervals about our property. Then, after a while, we were sent no notices, so we paid no more taxes. No one bothered us at all. It was a long time

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before we understood that in some way they'd forgotten about us." Marc nodded. Of course, if Green Bottle Street had dropped from the ken of city hall, no inspectors would go there, no census takers, no tax collectors. All would pass merrily by, directed elsewhere by the infallible filing cabinet. "Then Michael Flanagan, who lives at number four," she went on, "a most interesting man, you must meet him--Mr. Flanagan called us together and said that if miracles happened, we should aid and abet them. It was he who had the door built and put up at the entrance to keep out passersby or officials who might come along. We used to keep it locked, but it's been so long since anyone came that we don't bother now. "Oh, there were many little things we had to do, like getting our mail at the post office and never having anything delivered at the door. Now almost the only visits we make to the outside world are to buy our food and clothes." "And there has never been any change here all that time?" Marc asked. "Yes, two of our friends died, and their rooms were empty for a while. Then Jean Desselin--he's in 40 number six and sometimes goes into the city--returned with a Mr. Plonsky, a refugee. Mr. Plonsky was very tired and worn out with his travelings and gladly moved in with us. Miss Hunter, in number three, brought home a very nice person--a distant relative, I believe. They quite understand the situation." "And you, madam?" Marc inquired. "My name is Sara Trusdale, and I have lived here for more than twenty years. I hope to end my days here as well." She smiled pleasantly at him, apparently forgetting for the moment that he carried in his pocket a grenade that could blow their little world to pieces. All of them, it seemed, had had their troubles, their losses and failures, before they found themselves in this place of refuge, this Green Bottle Street. To Marc, conscious of his own unsatisfactory existence, it sounded entrancing. He fingered the card in his pocket uncertainly. "Mr. Plonsky and Mr. Flanagan took a great liking to each other," Miss Trusdale continued. "Both of them have been travelers, and they like to talk about the things they have seen. Miss Hunter plays the piano and gives us concerts. Then there's Mr. Hazard and Mr. Desselin, who are very fond of chess and who brew wine in the cellar. For myself, I have my flowers and my books. It has been very enjoyable for all of us." Marc and Miss Trusdale sat on her front step for a long time in silence. The sky's blue darkened, the sun disappeared behind the warehouse wall on the left. "You remind me of my nephew," Miss Trusdale said suddenly. "He was a dear boy. I was heartbroken when he died in the influenza epidemic after the war. I'm the last of my family, you know." Marc could not recall when he had been spoken to with such simple, if indirect, goodwill. His heart warmed to this old lady. Obscurely he felt on the verge of a great moral discovery. He took the card out of his pocket. "I found this yesterday in the filing cabinet," he said. "No one else knows about it yet. If it should come out, there would be a great scandal, and no end of trouble for all of you as well. Newspaper reporters, tax collectors . . ." He thought again of his landlady, his belligerent neighbors, his room that defied improvement. "I wonder," he said slowly, "I am a good tenant, and I wonder..." "Oh yes," she leaned forward eagerly, "you could have the top floor of my house. I have more space than I know what to do with. I'm sure it would suit you. You must come and see it right away." The mind of Marc Girondin, filing clerk, was made up. With a gesture of renunciation he tore the card across and dropped the pieces in the watering can. As far as he was concerned, Green Bottle Street would remain mislaid forever.

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Dreams by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

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Nelson, My Dog by Gary Soto Like the cat he scratches the flea camping in fur. Unlike the cat he delights in water up to his ears. He frolics. He catches a crooked stick On his back he naps with legs straight up in the air. Nelson shudders awake. He responds to love From head to tail. In happiness His front legs march in place And his back legs spark when they push off. On a leash he knows his geography. For your sake he looks both ways before crossing, He sniffs at the sight of a poodle trimmed like a hedge, And he trots the street with you second in command. In the park, he ponders a squirrel attached to a tree And he shovels a paper cup on his nose. He sweeps after himself with his tail, And there is no hand that doesn't deserve a lick. Note this now, my friends: Nelson can account the heritage of heroic dogs: One, canines lead the blind, Two, they enter fire to rescue the child and the child's toy, Three, they swim for the drowning, Four, they spring at the thief, Five, they paddle ponds for the ball that got away, Six, for the elderly they walk side by side to the very end, Seven, they search for bones but stop when called, Eight, they bring mud to all parties, Nine, they poke among the ruins of a burnt house, Ten, they forgive what you dish out on a plate. Nelson is a companion, this much we know, And if he were a movie star, he would do his own stunts O, how he would fly, climb the pant legs of a scoundrel And stand tall rafting on white-water rivers! He has befriended the kingdom of animals: He once ran with wolves but admittedly not very far, He stepped two paces into a cave and peeked at the bear, He sheltered a kitten, He righted the turtle pedaling its stumps on its back, Under the wheeling stars he caravanned with the mule, 15

He steered sheep over a hill, He wisely let the skunk pass, He growled at the long-bearded miser, He joined ducks quacking with laughter, Once he leaped at a pheasant but later whined from guilt. Nelson's black nose is a compass in the wilds. He knows nature. He has spied spires of summer smoke, He circled cold campfires, He howled at a gopher and scratched at the moon, He doctored his wounds with his tongue, He has pawed a star of blood left in snow. He regards the fireplace, the embers like blinking cats, This too we know about Nelson. True, he is sometimes tied to parking meters And sometimes wears the cone of shame from the vet's office. But again, he is happiness. He presents his belly for a friendly scratch. If you call him, he will drop his tennis ball, Look up, and come running, This muddy friend for life. When you bring your nose To his nose for something like a kiss, You can find yourself in his eyes.

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Abandoned Farmhouse by Ted Kooser He was a big man, says the size of his shoes on a pile of broken dishes by the house; a tall man too, says the length of the bed in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man, says the Bible with a broken back on the floor below the window, dusty with sun; but not a man for farming, say the fields cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn. A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves covered with oilcloth, and they had a child, says the sandbox made from a tractor tire. Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole. And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames. It was lonely here, says the narrow country road. Something went wrong, says the empty house in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste. And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard like branches after a storm--a rubber cow, a rusty tractor with a broken plow, a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

From Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems by Ted Kooser 1980.

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The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes PART ONE I The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding— Riding—riding— The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door. II He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin, A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin; They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh! And he rode with a jewelled twinkle, His pistol butts a-twinkle, His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky. III Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard, And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred; He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there But the landlord's black-eyed daughter, Bess, the landlord's daughter, Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair. IV And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked; His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay, But he loved the landlord's daughter, The landlord's red-lipped daughter, Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say— V "One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night, But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light; 18

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day, Then look for me by moonlight, Watch for me by moonlight, I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way." VI He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand, But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast; And he kissed its waves in the moonlight, (Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!) Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

PART TWO I He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon; And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon, When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor, A red-coat troop came marching— Marching—marching— King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door. II They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead, But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed; Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side! There was death at every window; And hell at one dark window; For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride. III They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest; They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast! "Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the dead man say— Look for me by moonlight; Watch for me by moonlight; I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way! 19

IV She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good! She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood! They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years, Till, now, on the stroke of midnight, Cold, on the stroke of midnight, The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers! V The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest! Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast, She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again; For the road lay bare in the moonlight; Blank and bare in the moonlight; And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain . VI Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear; Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear? Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill, The highwayman came riding, Riding, riding! The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still! VII Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night! Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light! Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath, Then her finger moved in the moonlight, Her musket shattered the moonlight, Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death. VIII He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood! Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear How Bess, the landlord's daughter,

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The landlord's black-eyed daughter, Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there. IX Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky, With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high! Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat, When they shot him down on the highway, Down like a dog on the highway, And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat. *

*

*

*

*

*

X And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees, When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, A highwayman comes riding— Riding—riding— A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door. XI Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard; He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred; He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there But the landlord's black-eyed daughter, Bess, the landlord's daughter, Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

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Old Lilacs by Ted Kooser Through early April cold, these thin gray horses have come near the house as to a fence, and lean there hungry for summer, nodding their heads with a nickering of twigs. Their long legs are dusty from standing for months in winter’s stall, and their eyes are like a cloudy sky seen through bare branches They are waiting for May to come up from the barn with her overalls pockets stuffed with the fodder of green. In a month they will be slow and heavy, their little snorts so sweet you’ll want to stand among them, breathing.

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All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury “Ready?" "Ready." "Now?" "Soon." "Do the scientists really know? Will it happen today, will it?" "Look, look; see for yourself!" The children pressed to each other like so many roses, so many weeds, intermixed, peering out for a look at the hidden sun. It rained. It had been raining for seven years; thousand upon thousands of days compounded and filled from one end to the other with rain, with the drum and gush of water, with the sweet crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they were tidal waves come over the islands. A thousand forests had been crushed under the rain and grown up a thousand times to be crushed again. And this was the way life was forever on the planet Venus, and this was the schoolroom of the children of the rocket men and women who had come to a raining world to set up civilization and live out their lives. "It's stopping, it's stopping!" "Yes, yes!" Margot stood apart from these children who could never remember a time when there wasn't rain and rain and rain. They were all nine years old, and if there had been a day, seven years ago, when the sun came out for an hour and showed its face to the stunned world, they could not recall. Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering and old or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands. But then they always awoke to the tatting drum, the endless shaking down of clear bead necklaces upon the roof, the walk, the gardens, the forests, and their dreams were gone. All day yesterday they had read in class about the sun. About how like a lemon it was, and how hot. And they had written small stories or essays or poems about it: I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour. That was Margot's poem, read in a quiet voice in the still classroom while the rain was falling outside. "Aw, you didn't write that!" protested one of the boys. "I did," said Margot. "I did." "William!" said the teacher. But that was yesterday. Now the rain was slackening, and the children were crushed in the great thick windows. "Where's teacher?" "She'll be back." "She'd better hurry, we'll miss it!" They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes. Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red 23

from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass. "What're you looking at?" said William. Margot said nothing. "Speak when you're spoken to." He gave her a shove. But she did not move; rather she let herself by moved only by him and nothing else. They edged away from her, they would not look at her. She felt them go away. And this was because she would play no games with them in the echoing tunnels of the underground city. If they tagged her and ran, she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows. And then, of course, the biggest crime of all was that she had come here only five years ago from Earth, and she remembered the sun and the way the sun was and the sky was when she was four in Ohio. And they, they had been on Venus all their lives, and they had been only two years old when last the sun came out and had long since forgotten the color and heat of it and the way it really was. But Margot remembered. "It's like a penny," she said once, eyes closed. "No it's not!" the children cried. "It's like a fire," she said, "in the stove." "You're lying, you don't remember!" cried the children. But she remembered and stood quietly apart from all of them and watched the patterning windows. And once, a month ago, she had refused to shower in the school shower rooms, had clutched her hands to her ears and over her head, screaming the water mustn't touch her head. So after that, dimly, dimly, she sensed it, she was different and they knew her difference and kept away. There was talk that her father and mother were taking her back to earth next year; it seemed vital to her that they do so, though it would mean the loss of thousands of dollars to her family. And so, the children hated her for all these reasons of big and little consequence. They hated her pale snow face, her waiting silence, her thinness, and her possible future. "Get away!" The boy gave her another push. "What're you waiting for?" Then, for the first time, she turned and looked at him. And what she was waiting for was in her eyes. "Well, don't wait around here!" cried the boy savagely. "You won't see nothing!" Her lips moved. "Nothing!" he cried. "It was all a joke, wasn't it?" He turned to the other children. "Nothing's happening today. Is it?" They all blinked at him and then, understanding, laughed and shook their heads. "Nothing, nothing!" "Oh, but," Margot whispered, her eyes helpless. "But this is the day, the scientists predict, they say, they know, the sun. . . ." "All a joke!" said the boy, and seized her roughly. "Hey, everyone, let's put her in a closet before teacher comes!" 24

"No," said Margot, falling back. They surged about her, caught her up and bore her, protesting, and then pleading, and then crying, back into a tunnel, a room, a closet, where they slammed and locked the door. They stood looking at the door and saw it tremble from her beating and throwing herself against it. They heard her muffled cries. Then, smiling, they turned and went out and back down the tunnel, just as the teacher arrived. "Ready, children?" she glanced at her watch. "Yes!" said everyone. "Are we all here?" "Yes!" The rain slackened still more. They crowded to the huge door. The rain stopped. It was as if, in the midst of a film, concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a peaceful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill. The silence was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing altogether. The children put their hands to their ears. They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the silent, waiting world came in to them. The sun came out. It was the color of flaming bronze and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color. And the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling, into the springtime. "Now don't go too far," called the teacher after them. "You've only two hours, you know. You wouldn't want to get caught out!" But they were running and turning their faces up to the sky and feeling the sun on their cheeks like a warm iron; they were taking off their jackets and letting the sun burn their arms. "Oh, it's better than the sun lamps, isn't it?" "Much, much better!" They stopped running and stood in the great jungle that covered Venus, that grew and never stopped growing, tumultuously, even as you watched it. It was a nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of flesh-like weed, wavering, flowering this brief spring. It was the color of rubber and ash, this jungle, from the many years without sun. It was the color of stones and white cheeses and ink, and it was the color of the moon. The children lay out, laughing, on the jungle mattress, and heard it sigh and squeak under them, resilient and alive. They ran among the trees, they slipped and fell, they pushed each other, they played hide-and-seek and tag, but most of all they squinted at the sun until the tears ran down their faces, they put their hands up to that yellowness and that amazing blueness and they breathed of the fresh, fresh air and listened and listened to the silence which suspended them in a blessed sea of no sound and no motion. They looked at everything and savored everything. Then, wildly, like animals escaped from their caves, they ran and ran in shouting circles. They ran for an hour and did not stop running. 25

And then— In the midst of their running one of the girls wailed. Everyone stopped. The girl, standing in the open, held out her hand. "Oh, look, look," she said, trembling. They came slowly to look at her opened palm. In the center of it, cupped and huge, was a single raindrop. She began to cry, looking at it. They glanced quietly at the sky. "Oh. Oh." A few cold drops fell on their noses and their cheeks and their mouths. The sun faded behind a stir of mist. A wind blew cool around them. They turned and started to walk back toward the underground house, their hands at their sides, their smiles vanishing away. A boom of thunder startled them and like leaves before a new hurricane, they tumbled upon each other and ran. Lightening struck ten miles away, five miles away, a mile, a half mile. The sky darkened into midnight in a flash. They stood in the doorway of the underground for a moment until it was raining hard. Then they closed the door and heard the gigantic sound of the rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and forever. "Will it be seven more years?" "Yes. Seven." Then one of them gave a little cry. "Margot!" "What?" "She's still in the closet where we locked her." "Margot." They stood as if someone had driven them, like so many stakes, into the floor. They looked at each other and then looked away. They glanced out at the world that was raining now and raining and raining steadily. They could not meet each other's glances. Their faces were solemn and pale. They looked at their hands and feet, their faces down. "Margot. One of the girls said, "Well . . .?" No one moved. "Go on," whispered the girl. They walked slowly down the hall in the sound of the cold rain. They turned through the doorway to the room in the sound of the storm and thunder, lightening on their faces, blue and terrible. They walked over to the closest door slowly and stood by it. Behind the closed door was only silence. They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

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Reading Guide #1 for “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury Name: ______________________________ Period ____Critical Reading Directions: Read the directions and follow them!  Part 1: Vocabulary BEFORE READING, Use the (+) and (-) system to note which words you know (+), and which words you don’t (-). DURING READING, look for these words and highlight them. AFTER READING, revisit the highlighted words and use the (+) and (-) system to note which ones you think you NOW know (+) and which words you’re still don’t (-). before reading

word

after reading

slackening frail vital surged apparatus tumultuously resilient solemn Part 2: Getting Ready to Read Read the question below, then check off and explain your answer in the space provided: If you had to live in one of the three locations below all year long, which would you choose and why? (Assume you would everything you need to survive in the conditions there.)

☐North Pole because _______________________________________ ☐Rain Forest because _______________________________________ ☐Desert because __________________________________________ Part 3: Statements to find evidence for and/or against BEFORE READING THE STORY, read the statements below, so they’re in your head as you read. DURING AND AFTER READING, write down the ¶ numbers in the text in which you find evidence for and/or against the statements. The idea is to collect as much evidence as you can. In some cases, you may wind up with evidence both for and against a statement; that’s okay! Turn the page for the statements. 27

evidence for (write down ¶ numbers)

statement The story happens in modern times, not in the past or in the future.

Climate doesn’t really affect how people act.

Margot (pronounced marGO – the “t” is silent) is hard to get along with.

Margot feels at home in this place.

The other kids want to be friends with Margot.

The kids have a good teacher.

Most people are followers.

Kids know right from wrong.

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evidence against (write down ¶ numbers)

Reading Guide #2 for “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury Your name: _____________________ Period _____ Critical Reading Part 1: Vocabulary As you re-read the story, highlight new vocabulary words – the ones you don’t think you really could write down definitions for. Part 2: Statements evidence for (write down ¶ numbers)

statement Margot remembers the sun much better than the other kids. It’s Margot’s fault that she doesn’t fit in.

Margot’s parents care about her.

The kids have a good teacher.

The climate (weather) makes the kids act the way they do. The kids are followers.

The kids know right from wrong.

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evidence against (write down ¶ numbers)

Lunch Line Redesign by Brian Wansink, David R. Just and Joe Mckendry School cafeterias are much criticized for offering the kind of snack foods and desserts that contribute to childhood obesity. But banning junk food from cafeterias, as some schools have tried, or serving only escarole or tofu, can backfire. Students then skip lunch, bring in their own snacks or head out for fast food. We’ve even seen some pizzas delivered to a side door. Children and teenagers resist heavy-handed nutritional policies — and the food that is associated with the heavy hand. No food is nutritious, after all, until it is actually eaten. A smarter lunchroom wouldn’t be draconian. Rather, it would nudge students toward making better choices on their own by changing the way their options are presented. One school we have observed in upstate New York, for instance, tripled the number of salads students bought simply by moving the salad bar away from the wall and placing it in front of the cash registers. Experiments that we and other researchers have done in cafeterias at high schools, middle schools and summer camp programs, as well as in laboratories, have revealed many ways to use behavioral psychology to coax children to eat better. Here are a dozen such strategies that work without requiring drastic or expensive changes in school menus. Go to: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/10/21/opinion/20101021_Oplunch.html for the interactive version of the picture below, where you can click on the information icons to read about the lunchroom strategies.

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Reading Guide for “Lunch Line Redesign” by Ray Bradbury Name: ______________________________ Period ____Critical Reading I. Vocabulary - Use the plus (+) and minus (-) system for the words below.

____escarole____ ____tofu____ _____ heavy-handed _____ ____draconian____ ____drastic____ ____opaque____ _____ behavioral psychology _____ ____ coax ____ II. The “Secret Code” As you read the article, circle which of these Signal Words and Phrases clue you in to the text structure. Recognizing the text structure can help you better understand an article.

problem

as a result

solution

rather

because

in order to

cause

so that

since

strategies

III. Comprehension - Before you read, place a check next to the statements with which you agree. After you read, revisit these statements and place a check next to the statements the article supports or “proves.” Be prepared to refer to the part of the article that supports that statement. Before reading  if you agree

Statement

After reading  if the text supports this statement

Kids don’t want to do what older people tell them to do. You can trick kids into eating healthier. Healthy food tastes bad and kids won’t buy it. The only way to get kids to eat healthy is to get rid of junk food in the cafeteria. What kids eat matters. IV. “Mapping” - After our discussion, use the graphic organizer supplied to identify the key points in the article.

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Changed by Naomi Shihab Nye They said something mean about me and didn’t notice it was mean. So my heart wandered into the rainy night without them and found a canopy to hind under. My eyes started seeing through things. Like gauze. Old self through new self. My flexible body went backwards and forwards in time. It’s hard to describe but true: I grew another head with better ideas inside my old head.

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Eleven by Sandra Cisneros (Excerpt from Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories Random House, New York. 1991) What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And you don't feel eleven at all. You feel like you're still ten. And you are--underneath the year that makes you eleven. Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That's how being eleven years old is. You don't feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don't feel smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's the way it is. Only today I wish I didn't have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I'd have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would've known how to tell her it wasn't mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth. "Whose is this?" Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater up in the air for all the class to see. "Whose? It's been sitting in the coatroom for a month." "Not mine," says everybody. "Not me." 33

"It has to belong to somebody," Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It's an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It's maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn't say so. Maybe because I'm skinny, maybe because she doesn't' like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldivar says, "I think it belongs to Rachel." An ugly sweater like that, all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs. Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out. "That's not, I don’t, you’re not...Not mine," I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four. "Of course it's yours," Mrs. Price says. "I remember you wearing it once." Because she's older and the teacher, she's right and I’m not. Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem number four. I don't know why but all of a sudden I'm feeling sick inside, like the part of me that's three wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite down on my teeth real hard and try to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you . But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and eraser as far from it as possible. I even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine. In my head I'm thinking how long till lunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it over the school yard fence, or even leave it hanging on a parking meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss it in the alley. Except when math period ends, Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody , "Now Rachel, that's enough," because she sees I've shoved the red sweater to the tippytip corner of my desk and it's hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don't' care. "Rachel," Mrs. Price says. She says it like she's getting mad. "You put that sweater on right now and no more nonsense." "But it's not—" "Now!" Mrs. Price says. This is when I wish I wasn't eleven, because all the years inside of me— ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one—are pushing at the back of my eyes when I put one arm through one sleeve of the sweater that smells like cottage cheese, and then the other arm through the other and 34

stand there with my arms apart like the sweater hurts me and it does, all itchy and full of germs that aren't even mine. That's when everything I've been holding in since this morning, since when Mrs. Price put the sweater on my desk, finally lets go, and all of a sudden I'm crying in front of everybody. I wish I was invisible but I'm not. I’m eleven and it's my birthday today and I'm crying like I'm three in front of everybody. I put my head down on the desk and bury my face in my stupid clown-sweater arms. My face all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can't stop the little animal noises from coming out of me, until there aren't any more tears left in my eyes, and it's just my body shaking like when you have the hiccups, and my whole head hurts like when you drink milk too fast. But the worst part is right before the bell rings for lunch. That stupid Phyllis Lopez, who is even dumber than Sylvia Saldivar, says she remembers the red sweater is hers! I take it off right away and give it to her, only Mrs. Price pretends like everything's okay. Today I'm eleven. There's cake Mama's making for tonight, and when Papa comes home from work we'll eat it. There'll be candles and presents and everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you, Rachel, only it's too late. I'm eleven today. I'm eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two. I wish I was anything but eleven, because I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny-tiny you have to close your eyes to see it.

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Failure is a Good Thing by Jon Carroll Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and, as is conventional, I wished her success. I was lying. What I actually wish for her is failure. I believe in the power of failure. Success is boring. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematical victory. First-time success is usually a fluke. First-time failure, by contrast, is expected; it is the natural order of things. Failure is how we learn. I have been told of an African phrase describing a good cook as "she who has broken many pots." If you've spent enough time in the kitchen to have broken a lot of pots, probably you know a fair amount about cooking. I once had a late dinner with a group of chefs, and they spent time comparing knife wounds and burn scars. They knew how much credibility their failures gave them. I earn my living by writing a daily newspaper column. Each week I am aware that one column is going to be the worst column of the week. I don't set out to write it; I try my best every day. Still, every week, one column is inferior to the others, sometimes spectacularly so. I have learned to cherish that column. A successful column usually means that I am treading on familiar ground, going with the tricks that work, preaching to the choir or dressing up popular sentiments in fancy words. Often in my inferior columns, I am trying to pull off something I've never done before, something I'm not even sure can be done. My younger daughter is a trapeze artist. She spent three years putting together an act. She did it successfully for years with the Cirque du Soleil. There was no reason for her to change the act—but she did anyway. She said she was no longer learning anything new and she was bored; and if she was bored, there was no point in subjecting her body to all that stress. So she changed the act. She risked failure and profound public embarrassment in order to feed her soul. And if she can do that 15 feet in the air, we all should be able to do it. My granddaughter is a perfectionist, probably too much of one. She will feel her failures, and I will want to comfort her. But I will also, I hope, remind her of what she learned, and how she can do whatever it is better next time. I probably won't tell her that failure is a good thing, because that's not a lesson you can learn when you're five. I hope I can tell her, though, that it's not the end of the world. Indeed, with luck, it is the beginning. 36

“Failure Is a Good Thing” - Reading Guide #1 Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading

I. VOCABULARY BEFORE READING: Put a plus sign (+) on the line to the left of any word whose definition you think you know, a minus sign (–) if you don’t know it. AFTER READING: If you’ve figured out a word put a plus sign (+) after the word, and if you still don’t know it put another (–) after it. ______conventional ______ ______ problematical______ ______fluke ______ ______credibility ______ ______inferior ______ ______preaching to the choir ______ ______subjecting ______ ______profound ______ I. COMPREHENSION BEFORE READING: Carefully read each statement below and put a check mark ( ) next to any statement with which you agree. AFTER READING: Return to the statements and see which ones are correct, based on the information you get from the article. 1. ______An author can confuse his/her audience when it’s unclear where they stand on an issue. 2. ______Our modern society puts tremendous strains on young people to do well. 3. ______People are probably willing to change the way they look at life if they see a better way of viewing it. 4. ______A person’s perspective about themselves is fixed early in life and usually cannot be changed. 5. ______ The personal narratives of one person usually have nothing to do with anyone else. 37

“Failure Is a Good Thing”- Reading Guide #2 Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading

I. VOCABULARY BEFORE READING: Put a plus sign (+) on the line to the left of any word whose definition you think you know, a minus sign (–) if you don’t know it. AFTER READING: If you’ve figured out a word put a plus sign (+) after the word, and if you still don’t know it, put another (–) after it. ______conventional ______ ______ problematical______ ______fluke ______ ______credibility ______ ______inferior ______ ______preaching to the choir ______ _____ sentiments _____ ______subjecting ______ ______profound ______ COMPREHENSION Note: This section of the Reading Guide works a little differently than the ones for The Misfits. Before reading the article, read the statements below, and check the ones with which you agree. Then, after reading, return to the statements and see if you feel differently. 1. ______Failure is something to avoid. 2. ______Failure is something to be proud of. 3. ______ An anecdote is a powerful way for a writer to make a point. 4. ______Being a perfectionist is a good thing. 5. ______ Older people give good advice. 6. ______ Life should be easy. 7. ______ Parents put lots of pressure on their kids to succeed.

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Bad Blood by Will Weaver From his family of thieves and con artists, Jared has learned well. But does he have the patience as well as the talent to make the big score from the old lady who lives alone at the edge of town? . ***

I knocked on the door. Waited. Inside the farmhouse I heard a radio go quiet, then shuffling sounds. I had a good feeling about this place; it was set well off the road, and the old lady appeared to live alone. She opened the door partway. "Yes?" Her voice was thin and croaky from lack of use. "Good morning, ma'am," I chirped. "My name's Jared Righetti and I'm looking for summer work. Painting, lawn mowing, odd jobs?" One good thing about being an undersized sixteen-year-old is that I can pass for thirteen. I tried to see beyond her, into the house. "No, nothing for you," she said, and stepped back from the screen door. The shades were half-drawn—what is it with old people and daylight?—so I couldn't see much. However, it smelled like an old person's house—stale, fruity, soggy tea bags, flowers, cats, all of it mixed together like the odor of old carpet. "Okay, ma'am," I said. I flashed her my winning smile (learned from my old man). "Sorry to bother you." I headed down her porch steps and pedaled off with my lawn mower in tow-except that I went only a short way before turning back. "What is it now?" she said. She was still at the screen door. "I told you I have no work for you." "I understand, ma am," I said. "But I'm in the Boy Scouts, and we get pins for doing volunteer work. I'm wondering if you'd mind if I mowed your lawn for free? It won't take me long. It's part of the Boy Scout oath—to do volunteer work." She was silent, then cleared her throat with a raspy sound. "Okay. But just that front part." "Thank you, ma'am!" I said, and saluted. Boy Scouts. Ha. As I started up my mower, I felt her gaze on me. When I began to move back and forth across the shaggy lawn, her white head peeped from behind the window Her fuzzy white hair looked like the dandelion seed globes that my mower scattered in the wind. I had spotted this place when my family first landed in this lame, white-bread Ohio town. I almost said Iowa; we've moved around so much, sometimes -I forget where we are. Anyway, I was riding my bike, casing the town—which I had to admit looked perfect for us. My father was a genius in choosing places such as Oakville, population 7,500. Here people left their car windows open, left their garage doors up in the daytime, and left their kids' bikes lying on lawns. It was one of those little towns that the real world hadn't caught up to yet—a petty thief's dream. Trouble was, my father had drummed into me that we were not petty thieves. Thieves, all right, but not smalltimers. "The dollar bill is lying on the table, and all you 39

have to do is reach over and pick it up. But it's not the dollar you want, or the ten-spot, or even the whole wallet. Set your sights higher, son." But stealing was in my blood. I didn't see a woman shopping; I saw her purse loosely slung over her shoulder. I didn't see a man walking down the street; I saw his wallet peeking from his hip pocket. I didn't see a photographer shooting a sundown scene; I saw his camera bag unattended. It was genetic. Anyway, back to the old lady. That first week here I had ridden all the way to the city limits and a little beyond-which was scary. All that open space, all those cornfields with tall, tight, shadowy rows. My parents had warned me about Midwestern cornfields, about kids getting lost in them and never found. Big fields and open horizons gave me the creeps—give me honking taxis and narrow streets any day (also probably genetic). So just as I was about to pedal like mad back to town, I saw a narrow driveway, and beyond—back off the road at least a block—an old white farmhouse. Saggy barn. Tall hay shed, along with various cribs and coops. And a lawn in major need of mowing. Elmer A. Anderson, the mailbox read. Even as I looked, a little white-haired lady shuffled onto her porch to water some red flowers in a window box.. I sank low in the ditch so she wouldn't see me and I watched her for quite a while. I got the feeling there was no Elmer around. At age sixteen I already had a nose for lonely old widows; sometimes I amazed and disgusted myself at the same time. Today when I finished mowing, I rattled my mower back to my bike. On Mrs. Anderson's porch steps sat a tall glass of iced tea. "I wouldn't feel right without giving you something for your trouble," she said from behind the screen. "Whew! It's hot—thank you so much, Mrs. Anderson," I exclaimed. "How'd you know my name?" she said suspiciously. "The mailbox?" I answered. She was silent. I took my time with the iced tea, but finally finished the last, long, cold swallow. I approached the screen door with the empty glass. "Just set it on the porch," she said. "Thank you. Bye, Mrs. Anderson," I called cheerfully over my shoulder. Through her watery little eyes I imagined seeing myself: a smallish brown-haired kid on his bike, heading down the driveway towing his lawn mower on a rope. The image should be a Norman Rockwell painting. Summer Job would be the title. That or Honest Hardworking Young Man. However, as far as I could see, there hadn't been any honest, hard-working men in my family for generations. My great-grandfather, whose last name was unpronounceable (it had several Z's and Y's), was some kind of King of the Gypsies back in immigrant days in New York City. His pickpocketing skills bordered on magic and the dark arts. People not only didn't miss their wallets or coin purses; they forgot they ever had them. (My father knows the moves but won't teach them to me—his own son. "They'll just get you in trouble, and besides, son, you've got to set your sights high in this world." If I hear that one more time, I swear I'll become an actual nice honest young man just to punish him.) My grandfather, Alphonse Szymoro, founded the so-called Travelers, the world's largest fly-by-night roofing and home repair company. It's based in Skokie, Illinois. Don't believe me? Sixty Minutes did an investigative report on the Travelers but all CBS got were some blurry long-distance photos of white Ford F-150 -pickup trucks carrying ladders and cans of roofing tar. Most of the segment was interviews with geezers all weepy about paying thousands of dollars for roof repairs and still needing rain buckets in their living rooms. When Mike Wallace began to talk about money—how the Travelers 40

wives all drove Cadillacs—my mother gave my old man the evil eye. "Always I said we should have stayed with the family," she said. (Her family was Eastern European as well—thick as thieves, you might say.) "Nonsense," my father said. He was a tidy, darkhaired man with brown eyes and an open, likable face and a sense of humor that tended to one-liners. His favorite: "Americas biggest problem is that it's overrun with private property." (It is sort of funny, considering.) Anyway, now he continued, "You don't see Sixty Minutes peeking in our windows, do you? The bigger you get, the bigger target you make. The three of us— we're on nobody's radar, and every penny we make, we keep." "Right," I muttered sarcastically. I happened to know that my old man had been drummed out of the larger clan for cheating them. In other words, not only was my father a crook, he was a dishonest crook. But he was a great father. Hey—you can't have everything. My mother had nothing more to say about her imaginary Cadillac, because in many ways my old man was right. Here we were in a nice rented home, a three-bedroom rambler, with a green lawn and bright flower beds. We had settled quietly into this neighborhood, and now were just another family on East Maple Drive. Okay, slightly darker skinned, and brown-eyed rather than blue, and a foot shorter than most of the corn-fed Swedish and German stock around here. But we. passed for Italian (Righetti was my favorite name so far), and Italians get a pass in the Midwest because they are associated with Italian restaurants. Nobody eats more than Midwesterners; it's why they’re so fat. Anyway, there was always the question of jobs—how my family supported itself—but as usual my father had that covered. My mother was an interior decorator (the perfect job for casing houses) and my father was a wholesaler involved in supplying olive oil to Italian pizza joints across the Midwest. I didn’t know exactly what scam he had going right now, but he was very cheerful of late, and I got the feeling he was closing in on something big. But then again, so was I. The next part I'll skip through, because it's as boring as a public television documentary on life in the Midwest. See me mowing Mrs. Anderson’s lawn, front and back, the next time. See me returning once a week to Mrs. Anderson’s farm. See me trimming the hedge. See me painting the porch railing. See me trying to get a look into the outbuildings, but see her always watching me from her chair on the porch. See me raking her leaves in the fall. See me shoveling snow in the winter. See me working in her garden the next spring. See me waiting for my chance—at what I didn't know. See me inside her gloomy house, having my snack, politely munching a sugar cookie and sipping my iced tea. See me checking drawers in the kitchen, desks in the living room the first time she left me alone. See me notice, one day, through the parlor doors .(never opened quite this far) a photo display on the wall—like a shrine in a church—except this was a shrine to a soldier. "That man on the wall, is that your husband?" Mrs. Anderson stiffened. "No," she said abruptly, and hurried to shut the parlor door. Next week when I arrived to work, I knocked and knocked. It wasn't locked, so I stepped inside. Mrs. Anderson was in the parlor, just sitting, staring at the soldier on the wall. It's like she hadn't moved for an entire week. "Hello? It's me, Jared," I called. She turned slowly; it was as if she didn't recognize me. 41

"I'm going to start on the garage today," I said cheerfully. ""Scraping and painting." "It's his birthday," she murmured. I stepped forward to the parlor entrance. For the first time I got a good look around. It was like a museum filled with antiques—valuable antiques. "His birthday?" I said. "Garry," she said to the wall. Creepylike, as if she was talking to Garry. I looked closer at the shrine. There were several photos of Garry, one with helicopters and a jungle in the background. "Garry, my son," she murmured, as if calling out to him. There was a framed and yellowed newspaper clipping. "Local Marine Garrett Anderson Killed in Vietnam." The date was July 16, 1969. I got it: her dead son. "He would be fifty today," she whispered. "Fifty years old. Isn't that amazing." "Yes, it is," I agreed as I made a note of the antiques: some great old lamps, a lion's head rocking chair,, an actual wind-up Victrola phonograph, plus an eight-track tape deck and a shelf of clunky, oversized eight-track tapes: Bob Dylan; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; the Byrds; others with faded daisylike and psychedelic designs. Eighttracks were worth a lot of money nowadays; people collected them. Mrs. Anderson blinked; she seemed surprised to see me standing there. "I'm starting on the garage today," I said again. Loudly, cheerfully. As always. She didn't seem to hear me and turned back to look at the soldier on the wall. Which gave me the opportunity—at last—to case the outbuildings without her spying on me. The garage was gloomy and full of spiders. It looked like a museum of rusty tools and shovels, not a hundred bucks' worth of goods. So I slipped over into the barn. The door creaked and pigeons clattered out of the hayloft.. My heart pounded; the damned birds scared me. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the light, which revealed a long row of rusty stanchions and a few old shovels and forks lying here and there. Zilch. Zero. Coming out of the barn, I looked around. The only other building was a hay shed: a metal roof supported by tall poles, and open sides. I still don't know why I walked over to it, and certainly can't explain why I walked around back, behind it. The thief in me, I guess. A few bales had sagged and spilled out to the ground. They were black and rotted. I kicked at them. Just as I was about to give up on finding anything of value, I spotted a different kind of green in the haystack. Some kind of canvas or tarpaulin. I tugged loose a couple of bales and looked closer. The canvas, mouse-chewn so badly it looked shot by a machine gun, was draped over some kind of wooden frame. Beams, heavy ones. Some kind of secret garage. I got down and dug out some bottom bales until I could slip underneath the canvas. Inside the canvas enclosure it was dark except for the bullet holes. Standing up, I hit my head on something hard; suddenly I had plenty of light—as in stars—little arcing pinwheels of white. To steady myself I reached out and felt curving metal sticky with some kind of grease. "Ack," I muttered, and wiped my hand on the scratchy hay. I needed more light so crawled backward out of there and began to remove more bales. Soon I had a double doorway-sized area clear, and found a corner of the canvas. It was nailed to the wooden frame. I glanced around; seeing or hearing no one, I yanked it upward. 42

With a ripping sound, the canvas came loose; light spilled into the secret garage. Inside was a car. A small car covered in grease. A small, squat car with lines and curves that anyone would instantly recognize: an old Corvette. I sucked in a breath. It's not the dollar bill or the ten-spot or even the whole wallet! Peeking around the hay shed toward the house, and seeing nothing of old lady Anderson, I stepped inside the secret garage and tried the car door. Grease, everything coated with grease, as if painted or broomed on, but the door opened. The little cockpit sat empty, its stick shift with its little round knob sticking upright between the seats. I slid over behind the wheel, and my hand fell immediately to the stick shift; the car fit me like a glove. I wiped dust from the dashboard, the gauges. The odometer read 562 miles. The bumpa-bumpa of my heart echoed louder inside the dim cab. A classic Corvette with less than a thousand miles on it. The car had to be worth twenty or thirty grand. In the glove box were some papers. A faded green title sheet with all the information. Make: Chev. Year: 1964. Model: Coupé (Stingray). Owner: Garrett Elmer Anderson. One other paper, a yellow sheet of tablet paper, fell out of the title papers. Dear Mom and Dad, Take care of my 'Ray. When we win this war, which shouldn't take long, I'll come home and I'll drive you down Main Street in the Fourth of July parade. I promise. Love, Garry The rest of that afternoon I loudly and cheerfully scraped window trim on the garage. I whistled while I worked, and kept one eye on the house. Finally the old lady came out on the porch. She seemed older in just two hours and walked bent over as if she carried' a hundred pounds on her bony shoulders. I thought she'd never bring out an iced tea, but finally she remembered. I joined her on the porch. We sat there in silence. "Hot one today," I said. "Whew." She was silent. "But I'm happy for the work," I said. She stared off across the fields. Her eyes were cloudy today. "I'm saving my money for college, you know She had nothing to say. I took a deep breath. "That and a car." No response. "If I had a car, I could drive out here anytime you needed me," I added. She blinked, seemed to consider that. "Garry had an old car," she murmured, still looking across the fields. "Funny little thing, it was. He worked summers at the gas station to buy that car. Was so proud of it." Then I took a chance, a big chance. "There's a little old car in the hay shed," I said. "Would that be it?" "Car in the hay shed?" she repeated. "You mean a tractor?" "No, a little old car," I replied as if I was uninterested—as if this was the most 43

boring topic in the world. "I don't know what Garry did with his little car," she murmured. "So hard to remember everything." "Just a little old car in the hay shed," I drawled and pretended to check some paint chips under my fingernails. She looked through the parlor at the soldier on the wall, then around her house. "I hardly drive my Pontiac anymore," she said. "I certainly don't need two cars." I felt shaky; things were happening fast; things were coming together. It was a major adrenaline rush—and I suddenly understood why the men in my family could never hold straight jobs. "Why don't you take it, Jared?" she said. "The little car in the hay shed?" I asked. My voice was suddenly as thin and shaky as hers. "Why would I need two cars? I hardly drive the Pontiac anymore." I swallowed, -then took a gamble. "No, Mrs. Anderson, I couldn’t do that. You've been awfully nice to me too, and while the car probably isn't worth much, I just couldn't accept a gift like that." "Why, you're always helping out around here," she continued, like she hadn't heard me. She actually came over and patted me on the head—it was the first time we had touched. "This place would have fallen down without you. Such a nice young fellow. I think you should take it. Why would I need two cars? I hardly drive the Pontiac anymore." "I'll... think about it," I said. I was so excited that I almost tipped my glass. "Right now I'd better get back to work." "I hardly drive the Pontiac anymore," she murmured as I left. Outside, I let out a deep breath. I hurried back into the secret garage and examined the title page again: it was clear that if I could get her signature in a couple of places, the Corvette was mine. I couldn't believe my luck. I did a crazy little victory dance—wait till my old man saw this car. Then I heard a sound and peeked back around the hay shed; I saw her shuffling across her porch, so I stuffed the title papers inside my shirt and resumed work on the garage. I watched her lift a watering can to her petunias. Her arms shook so badly that she spilled most of the water. I turned away—I couldn't watch. That night, at home, my father asked, "So how's the old lady?" He had come to be a little puzzled at my loyalty to Mrs. Anderson. I think he worried that I was turning into a nice young honest fellow. "Better and better," I said, trying to sound sly. In truth I had this weird mix of emotions swirling in my head. "Great," my father answered. He flashed a white-toothed smile (sometimes I swear he could pass for Omar Sharif and be in the movies). "Anything you'll need help with?" "If I do, I'll let you know." I was suddenly crabby. He nodded. "Remember, son—" he began. "I know, I know. Nothing illegal, nothing I can't walk away from, don't get greedy, blah blah." I'd heard all that one too many times. "That's right," he said gently. "Good luck." I shrugged. It was difficult to stay angry at him. "Anyway, it's in the bag," I said. He patted me on the head. "I'm proud of you, son." Later, in bed, I lay in the dark with my eyes closed. I saw myself cruising in Garry 44

Anderson's Corvette. At first it was just me, then me and a girl—a blond college coed. Then I must have drifted off, because I was in college, studying to be a doctor or an astronaut—something all-American—and it was clear that the blond girl and I would bemarried and have two perfect children, and I would take my family for Sunday afternoon drives in the Corvette, and when we passed, people would look up and remark, "Such a nice family." The next night I had another Corvette dream. It started out with the blond girl again, but then it was me at the wheel, and Mr. and Mrs. Anderson were in the back seat. People were gathering for a parade. Firecrackers and fireworks kept going off, in loud booms and sharp machine-gun-like rattles, and then the parade began. It was the Fourth of July, and I was driving proudly down the street, wearing a Boy Scout's uniform and saluting all the people waving and clapping—except in the crowd I kept seeing flashes of this ragged-looking soldier. He was burned or injured somehow, and he just kept staring at me. From this dream I woke up with a start; my heart was pounding. The third night I had a dream that made no sense. I was in this health club, in the weight room with all these bodybuilders. Me, an undersized, pencil-necked sixteen-yearold who couldn't lift one of the massive iron plates they were pumping. I watched them in awe (me watching would have made yet another Norman Rockwell painting). Then I went up to the biggest guy and in a cheerful, totally optimistic voice said, "Excuse me, sir. I want to change how I look. If I start lifting weights today, how long do you think it would take for me to look like you?" The buffalo-necked guy glared down at me, then lifted me by my neck with one hand and examined my scrawny body. "How long would it take for you to look like me? I'd say at least three to four generations." Everyone in the club laughed wildly. The next day I felt hyper, felt shaky—like today was the day. it had to be done. Now or never. Fish or cut bait. I biked out to Mrs. Anderson's right away in the morning. She looked like she had been wearing the same dress all week. She didn't even get out of her chair when I came in. "Garry!" she said. "No, Jared," I said loudly. She blinked; then her eyes filled with water. "I'm sorry, Jared. Don't know what I was thinking." "It's okay," I said quickly. I drew up a chair and produced the title sheet to the Corvette. "I've changed my mind; I'd like to have the little car in the hay shed," I said. She stared at me. "The one you offered to me," I added. "That would be fine," she murmured. "I don't even drive my Pontiac anymore." "You'll have to sign on the title page," I said clearly and loudly. "Do you understand?" Nothing illegal, nothing you can't walk away from... "Yes, I understand," she said. I had a pen ready. If I hadn't, if one thing had gone wrong—say the pen ran dry— I swear I would have bolted. But I didn't. "There," she said. Her handwriting was crampy but legible. "And date it," I said. I wanted everything in her handwriting, everything legal. "What is the date?" she asked. I told her the day and year. She looked up quickly. "How is that possible?" she murmured. "That means Garry 45

is fifty." "Right there," I said, pointing to the line. "Fill in the date right there." My voice was high and faster now. I was sweating. Images of my dream Fourth of July parade filled my head. Garry on the wall stared down at me. I thought I might throw up. But then it was done. "Thank you so much," I said. I touched her bony hand—it was cool, almost cold. I drew back, then hurried toward the door. "Jared?" she called after me. "Garry?" Mrs. Anderson croaked only two weeks later. I was the one who found her, which I prefer not to talk about, other than that she was on the kitchen floor. Her false teeth had come out, and the place didn't smell so good. I guess I knew she was going to tip over sooner rather than later, so to be honest it wasn't a surprise. Looking back, I could have taken advantage of the moment and cased the entire house—maybe she had money under the mattress—but that would have been a mistake. "Never get greedy," my father always said. "It only calls attention to yourself." So I called 911, did all the right things. Me, the yard boy who had worked for Mrs. Anderson for nearly two years—loyal to the end. Even some of the distant neighbors, who I didn't know had been watching, knew of my work for her. "More than work, a relationship with Mrs. Anderson," as the attorney for the estate described it. He and the neighbors supported me when some long-lost Andersons appeared at the funeral (which I attended along with my mother and father) and then stayed in town for the reading of the will. "It always happens," the attorney muttered to me. "Somebody dies all alone, and then the relatives come out of the woodwork." There were objections to the signatures and dates on the Corvette title, but in the end it was no contest-and anyway, the distant relatives ended up with the farm, which they immediately put up for sale. My father was beside himself with pride. "You've got a great future, son," he kept saying as we loaded the Corvette onto the trailer. "This was masterful. Couldn’t have done better myself. And being there at the funeral—what a great touch." "Thanks," I muttered. He was so happy he didn't hear me. As we drove out of the driveway, I looked back at the old white house, at the sagging, shabby buildings, at the dead flowers on the porch. Then we headed onto the highway and picked up speed. As we passed the endless rows of corn, for an instant I thought I saw bony, tattered arms reaching out at me, but they were only corn leaves fluttering in the wind. My father began to whistle as he drove. I turned to look at him. My father the crook. My grandfather and great-grandfather, all crooks. At least three to four generations, the bodybuilder said. I looked behind at the little car on the trailer. "So, I've found this dealer in Wisconsin who specializes in muscle cars. He'll give top dollar," my father began. I cut him off. "We'll see," I answered. He looked at me, surprised. "Hey, it's my car," I said. "Has my name on the title, if you recall. Which means I can do with it what I want." His face turned dark with anger, then a moment later opened in a great laugh. "Okay, I get it. Chip off the old block, yes? Just like your old man?" "Maybe," I said. I looked down the highway ahead of me. "Then again, maybe not."

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Reading Guide for “Bad Blood” by Will Weaver Write the details and page numbers, NOT paragraph numbers. Your name: ____________________________________________ Period ____ Critical Reading evidence for

statement

evidence against

Jared’s father is like other parents.

Jared is like other kids.

Please turn this page over to continue.

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Jared cares about Mrs. Anderson.

Jared has bad blood.

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“Bad Blood” - Inferential Discussion Statements Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading EVIDENCE FOR

EVIDENCE AGAINST PAGES 84-85 1) The narrator is a trustworthy person.

PAGES 84-85 2) The boy is a member of the Boy Scouts, and looking for summer work.

PAGES 86-87 3) The Righetti family is the stereotypical, all-American family.

PAGES 86-87 4) Jared has a close relationship with his father.

PAGES 88-89 5) Jared is proud of his family.

PAGES 88-89 6) Jared’s father is good at what he does.

PAGES 90-91 7) The Righettis feel deep pride in their family name.

PAGES 90-91 8) The boy knows exactly how to get the old woman to trust her.

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EVIDENCE FOR

EVIDENCE AGAINST PAGES 90-91 9) Mrs. Anderson is a sad woman. PAGES 92-93 10) Jared has very little experience as a thief.

PAGES 94-97 11) Jared enjoys stealing.

PAGES 98-99 12) Mr. Righetti understands his son well.

PAGES 98-99 13) The first dream makes Jared feel _____________________.

PAGES 98-99 14) The second dream makes Jared feel __________________.

PAGES 99-100 15) The third dream makes Jared feel __________________.

PAGES 101-102 16) Jared’s motivation for asking Mrs. Anderson to sign the car title over to him is to steal.

PAGES 101-103 17) Jared is and always will be a thief.

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“Bad Blood” – What Are Idioms? The title of this story “Bad Blood” is an “idiom.” An idiom is a word or phrase or sometimes a full sentence that means something different from what it says. It is a phrase whose meaning cannot be understood from the dictionary definitions of each word taken separately. It is usually a metaphor. For example, the idiom “spill the beans” means to tell a secret. It is difficult for someone new to a language to understand and use idioms in that language properly. In the above example, someone who is just learning English may wonder what spilling beans and secrets have in common! How may of the following idioms about blood can you explain? Write your answers on the right. See example.

Idiom We’re blood brothers.

Meaning We are very close and we like one another a great deal, as if we were physically related by blood.

He’s out for blood. It’s in my blood. You can’t get blood from a stone. New blood Blood, sweat and tears They have blood on their hands. In cold blood Bad blood It makes my blood boil. It makes my blood run cold. Blood is thicker than water. to smell blood He’s my flesh and blood.

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Hope by Gary Soto Maybe the dog I loved best will limp Up the street and fall at my feet, Not really hurt, just tired. "Smoky," I cry, and in crying send the sparrows In the tree a limb higher. "I missed you, I really missed you. Where did you go?" I peel back his eyelids and view An adventure-oh, how he dodged cars And dipped his tired paws in puddles, how He slept in ditches and bit a tribe of fleas Camping in his fur. I see him topple A garbage can and a rat with long whiskers Run between his feet. I see him living With a kind old woman by a railroad. She ate a lot of stew, and shared her stew, Until her mean son drove her away, Leaving Smoky to wag his tail in dust. "Oh, Smoky," I sob. I scan The full story in his eyes. I see my dog Sniffing the air, his nostrils flaring For the scent of home, my home With newspapers piled up on the roof And duct tape on the broken front window. Now my dog's collapsed at my feet. "You're home," I say to Smoky, "And you're never going to leave again." True, our house appears abandoned Ever since Dad left and left an oil stain on the drive. But I'm here in this house of ours, My mother and little brother are here, And aren't those daffodils below the window A sign of spring? I hug my dog, Who disappeared when I was nine. Now I'm twelve, a dodger of cars, An ambler of ditch banks. When I bend Over and bring him into my arms, What do I feel but the weight of fur And three lost years.

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I’m Nobody by Emily Dickenson I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us — don't tell! They'd banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

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In New Jersey Once by Maria Mazziotti Gillan In New Jersey once, marigolds grew wild. Fields swayed with daisies. Oaks stood tall on mountains. Powdered butterflies graced the velvet air. Listen. It was like that. Before the bulldozers. Before the cranes. Before the cement sealed the earth. Even the stars, which used to hang in thick clusters in the black sky, even the stars are dim. Burrow under the blacktop, under the cement, the old dark earth is still there. Dig your hands into it, feel it, deep, alive on your fingers. Know that the earth breathes and pulses still. Listen. It mourns. In New Jersey once, flowers grew.

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Aprender el inglés by Luis Alberto Ambroggio Vida para entenderme tienes que saber español sentirlo en la sangre de tu alma. Si hablo otro lenguaje y uso palabras distintas para expresar sentimientos que nunca cambiarán no sé si seguiré siendo la misma persona.

Learning English by Luis Alberto Ambroggio Translated from the Spanish by Lori M. Carlson

Life to understand me you have to know Spanish feel it in the blood of your soul. If I speak another language and use different words for feelings that will always stay the same I don't know if I'll continue being the same person.

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Meteor Watch by Naomi Shihab Nye Leaving the car on a high hill in the dark, we spread a tablecloth on the ground and eat with our fingers – grapes, gingersnaps, cheese – staring at the huge sky. This night feels ripe. What will flash by? We want stars to surprise us. We want to be amazed. Each streak of light, we cry out. If you turn your head For just a minute, you can miss one. Focus on east, You lose the ones in the west. I think of people knowing one another in the great spaces, the brave arc of connection between friends, lit up. And all the quiet stars holding their places in between.

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Momentum by Catherine Doty Your friends won’t try to talk you out of the barrel, or your brag to go first, which has nothing to do with bravery. And you’re so hungry to earn their love you forget to claim first your, perhaps, last look at this mountain— crab apples hanging sour in the sun, abandoned Buick, a favorite place to play, dismantled and weathered and delicate as a voting booth. Instead you dive straight away and head-first into darkness, the steel drum that dusts you, like a chicken part, with rust. Looking out, there’s nothing to see of your friends but their calves, which are scabby, and below them the filthy sneakers, shifting, shifting, every foot aching to kick you off this cliff. Their faces, you know, are blank with anticipation, the look you see when they watch TV eating popcorn. They’re already talking about you as if you’re gone, as if you boarded a bus and roared out of earshot, when one foot flashes forward and launches you. You know as you feel that first solid slam you are lost. The barrel changes shape with each crash to earth, as you will later, assuming and losing lives, but this is so true now: ankles flayed to the bone, cracked ribs and crushed mint, the brittle, pissy sumac. Right now the pin oaks are popping in their sockets, the hillside wears your shoes, clouds pleat and buck. You know, of course, that no one’s going second, and friends who tell this story will use the word idiot, rolling their hands in the air, but you know you know what your life is for now and rise up, and just about scalp yourself on that tree limb above you, another thing you couldn’t possibly know was coming, another which, like your first breath, was not your idea.

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Mr. Entwhistle by Jean Little Mr. Entwhistle was our substitute teacher. He had big shoulders and a mean mouth. He knew, before he'd laid eyes on us, that we were out to make trouble. And he knew how to handle teenagers. Step on them hard, right from the start, and you'd have no discipline problems. He'd show us who was boss the first time one of us stepped out of line. Looking back, I can see that was how it started. But at the time, I had not gotten around to noticing him, except to see that he was young. That's a nice change, I thought, and went back to attempting to show Sandra Mayhew where she'd fouled up in the Math homework. Mr. Entwhistle had started writing our names in on a seating plan. He knew all the tricks. He wasn't going to put up with desk jumpers. "What's your name?" he asked sharply. I didn't look up, let alone answer. Sandra was finally catching on. It never once crossed my mind that he was speaking to me. "I said, `What is your name?"' he blasted, making a real production out of it. He was closer to me. He had started down our aisle. So I glanced up. I still had not realized that I was the one he was addressing. I sat there, gazing up at him, wondering why he was all charged up. I did not tell him my name. "All right. That does it!" he thundered. "You can go to the Office." "Me?" I said in blank amazement. I was bewildered. Yet he was glaring straight at me. His eyes were greenish with brown spec ides. They seemed to be on the point of falling out. He was absolutely frantic. "Yes, you. Oh, yes indeed, you! Perhaps next time you'll show respect," he babbled, sidestepping to his desk like a giant crab and scribbling a note for me to take. I couldn't see what he wrote but Pete Evans told me later that it was something about insubordination. I did see that his hand was shaking. I sat there, stunned. I honestly believed that, any minute now, I'd wake up. "On your feet!" Mr. Entwhistle shrieked. Maybe it only sounded like a shriek to me. But his voice did seem to get louder every time he spoke. I stood up slowly. Outside the open window, the sun was shining. Everything was green, beguiling. "Come," it said to me. "Just come out and away." I considered it. At the selfsame instant, some other part of me shouted, as angrily as Mr. Entwhistle could have done, "Fight back, Kate. The bell hasn't gone. You have your rights. The others will back you up. Fight!" Then our eyes met and I saw that he was afraid. He was just a person. He had made a mistake and now, too late, he knew it. He'd rage and bluster if I stood up to him. He'd have to. All the same, he was wishing he could go back and start over. I've felt like that. "Yes, sir," I said quietly, and reached out my hand for the note. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed even. I was waiting for him to hand it to me; the rest of the kids, maybe, for me to start an argument. I often do. Mr. Entwhistle... who knows? Then it was as though someone said, "Will the real Mr. Entwhistle please stand up?” The bombast went out of him. For one more moment, he hesitated. "Never mind," he blurted then. "Sit down. We'll let it pass this time." He tore the note in half, crumpled it up, and threw it at the wastebasket. Even though he missed and the wad of paper landed on the floor, even though I'd won in some way, and he'd had to back down, he looked taller. Taking my seat I felt a bit taller myself. I shoved my hands out of sight when I saw that they were trembling. Sunlight flooded the room. "Way to go, Kate!" Sandra cheered in a too-loud whisper. I scowled at her. "Shh," I said. 58

My Dad is Better Than Your Dad by Andy Griffiths "My dad's better than your dad," says Buck. "No he's not," I say. "Yes he is," says Buck. "He's tougher for a start." "Yeah, right," I say. "My dad's a black belt. Can't get much tougher than that." "Yes you can," says Buck. "My dad's a double black belt." "No such thing," I say. "There is so," says Buck. "He beat up ten blokes once. With his bare hands." "My dad beat up fifty blokes," I say. "With his hands tied behind his back." "My dad beat up three thousand blokes," says Buck. "And he was completely frozen inside a block of ice." "Big deal," I say. "My dad's been inside a volcano. While it was erupting. Wearing nothing but a pair of underpants." "So what?" says Buck. "My dad's been to the moon-without a space suit!" "Space travel?" I say. "That is so boring. My dad's got a time machine. He went back to the Jurassic age and fought a Tyrannosaurus." Buck snorts. "My dad reckons time machines are for kids. He prefers driving his Porsche." "My dad's got a Porsche, too," I say. "In fact, my dad is so rich his Porsche has got a Porsche. He's a billionaire, you know." "Only a billionaire?" says Buck. "My dad's a zillionaire!" "Oh, did I say billionaire?" I say. "I meant krillionaire." "Krillionaire?" says Buck. "There's no such thing." "You've never heard of a krillionaire?" I say. "Gee, I'd hate to be so poor that I didn't know what a krillionaire is. You know all those tiny shrimp things that whales eat? They're called krill. Well, my dad gets his satellite to scan the ocean and he sees all these countless krill in the water and because they're countless he uses that to describe how many dollars he has because he has so many that it's impossible to count them all." "Oh really?" says Buck. "Your dad is still working with outdated technology that can't count all the krill in the ocean? My dad's satellite can see in so much detail that he is capable of not only counting all the krill in the ocean but identifying each krill individually and giving a name to each one. But krillions are nothing to him. Krillions is just a word he uses for his spare change. He's so rich he owns practically everything on earth." "My dad owns the earth," I say. "In fact, he owns the whole solar system." "He doesn't own it," says Buck. "He just rents it. From my dad. My dad owns the entire universe. All the stars. All the asteroids. All the UFOs. All the black holes. Everything. You name it, my dad owns it." He stands there with his hands on his hips. Smirking. I shrug. This is not over yet. Not by a long shot. "That may be so," I say, "but my dad can wiggle his ears!" Buck groans. He knows as well as I do that you can own all the universe you want, but if you can't wiggle your ears, what's the point? Now it's my turn to put my hands on my hips. "Well? Got anything to say?" "Yeah," says Buck. "My mom is better than your mom." 59

Reading Guide - “My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad” Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading _____ bloke _____ _____ reckons _____ _____ asteroid _____ _____ krill _____ Before you read, put a check mark ( ) next to the statement you agree with. ______ Both girls and boys like to outdo one another _____ ______ People sometimes stretch the truth to make themselves look good. ______ ______ Boys act differently with their friends than girls to. ______ ______ Girls argue more than boys. ______ ______ You can’t be friends with someone whom you argue with. ______ ______ Winning an argument is important. ______ During or after your reading, place a check mark ( ) next to the statements with which you agree.

______ Hyperbole, is fun! ______ Hyperbole is a form of lying. ______ It’s not okay to be sarcastic with friends. ______ The speakers in this story are in elementary school. ______ Men rule the world

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Oranges by Gary Soto The first time I walked With a girl, I was twelve, Cold, and weighted down With two oranges in my jacket. December. Frost cracking Beneath my steps, my breath Before me, then gone, As I walked toward Her house, the one whose Porch light burned yellow Night and day, in any weather. A dog barked at me, until She came out pulling At her gloves, face bright With rouge. I smiled, Touched her shoulder, and led Her down the street, across A used car lot and a line Of newly planted trees, Until we were breathing Before a drugstore. We Entered, the tiny bell Bringing a saleslady Down a narrow aisle of goods. I turned to the candies Tiered like bleachers, And asked what she wanted Light in her eyes, a smile Starting at the corners Of her mouth. I fingered A nickel in my pocket, And when she lifted a chocolate That cost a dime, I didn’t say anything. I took the nickel from My pocket, then an orange, And set them quietly on The counter. When I looked up, The lady’s eyes met mine, And held them, knowing Very well what it was all About.

Outside, A few cars hissing past, Fog hanging like old Coats between the trees. I took my girl’s hand In mine for two blocks, Then released it to let Her unwrap the chocolate. I peeled my orange That was so bright against The gray of December That, from some distance, Someone might have thought I was making a fire in my hands.

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More Questions about “Oranges” by Gary Soto Name________________________________________________ Period ____ Critical Reading Directions: To prepare for further discussion of the poem, re-read the poem and then answer the questions below. 1. What choices do characters in this poem make? character

choice(s) they make

2. Who has the most power? Explain.

3. What do you notice about gender (boys and girls) in this poem – what does the poem “say” or show about boys? About girls?

4. Find an example of a simile and write it down along with the number of the line in which it appears.

5. Find an example of onomatopoeia and write it down, along with the number of the line.

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Please turn this page over to continue.

6. Why might the writer have chosen to tell this story as a poem instead of as a narrative?

7. Now what do you think the orange(s) in the poem may symbolize?

8. What do you think of the title? Explain.

9. What else could Soto have called this poem? Think of another title that captures its essence.

10. Mini Author Study: Read another poem by Gary Soto. What is similar about them? What is different? Dig deep (skip the obvious: that one is about humans and one is about a dog ).

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Public School #18: Paterson, New Jersey by Maria Mazziotti Gillan Miss Wilson’s eyes, opaque as blue glass, fix on me: "We must speak English. We’re in America now." I want to say, "I am American," but the evidence is stacked against me.

Years later, in a white Kansas City house, the Psychology professor tells me I remind him of the Mafia leader on the cover of Time magazine. My anger spits venomous from my mouth:

My mother scrubs my scalp raw, wraps my shining hair in white rags to make it curl. Miss Wilson drags me to the window, checks my hair for lice. My face wants to hide.

I am proud of my mother, dressed all in black, proud of my father with his broken tongue, proud of the laughter and noise of our house.

At home, my words smooth in my mouth, I chatter and am proud. In school, I am silent, grope for the right English words, fear the Italian word will sprout from my mouth like a rose,

Remember me, Ladies, the silent one? I have found my voice and my rage will blow your house down.

fear the progression of teachers in their sprigged dresses, their Anglo-Saxon faces. Without words, they tell me to be ashamed. I am. I deny that booted country even from myself, want to be still and untouchable as these women who teach me to hate myself.

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Reading Guide - “Public School #18: Paterson, New Jersey” Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading

I. VOCABULARY Directions: Before reading, read through the list of words below. Put a plus sign (+) on the line to the left of any word whose definition you think you know. If you don’t know it, put a minus sign (–). Return to these words after you have read the chapter, and if you’ve figured out a word you didn’t know before (or if you knew the word all along), put a plus sign (+) after the word. If you still don’t know a word, put another (–) after it. If you’ve learned a different definition for the word, put a double plus sign (++) after the word. ______ opaque ______ ______ lice ______ ______ grope ______ ______progression ______ ______ Anglo-Saxon ______ ______ Mafia ______ ______ venomous ______ I. COMPREHENSION Directions: Scan the statements on this study guide before reading. Then, during or after you read, put a check mark ( ) next to any statement with which you agree. Be sure to be able to point to the text to support your choices whether you agree with the statement or not. LEVEL I: RIGHT THERE ON THE PAGE 8. ______The speaker in the poem is a boy. 9. ______The speaker of the poem’s native language is English. 10. ______Time goes by as the poem proceeds. 11. ______There is only one teacher being spoken about in the poem. LEVEL II: READING BETWEEN THE LINES 12. ______The speaker is made to feel badly about himself/herself for the rest of his/her life. 13. ______This poem is really about xenophobia, which is “fear of the other.” 14. ______ The speaker of the poem, known as the “persona,” goes through a great range of emotions, from happiness as a child to depression as an adult. 15. ______ The poet uses figurative language to bring the reader more deeply into the feelings and issues of the poem. LEVEL III: READING BEYOND THE LINES 16. ______Teachers are sometimes capable of doing damage to their students. 17. ______Racism is not an issue in America. 65

Purple by Alexis Rotella In first grade Mrs. Lohr said my purple teepee wasn’t realistic enough, that purple was no color for a tent, that purple was a color for people who died, that my drawing wasn’t good enough to hang with the others. I walked back to my seat counting the swish swish swishes of my baggy corduroy trousers. With a black crayon nightfall came to my purple tent in the middle of an afternoon. In second grade Mr. Barta said draw anything; he didn’t care what. I left my paper blank and when he came around to my desk my heart beat like a tom tom. He touched my head with his big hand and in a soft voice said the snowfall how clean and white and beautiful.

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Writing About Reading – “Public School #18” and “Purple” Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading Paragraph 1 - comparison The poems “Purple” and “Pubic School #18” are alike in several ways.

A – make a statement –first way a B – choose an appropriate quote from each support it

b

a’ C – explain how your quotes support what you’re saying – in your own words

A – make a statement –second way

B – choose an appropriate quote from each support it C – explain how your quote supports – in your own words

b’

Paragraph 2 - contrast The poems “Purple” and “Pubic School #18” are different in several ways.

A – make a statement –first way

B – choose an appropriate quote to support it

C – explain how your quote supports – in your own words

A – make a statement –second way

B – choose an appropriate quote to support it

C – explain how your quote supports – in your own words

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The Lost Art of Building With Your Hands by Mitch Albom William Kamkwamba of Malawi built a windmill from trash. The kid had an idea. He didn't have money. He didn't have supplies. All he had was a book with pictures. He went to a junkyard, found a bicycle rim, PVC pipe, an old tractor fan. And he did something many of us used to do. He used his hands. He bent. He hammered. He glued. The kid's name was William Kamkwamba. His idea was to make a windmill, because a windmill could make electricity, electricity could pump water, and water could grow crops for his drought-plagued village in Malawi, in southeast Africa. "Normal people do not collect garbage," he admitted, laughing. "The people in my village thought there was something wrong with me." But three months after he started, he'd done it. Made a small windmill with enough energy to power one light bulb. He was 14. When I spoke with Kamkwamba, now 22 -- the subject of the best-selling book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind -- I was impressed with his ingenuity. But I also felt a pang of concern. That same day, I'd read about the advent of 3-D television. I worried about our kids, sitting on the couch, wearing funny glasses, all the imagination done for them. I worried they are losing what Kamkwamba found: the joy of creation, of dirty fingernails. It's mostly done for us now. We download. We boot up. We plug and play. We call tech support. And it starts younger and younger. The world of Wii and PlayStation has rendered building blocks laughable. Who needs blocks when you have a joystick? I remember, as a kid, building a beginner's darkroom in our basement (getting instructions, like Kamkwamba, from a library book). I shook film in a plastic canister. Slid paper into a tray of smelly chemicals. It took hours. But eventually, I held a wet print in my hands. Today, my 3-year-old niece, when you snap her picture, grabs for the camera and says, "Lemme see." In her world, all photos are

instantly viewable on the back. Now, I don't want to play Cranky Man to technology. But there is a time to discover what you can make on your own. What kid, when we were younger, didn't have paint, tape, or magic markers? A ball of rubber bands? A father's toolbox that you weren't supposed to get into? What kid didn't, at least once, go to the hobby store and buy a plastic model to assemble? Remember that word? "Assemble"? We built little airplanes. We glued plastic ships. We hammered nails (and our fingers), we made forts, we strung tin cans, we drew faces on socks and pulled them over our hands. And through it all, when we held up the toy rocket or the puppet, there was quiet. No thumping music. No sound effects. We growled the noise of an engine, we spoke the parts of our characters. We used our own voices. And in doing so, we discovered them. It was quiet when Kamkwamba tinkered with his windmill creation. Just him and his spare parts. He was too poor to attend school. He knew nothing of texting, email, or the Internet. "The day I connected the generator to the windmill, the whole village came to watch," he said. "I was scared that if this thing is not going to work, then the people who think I'm crazy will prove me crazy." It worked. The village cheered. That led to bigger windmills -- and finally a water pump. But it is fitting that the first thing Kamkwamba powered was a flickering bulb, the symbol of an idea. Because children should know that the most rewarding lights of their lives will always be lit -- not by microchip processors, but by their imagination. What have you built with your hands? Go to: http://www.parade.com/news/slideshows/editors-pick/built-byhand.html#?slideindex=0 to see a slideshow of notable creations from households across America.

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Reading Guide for “The Lost Art of Building with Your Hands” Your name: _____________________________________________________ evidence for

statement Kids today are just as creative as kids used to be.

Technology is a good thing.

The author’s audience is kids; he’s talking to you when he writes.

People in other parts of the world believe in kids more than Americans do.

The author is worried.

Kids can change the world.

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Period: _______ evidence against

Shells by Cynthia Rylant "You hate living here." Michael looked at the woman speaking to him. "No, Aunt Esther. I don't." He said it dully, sliding his milk glass back and forth: on the table. "I don't hate it here." Esther removed the last pan from the dishwasher and hung it above the oven. "You hate it here," she said, "and you hate me." "I don't!" Michael yelled. "It's not you!" The woman turned to face him in the kitchen. "Don't yell at me!" she yelled. "I'll not have it in my home. I can't make you happy, Michael. You just refuse to be happy here. And you punish me every day for it." "Punish you?" Michael gawked at her. "I don't punish you! I don't care about you! I don't care what you eat or how you dress or where you go or what you think. Can't you just leave me alone?" He slammed down the glass, scraped his chair back from the table and ran out the door. "Michael!" yelled Esther. They had been living together, the two of them, for six months. Michael's parents had died and only Esther could take him in—or, only she had offered to. Michael's other relatives could not imagine dealing with a fourteen-year-old boy. They wanted peaceful lives. Esther lived in a condominium in a wealthy section of Detroit. Most of the area's residents were older (like her) and afraid of the world they lived in (like her). They stayed indoors much of the time. They trusted few people. Esther liked living alone. She had never married or had children. She had never lived anywhere but Detroit. She liked her condominium. But she was fiercely loyal to her family, and when her only sister had died, Esther insisted she be allowed to care for Michael. And Michael, afraid of going anywhere else, had accepted. Oh, he was lonely. Even six months after their deaths, he still expected to see his parents—sitting on the couch as he walked into Esther's living room, waiting for the bathroom as he came out of the shower, coming in the door late at night. He still smelled his father's Old Spice somewhere, his mother's talc. Sometimes he was so sure one of them was somewhere around him that he thought maybe he was going crazy. His heart hurt him. He wondered if he would ever get better. And though he denied it, he did hate Esther. She was so different from his mother and father. Prejudiced—she admired only those who were white and Presbyterian. Selfish—she wouldn't allow him to use her phone. Complaining—she always had a headache or a backache or a stomachache. He didn't want to, but he hated her. And he didn't know what to do except lie about it. Michael hadn't made any friends at his new school, and his teachers barely noticed him. He came home alone every day and usually found Esther on the phone. She kept in close touch with several other women in nearby condominiums. Esther told her friends she didn't understand Michael. She said she knew he must 72

grieve for his parents, but why punish her? She said she thought she might send him away if he couldn't be nicer. She said she didn't deserve this. But when Michael came in the door, she always quickly changed the subject. One day after school Michael came home with a hermit crab. He had gone into a pet store, looking for some small living thing, and hermit crabs were selling for just a few dollars. He'd bought one, and a bowl. Esther, for a change, was not on the phone when he arrived home. She was having tea and a crescent roll and seemed cheerful. Michael wanted badly to show someone what he had bought. So he showed her. Esther surprised him. She picked up the shell and poked the long, shiny nail of her little finger at the crab's claws. "Where is he?" she asked. Michael showed her the crab's eyes peering through the small opening of the shell. "Well, for heaven's sake, come out of' there!" she said to the crab, and she turned the shell upside down and shook it. "Aunt Esther!" Michael grabbed for the shell. "All right, all right." She turned it right side up. "Well," she said, "what does he do?" Michael grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know," he answered. "Just grows, I guess." His aunt looked at him. "An attraction to a crab is something I cannot identify with. However, it's fine with me if you keep him, as long as I can be assured he won't grow out of that bowl." She gave him a hard stare. "He won't," Michael answered. "I promise." The hermit crab moved into the condominium. Michael named him Sluggo and kept the bowl beside his bed. Michael had to watch the bowl for very long periods of time to catch Sluggo with his head poking out of his shell, moving around. Bedtime seemed to be Sluggo's liveliest part of the day, and Michael found it easy to lie and watch the busy crab as sleep slowly came on. One day Michael arrived home to find Esther sitting on the edge of his bed, looking at the bowl. Esther usually did not intrude in Michael's room, and seeing her there disturbed him. But he stood at the doorway and said nothing. Esther seemed perfectly comfortable, although she looked over at him with a frown on her face. "I think he needs a companion," she said. "What?" Michael's eyebrows went up as his jaw dropped down. Esther sniffed. "I think Sluggo needs a girl friend." She stood up. "Where is that pet store?" Michael took her. In the store was a huge tank full of hermit crabs. "Oh my!" Esther grabbed the rim of the tank and craned her neck over the side. "Look at them!" Michael was looking more at his Aunt Esther than at the crabs. He couldn't believe it. "Oh, look at those shells. You say they grow out of them? We must stock up with several sizes. See the pink in that one? Michael, look! He's got his little head out!" Esther was so dramatic—leaning into the tank, her bangle bracelets clanking, earrings swinging, red pumps clicking on the linoleum—that she attracted the attention of 73

everyone in the store. Michael pretended not to know her well. He and Esther returned to the condominium with a thirty-gallon tank and twenty hermit crabs. Michael figured he'd have a heart attack before he got the heavy tank into their living room. He figured he'd die and Aunt Esther would inherit twenty-one crabs and funeral expenses. But he made it. Esther carried the box of crabs. "Won't Sluggo be surprised?" she asked happily. "Oh, I do hope we'll be able to tell him apart from the rest. He's their founding father!" Michael, in a stupor over his Aunt Esther and the phenomenon of twenty-one hermit crabs, wiped out the tank, arranged it with gravel and sticks (as well as the plastic scuba diver Aunt Esther insisted on buying) and assisted her in loading it up, one by one, with the new residents. The crabs were as overwhelmed as Michael. Not one showed its face. Before moving Sluggo from his bowl, Aunt Esther marked his shell with some red fingernail polish so she could distinguish him from the rest. Then she flopped down on the couch beside Michael. "Oh, what would your mother think, Michael, if she could see this mess we've gotten ourselves into!" She looked at Michael with a broad smile, but it quickly disappeared. The boy's eyes were full of pain. "Oh, my," she whispered. "I'm sorry." Michael turned his head away. Aunt Esther, who had not embraced anyone in years, gently put her arm about his shoulders. "I am so sorry, Michael. Oh, you must hate me." Michael sensed a familiar smell then. His mother's talc. He looked at his aunt. "No, Aunt Esther." He shook his head solemnly. "I don't hate you." Esther's mouth trembled and her bangles clanked as she patted his arm. She took a deep, strong breath. "Well, let's look in on our friend Sluggo," she said. They leaned their heads over the tank and found him. The crab, finished with the old home that no longer fit, was coming out of his shell.

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Smoky Night by Eve Bunting Mama and I stand well back from our window, looking down. I'm holding Jasmine, my cat. We don’t have our lights on though it's almost dark. People are rioting in the street below. Mama explains about rioting. "It can happen when people get angry. They want to smash and destroy. They don't care anymore what's right and what's wrong." Below us they are smashing everything. Windows, cars, streetlights. "They look angry. But they look happy, too," I whisper. "After a while it's like a game," Mama says. Two boys are carrying a TV from Morton's Appliances. It's hard for them because the TV is so heavy. "Are they stealing it?" I ask. Mama nods. Someone breaks the window of Fashion Shoes. Two women and a man climb in through the broken glass. They toss out shoes like they're throwing footballs. I've never heard anybody laugh the way they laugh. Smoke drifts, light as fog. I see the distant flicker of flames. Across the street from us people are dragging cartons of cereal and sacks of rice from Kim's market. My mama and I don't go in Mrs. Kim's market even though it's close. Mama says it's better if we buy from our own people. Mrs. Kim's cat and my cat fight all the time, and Mrs. Kim yells at Jasmine in words I can't understand. She's yelling the same kind of words now at the people who are stealing her stuff. They pay no attention. I move behind Mama. "Will they come here?" "There's nothing for them here, Daniel. See? They've finished with our street. They're moving on." Our street is emptying. One last man is staggering under a pile of clothes he's taken from the dry cleaners. The plastic bags are still over them. "We'll sleep together tonight," mama tells me. She makes me wash my face and brush my teeth. I'm to take off my shoes but leave on my clothes. She puts me next to the wall. I hold Jasmine. “I can't sleep," I say. "Shh!"' Mama whispers. Close your eyes." I do. I guess I sleep. Next thing I know, Mama is shaking me. "Quick, Daniel! Get up!" 75

There's a terrible smell of smoke. Someone's pounding on our apartment door. "Fire! Fire!" I'm suddenly awake. "Where's Jasmine?" I run to the closet. Sometimes Jasmine sleeps on a shelf. Mama's screaming at me. "We can't wait. Jasmine's gone, Put on your shoes, Hurry!" We rush down the stairs. Others crowd around us. The smoke makes us cough. Mr. Ramirez is in front of us carrying Lissa and the baby, who are both howling. "Those people are hooligans," he shouts over his shoulder. “Hooligans!" Mrs. Ramirez is ahead of him. She is holding the cage with Loco, their parrot. Loco's squawking something awful. "Did you see Jasmine, Mr. Ramirez?" I shout. He shakes his head, but I don't think he even hears me. Don't touch the railing," he warns. "It’s hot." Outside, the sky is hazy orange. Flames pounce up the side of our building. Three fire engines scream to a stop. Fire fighters jump out, running, pulling hoses. I see our window where Mama and I had stood. The fire hasn't reached it yet. "Is everybody out?" one fire fighter yells. "Far as we know," another says. "Did you see a cat?" I ask him. "She's yellow. Maybe she's still in there." He glances down. "Probably not, son. Cats are plenty smart. She'll be long gone."" A lady comes up to us. "There's a shelter you can come to," she says. “Everyone follow me." I’m crying because I'm not sure Jasmine is all that smart. What if she's inside? Some of the streetlights have been smashed. We walk along the sidewalk, which sparkles with broken glass. There are empty cartons everywhere. A street sign lies crumpled in the gutter. I grab hold of Mama because I think I see a dead man with no arms lying there, too. But it’s just one of those plastic people that show off clothes in department stores. The lady looks back at Mrs. Kim, who is trailing along behind us. "Are you all right?" she calls. Mrs. Kim nods. "We're almost at the shelter," the lady tells her. The shelter is in a church hall. There are cots to sleep on and a table with hot drinks. Two men are making sandwiches. I've never seen a bigger jar of mayo. We see people from our building. They're talking about who did this. What will happen to us? "It's a sad, sad night," Mr. Jackson says. I ask him about Jasmine. He says he's pretty sure he saw her. "She got out, Daniel," he tells me. I hope he's not just trying to make me feel better. 76

"Did you see my cat?" Mrs. Kim asks. "He is orange." "He's the color of carrots," I say and I almost add, "and he's fat and... But I don’t. A girl gives me a mug of hot chocolate. I wish it had more sugar. When I finish drinking it Mama says I should lie down. She's always making me lie down. People keep coming. Some of them are crying. One woman screams and screams. I hide under my blanket. Then Mama says, "Daniel! Look!" And there is the fire fighter who was at our building. He is standing in the open door, with the smoky night behind him, and I see that he's carrying a cat under each arm. That was how Mr. Ramirez carried Lissa and the baby. The cats are howling, too. "Jasmine!" The blanket's caught on my foot and I'm trailing it. "Oh, thank you! Thank you for finding her!" "The other cat is mine." Mrs. Kim takes her big, fat, mean old orange cat and holds him close. I'm kissing Jasmine. She smells of smoke. "Where was she?" I ask the fire fighter. "The two of them were under the stairs, yowling and screeching," he says. He takes a- mug of hot chocolate. I like him so much! I wish I had a whole barrel of sugar for his drink. "The cats were together?" Mrs. Kim asks. The firefighter nods. "They were so scared they were holding paws." I grin. "No they weren't!" "What about our building?" Mr. Ramirez asks. "The fire's out. You'll be able to go back in a day or two." A woman puts down a dish of milk "Here kitty, kitty," she calls. Jasmine jumps out of my arms, and Mrs. Kim puts her carrot-colored cat down, too. The cats drink from the same dish. Milk isn't that good for cats, but I don't say that either. "Look at that!" Mama is amazed. "I thought those two didn't like each other." Everyone looks at me, and it's suddenly very quiet. "Did I say something wrong?" I whisper to Mama. "No, Daniel." Mama's tugging at her fingers the way she does when she's nervous. "My name is Gena," she tells Mrs. Kim. "Perhaps when things settle down you and your cat will come over and share a dish of milk with us." I think that's pretty funny, but nobody laughs. Mrs. Kim picks up her cat and strokes him. She's staring at the wall. Maybe she's not going to say anything. But then she looks across at Mama. "Thank you," she says. "We will come. Mama smiles. I reach out and stroke Mrs. Kim's big old orange cat, too. "Can you hear him, Mrs. Kim?" I ask. "He's purring!"

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Survival of the Fittest by Soledad O’Brien The racial slurs she heard as a child fueled journalist Soledad O'Brien's drive to succeed The O'Briens in 1967. Back: Edward, Orestes, Soledad, and Estela. Front: Cecelia, Maria, Tony and Estela.

I'm 11. My sister Estela is 14. We're at a photo studio in Smithtown, N.Y., not that far from where we live. The photographer says, "Forgive me if I'm offending you, but are you black?" I turn the comment over in my head. I'm trying to figure out why these nice-sounding words make me feel small and embarrassed. Estela, light years ahead of me, starts to shred the guy. "Offend us? Offend us? By asking if we are black?" He's white, and we're two mixed-race girls trying to get our picture taken as an anniversary present for our parents. It's 1977. I'm this cheery, optimistic kid who suddenly feels quite sunk. Forgive me if I'm offending you… What is that supposed to mean? I am black; I am also Latina, and half white through my Australian father. That isn't typical in Smithtown, but there is nothing wrong with me. I just don't understand how it could possibly be offensive to be black. This is the first time I remember feeling like I might be disliked for who I am. But Estela is totally on it. She gives me the universal body language for "We're taking a walk" and off we go. I think this was the day it began, my life of perpetual motion. I was a middle-class girl in a middle-class Long Island suburb, but my life became like those games of dodge ball in the schoolyard. When you move, you can't get hit. You survive to play again. By doing that, you come out the winner. There was the day I was walking down the hall to science. An older kid, an eighth-grader, came up to me. "If you're a [n-word], why don't you have big lips?" he asked. It killed me that I could feel myself trying to formulate an answer, as if 78

the question merited one. There was no hostility in his voice. He wasn't much bigger than me; he wasn't even scary. Today, almost 33 years later, I could pick him out of a lineup. That day, I just pursed my mouth and kept moving. I wouldn't dignify him with a response. I had to get to class. I've been a journalist now for over 20 years. I sprint from story to story. I am a big version of that little girl in Smithtown, except now I'm walking toward something rather than away from it. In interviews, I force people to consider every word they say. I dig in to the awkward question. I revel in making people rethink their words. Nothing stops me. It's not that I'm propelled by unfounded optimism. I just see life as a series of victories, of wins. I graduated with honors from a school where being half black and half white meant that I was the brunt of bad jokes. I went to Harvard, just like my sister Estela -- like all six of us siblings, in fact. I am by all objective measures a successful journalist. I've gone on to marry a great guy, have four healthy kids, anchor a network TV show, write books, give speeches, and produce awardwinning documentaries about challenging subjects like race. That eighth-grader didn't hinder my forward motion one bit. Whatever became of him, he was wrong about me. Whatever assumptions he made about me, I refuted them by succeeding. Encounters like that changed me for the better. I learned that I didn't need to stop and confront every injustice thrown my way. That anger could teach me. That my experiences could help me identify with people with whom I had little in common. I knew that if I let anger take hold of me, every person who rubbed me the wrong way would be paying for that guy back at the photo studio in 1977. Forgive me if I'm offending you… I think life harbors the possibility that we can push forward and come out better on the other end. In this country, one thing that’s certain is that not far around the corner from every ugly thing there's something really beautiful. And if you stop at every bitter comment, you will never reach your destination.

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Reading Guide for “Survival of the Fittest” by Soledad O’Brien Your name: ______________________________________________ Period ______ Critical Reading Part I: Vocabulary Use the (+) and (-) system before and after reading. _____ slur _____ _____ perpetual _____ _____ purse _____ _____ dignify _____ _____ revel _____ _____ unfounded _____ _____ brunt _____ _____ hinder _____ _____ refute _____ _____ harbor _____ Part 2: Pre-reading Before reading: Check the statements with which you agree. After reading: Check the statement with which the WRITER would agree. BEFORE READING: Check if you agree

STATEMENT

AFTER READING: Check if you think Soledad O’Brien would agree

We are who other people say we are. Saying “No offense, but …” makes a comment okay. Things that happen to us when we’re 11 don’t really “stick.” People don’t really care what race someone is. Something good comes from everything. People tend to overreact to stuff and make a big deal over things they should just let slide. Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing. Please turn over the page.  80

Part III: Writing About Reading 1. What surprised you in this personal essay? Explain. _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. What is Soledad O’Brien’s main point or message? Complete this thought: Soledad O’Brien believes ____________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. Do you agree? Why or why not? Explain. _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. What anecdotes does Soledad use in her essay to help make her point? _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ 5. Do you think Soledad O’Brien would agree with the saying “Success is the best revenge”? Why or why not? Explain. _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ 6. If Soledad O’Brien and the eighth-grader she mentions in her essay met as adults, what do you think she would say to him? _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ 7. Why do you think Soledad O’Brien wrote about this? _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________

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Taco Head by Viola Canales Mama used to pack two bean tacos for my school lunch each day. Every morning she'd get up at five to make a fresh batch of flour masa. She'd roll out and cook one tortilla at a time until she had a big stack of them, nice and hot, and then she'd fill each with beans that she'd fried in bacon grease and flavored with chopped onion in her huge cast-iron skillet. And each morning I would sit at the kitchen table and say, "Mama, can I please have some lunch money too, or a sandwich instead?" But the reply was always the same: "Why, mi’ja? You already have these delicious bean tacos to eat." It wasn't that the tacos weren't good; it was that some kids called all Mexican Americans beaners, so the last thing I needed was to stand out like a big stupid sign. All the other kids either bought their lunch at the cafeteria or took nice white sandwiches. I started going to the very end of the cafeteria, to turn my back and gobble up my tacos. Then I started eating each taco by first putting it in a bag. It would take me all of five minutes to eat, and then I'd go outside to the playground. I was always the first one there, often the only one for quite a while. But I didn't mind, except on really cold days, when I wished I were still inside. On one cold day, I so dreaded going outside that I started eating my second taco rather slowly. "Hey, you!" someone shouted. I turned and found a big girl standing right 'smack in front of me, her arms crossed over her chest like bullet belts. "What's in that paper bag?" She glared and poked at the bag with her fat finger. I was stunned stupid. She grabbed the bag. "Taco head! Taco head!" She yelled. In seconds I was surrounded by kids chanting "Taco head! Taco head!" I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Not only was I found out, but the girl had caused my taco to fly open and splatter all over my white sweater. This nightmare went on forever, until Coach Clarke, the girls' PE teacher, blew her whistle and ordered everyone back to their seats. "Sofia," she said, "don't pay attention to them. They're just being mean and silly." She took me to the teachers' lounge and helped me clean up. For two days after that, I went directly to the playground and didn't eat my lunch until I got home after school. And then for two days after that, I ate inside a stall in the girls' restroom. The next Monday, Coach Clarke stopped me in the hall. "Sofia, how about we eat lunch together in the cafeteria?" When the lunch bell rang, I found Coach Clarke sitting in the middle of the cafeteria, with students standing all around her. She looked up and waved me over. "Here, Sofia," she said as she pulled out the chair beside her. "Everyone else was begging to sit with me, but I said no, that I was saving this chair for you." I sat down, feeling sick, nervous. "How about we trade?" Coach said. She opened her lunch bag and pulled out a half-sandwich wrapped in plastic. "I'll trade this for one of your tacos." All the kids were staring at us. "Oh, please, I really want to trade." I hesitated and pulled out my lunch. I unwrapped the foil. 82

"Those look good," Coach said, reaching for a taco. "Better than any stupid sandwich I've ever had. See for yourself Take a bite." I carefully unwrapped the half-sandwich and took a little bite. It was awful, something between sardines and bologna. "Ha! Told you!" Coach Clarke said, laughing. "Here," she said, taking the rest of the sandwich, "you don't have to eat it. Have your taco instead." As I ate one and Coach Clarke ate the other, she kept making all these loud mmmmm sounds. I knew everyone in the cafeteria could hear. And the next day we ate lunch together in the middle of the cafeteria. We traded. Again, her half-sandwich was truly awful. Do all sandwiches taste like something between sardines and bologna? I wondered. But this time, as she ate one taco and I the other, she told me stories about herself: about how she became a coach because she'd fallen in love with sports at school; how she loved playing soccer most but had also been good at playing field hockey and softball. We laughed when she described the funny skirt she had worn playing field hockey. I told her I liked to play soccer too, with my father and cousins in the street. Then I remembered Clara and her stories, so I told Coach Clarke about Clara and how she told me that I had inherited my great-great-grandmother's gift for kicking like a mule. I hesitated, then said, "I wish I'd kicked the girl who made fun of me." "Sofia, learn to kick with your head instead." "Like in soccer?" "No, like with your brain. And you know how you can really kick that girl, and really hard?" "How?" "By kicking her butt at school, by beating her in English, math, everything—even sports." Coach Clarke and I had lunch together the rest of that week. She asked me for the recipe for the tacos. I had to ask both Papa and Mama for this, since Papa cleaned and cooked the beans before Mama fried them. After that, I wanted to "kick that girl" so bad that I asked Coach Clarke if I could go to the library to study after lunch instead of wasting time on the playground. She arranged it for me. She also told me, "Part of `kicking that girl' is to eat your tacos proudly, and right in the middle of the cafeteria." That year I kicked that girl in all classes and sports, especially soccer. It wasn't long after my lunches with Coach Clarke that some of the other Mexican American kids started eating their foods out in the open too. And sometimes when I pulled out my lunch, I got offers to trade for sandwiches. But I always ate both my tacos before heading off to the library.

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Thank You, M’am by Langston Hughes She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails. It had a long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and she was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap broke with the single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy’s weight and the weight of the purse combined caused him to lose his balance so, instead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up. the large woman simply turned around and kicked him right square in his bluejeaned sitter. Then she reached down, picked the boy up by his shirt front, and shook him until his teeth rattled. After that the woman said, "Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here." She still held him. But she bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, "Now ain’t you ashamed of yourself?" Firmly gripped by his shirt front, the boy said, "Yes’m." The woman said, "What did you want to do it for?" The boy said, "I didn’t aim to." She said, "You a lie!" By that time two or three people passed, stopped, turned to look, and some stood watching. "If I turn you loose, will you run?" asked the woman. "Yes’m," said the boy. "Then I won’t turn you loose," said the woman. She did not release him. "I’m very sorry, lady, I’m sorry," whispered the boy. "Um-hum! And your face is dirty. I got a great mind to wash your face for you. Ain’t you got nobody home to tell you to wash your face?" "No’m," said the boy. "Then it will get washed this evening," said the large woman starting up the street, dragging the frightened boy behind her. He looked as if he were fourteen or fifteen, frail and willow-wild, in tennis shoes and blue jeans. The woman said, "You ought to be my son. I would teach you right from wrong. Least I can do right now is to wash your face. Are you hungry?" "No’m," said the being dragged boy. "I just want you to turn me loose." "Was I bothering you when I turned that corner?" asked the woman. "No’m." 84

"But you put yourself in contact with me," said the woman. "If you think that that contact is not going to last awhile, you got another though coming. When I get through with you, sir, you are going to remember Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones." Sweat popped out on the boy’s face and he began to struggle. Mrs. Jones stopped, jerked him around in front of her, put a halfnelson about his neck, and continued to drag him up the street. When she got to her door, she dragged the boy inside, down a hall, and into a large kitchenette-furnished room at the rear of the house. She switched on the light and left the door open. The boy could hear other roomers laughing and talking in the large house. Some of their doors were open, too, so he knew he and the woman were not alone. The woman still had him by the neck in the middle of her room. She said, "What is your name?" "Roger," answered the boy. "Then, roger, you go to that sink and wash your face," said the woman, whereupon she turned him loose--at last. Roger looked at the door—looked at the woman—looked at the door—and went to the sink. Let the water run until it gets warm," she said. "Here’s a clean towel." "You gonna take me to jail?" asked the boy, bending over the sink. "Not with that face, I would not take you nowhere," said the woman. "Here I am trying to get home to cook me a bite to eat and you snatch my pocketbook! Maybe, you ain’t been to your supper either, late as it be. Have you?" "There’s nobody home at my house," said the boy. "Then we’ll eat," said the woman, "I believe you’re hungry—or been hungry—to try to snatch my pocketbook." "I wanted a pair of blue suede shoes," said the boy. "Well, you didn’t have to snatch my pocketbook to get some suede shoes," said Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones. "You could of asked me." "M’am?" The water dripping from his face, the boy looked at her. There was a long pause. A very long pause. After he had dried his face and not knowing what else to do dried it again, the boy turned around, wondering what next. The door was open. He could make a dash for it down the hall. He could run, run, run, run, run! The woman was sitting on the day-bed. After a while she said, "I were young once and I wanted things I could not get." There was another long pause. The boy’s mouth opened. Then he frowned, but not knowing he frowned. The woman said, "Um-hum! You thought I was going to say but, didn’t you? You thought I was going to say, but I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks. Well, I wasn’t going to say that." Pause. 85

Silence. "I have done things, too, which I would not tell you, son— neither tell God, if he didn’t already know. So you set down while I fix us something to eat. You might run that comb through your hair so you will look presentable." In another corner of the room behind a screen was a gas plate and an icebox. Mrs. Jones got up and went behind the screen. The woman did not watch the boy to see if he was going to run now, nor did she watch her purse which she left behind her on the day-bed. But the boy took care to sit on the far side of the room where he thought she could easily see him out of the corner other eye, if she wanted to. He did not trust the woman not to trust him. And he did not want to be mistrusted now. "Do you need somebody to go to the store," asked the boy, "maybe to get some milk or something?" "Don’t believe I do," said the woman, "unless you just want sweet milk yourself. I was going to make cocoa out of this canned mild I got her." "That will be fine," said the boy. She heated some lima beans and ham she had in the icebox, made the cocoa, and set the table. The woman did not ask the boy anything about where he lived, or his folks, or anything else that would embarrass him. Instead, as they ate, she told him about her job in a hotel beauty-shop that stayed open late, what the work was like, and how all kinds of women came in and out, blondes, red-heads, and Spanish. Then she cut him a half of her ten-cent cake. "Eat some more, son," she said. When they were finished eating she got up and said, "Now, here, take this ten dollars and buy yourself some blue suede shoes. And next time, do not make the mistake of latching onto my pocketbook nor nobody else’s—because shoes come be devilish like that will burn your feet. I got to get my rest now. But I wish you would behave yourself, son, from here on in." She led him down the hall to the front door and opened it. "Goodnight!" Behave yourself, boy!" she said, looking out into the street. The boy wanted to say something else other that "Thank you, m’am" to Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, but he couldn’t do so as he turned at the barren stoop and looked back at the large woman in the door. He barely managed to say "Thank you" before she shut the door. And he never saw her again.

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“Thank You Ma’am” - Student-Created Discussion Statements Name: ______________________________________Period_____ EVIDENCE FOR

Critical Reading EVIDENCE AGAINST

1) Roger is an experienced thief. 2) Roger expected Mrs. Jones to be wealthier than he was. 3) The goal of Mrs. Jones when she drags Roger to her home is to punish him. 4) Mrs. Jones’s socioeconomic status/ class background affects the way she ends up dealing with Roger’s crime. 5) Blue suede shoes are a popular fashion trend at the time of Roger’s crime. 6) Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones trusts Roger. 7) Mrs. Jones wants Roger to wash his face and comb his hair because she is disgusted by how dirty he looks. 8) Roger has no self-respect at all. 9) Roger expected a “speech” or “lecture” when Mrs. Jones said, “I were young once and I wanted things I could not get.” 10) Roger does not understand what is going on while he is with Mrs. Jones. 11) FEAR is what stops Roger from running out the door that Mrs. Jones leaves open while she is preparing dinner. 12) Most people would define justice as getting what you deserve. Mrs. Jones would agree with this definition.

The Candy Bite by Viola Canales One Saturday morning, I walked into the kitchen and told Mama, "I'm not going to be friends with Berta anymore. She's mean and selfish." I still hadn't figured out what being a good comadre was all about, but I was sure I didn't want to make Berta part of my family. "But Berta's your cousin, your best friend," Mama said as she stopped sweeping and turned to look at me. "You've played together since you were babies." "She might still be my cousin, but she's not my best friend anymore." I went into the living room and started watching cartoons. There was a knock on the front door. I glanced out the window and saw Berta's hazel eyes and the red bow in her curly brown hair. I raced into the kitchen. "It's Berta. Tell her I'm not here." "You go tell her. What? I'm supposed to lie for you now?" "Oh, please. I'll sweep the rest of the kitchen for you." "I'll consider it if you tell me why all of a sudden you've stopped liking Berta." Berta knocked louder. "Sofia! Sofia! Are you home?" "Berta always takes a huge bite out of my candy bars, but when she has one she puts her fingers on the tip so I can only take the tiniest nibble out of hers." Mama shook her head. "Mi’ja ... go get two nickels from my purse and then take Berta to the store to buy two candy bars—one for you and one for her."

The very next day Mama and I were walking to church for seven o'clock Sunday Mass. I turned and saw Berta on the other side of the street, about ten paces ahead of us. She was eating a chocolate bar. I glared at her, my mouth watering. Then I got mad. "Is that Berta?" Mama looked at me. "Yeah." "Eating a candy bar—right?" Silence. "Sofia, why don't you go over and ask her to give you a bite?" I started walking more slowly, letting Mama go ahead. "Sofia, I'm talking to you." "What?" "Go over and ask Berta for a bite of her chocolate." "I ... don't want ... any." "Oh, Sofia, don’t try that on me. I know you like your papa knows his bean pot. You're loca about candy—chocolate especially. Now go over and get a bite. Remember, you bought her a whole candy bar yesterday." "But she'll only let me take a nibble." "Well, if she puts her fingers at the tip again, you have my permission to go ahead and bite them." What? "I'm serious. Now go on." Mama turned me toward Berta and gave me a push. I turned to Mama. She waved me off. I slowly crossed the street and turned to Mama again. Still serious. Berta was absorbed in her chocolate bar. I felt my blood hot and rushing, my hands sweaty. 88

"Hey, Berta. . ." She turned, her nostrils flared. She made her eyes into slits. "Oh,... hi." I turned to Mama. She had caught up to us but was still across the street. Still serious. "Berta ... can I ... have a bite?" Berta sighed like a big balloon letting out air. "Okay..." She took her candy bar and put her fingers on the tip. Mama nodded. I took a huge bite. Berta howled and took a bite of my shoulder. I kicked her like a mule. I didn't even bother to turn to look at Mama then. As Berta's big teeth came at me for another bite, her mother, Tía Belia, miraculously appeared and pulled her back. Mama caught me as I was about to kick Berta on her butt. We stood in our mothers' arms, panting, glaring, with sweaty red faces. Berta clutched her candy bar like a trophy. "Berta," said her mother, "now, share your chocolate with Sofia. Remember that she bought you a whole candy bar yesterday. Break it in half and give her a piece." Berta squinted. "Berta ..." With tears in her eyes, she took off the wrapper and snapped the candy bar in two. One piece was much bigger than the other. "Give your friend Sofia a piece." Berta handed me the smaller piece. "Wait. Sofia, you take the piece you want." I gulped, looked at Berta's watery eyes, and took the smaller piece.

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The Follower by Jack Gantos from Guys Write for Guys Read edited bv Jon Scieszka My mother said he was trouble the first time I met him. His name was Frankie Pagoda and he had just been catapulted across the yard like a human cannonball and landed badly in ours. He was moaning as I stood over him, not knowing what to do. He was on his back and at first he wasn't moving, but slowly he began to gyrate his arms and legs like a stunned crab. "Who are you?" I asked. "Frankie ... P—" he slowly replied. "Frankie Pagoda." He was in a lot of pain, and here's what was going on. His older brother, Scary Gary, who had already been in trouble with the law, had made him climb to the very top of a reedy Australian pine tree with a rope between his teeth. Then he tied the rope to the top of the tree and Gary tied the other end to the winch on Mr. Pagoda's tow truck. He winched the tip of the tree all the way down so it made a big spring and then Frankie held on like a Koala bear while Gary cut the rope with a machete. Frankie was launched like the stones the Romans flung at the Vandals. I was in my bedroom and Mom was in the kitchen; both of us had windows that faced the back-yard. Then we heard that first whoosh! of the tree and Frankie hollering, "Ahhhhhbh!" That was followed by a loud thud and a very soulful moan. And this is how we found him—on his back with his arms and legs slowly stretching out. "Are you okay?" I asked. He slowly turned over onto his hands and knees. "Yeah," he said, wincing. "I've had worse." Mom pointed at him as if he were a garden pest. "He's a heap of trouble," she said to me. Then she said to Frankie, "If you have to hurt yourself, please do it in your own yard." He seemed to nod to that and I helped him up and he ran off. A few minutes later we heard, "Whoosh!" Thud! "Ugh!" He was back. "Something is messed up with those people," Mom said, chopping up onions that evening. "Something's wrong in their heads." Maybe there was something wrong with me, too. I was different from Frankie but still, the first moment I saw him in pain, it occurred to me that I wanted to be in pain, too. That evening my mother came into my room. "If I ever catch you playing with that kid or over at their house, you will be in big trouble. This is just a friendly warning," she said. "'Why?" I asked. "He's a neighbor and will probably be my friend." "You should not be friends with kids who are a danger to themselves and others." I got some courage up and replied, "That's what I love about him." She pointed a red finger at my chest. "You are a follower, not a leader," she said bluntly. "You are putty in the wrong hands. Don't get me wrong. You're a nice kid, but you are most definitely a follower." I sort of knew this was true but I didn't want to admit it to her. Plus, a little of me still wanted to believe that I was strong, that I was my own man and a great leader. But within a week I was Frankie's man, which was pretty scary because he was Gary's man, which made me low man on the totem pole—or pine tree. The first time Gary launched me, I hit a car. It was an old Mercury Cougar parked in their backyard. It didn't have any wheels and sat on its belly like a cat crouching to catch a bird. I hit the roof, which was like a steel trampoline. It dented down and popped up and I went 90

springing off the top. As I was in the air, I kept thinking, When you hit the ground, roll and tumble and it won't hurt so much. This is what I had learned from watching Roller Derby on TV. It was my favorite show and very violent, but the players always avoided massive debilitating and life-threatening injuries as long as they rolled and tumbled across the wooden track or over the rails and onto the rows of metal folding chairs. So, as I flew through the air, I stared at the grassy yard and planned my clever descent. I hit the ground with my outstretched arms and, instead of bouncing as if my hands were shock absorbers, I collapsed into the group like a piece of space junk. I dislocated the fingers on my right hand, bruised the side of my face, and sprained my right shoulder. I limped home hunched over like Quasimodo and went straight to my room. A few minutes later I was barking in pain from relocating the joints in my fingers. I was so afraid my mother would see my bruised face that I stole my sister's makeup and powdered my bruise. At dinner I couldn't use mv right arm. It hung limply by my side like an elephant's trunk. I must have pinched a nerve on contact with the ground that left my arm paralyzed. Perhaps for life. I ate with my left hand and food kept falling down mv chin and shirt and onto my lap. "What's wrong with your arm?" my mother asked. "Nothing," I mumbled. She sneered, stood op, and came around to my side. She grabbed my arm and pulled on it like it was the starter rope on a lawnmower engine. Something deep inside my shoulder went Pop! "Arghhh," I sighed. The relief from the pain was heavenly. "You are dumb as a post," my mother said. "I'm warning you—don't play with that kid! He'll lead you to your death." I couldn't help myself. The next day I felt pretty good and my teeth no longer throbbed when I breathed through my mouth. As soon as my mother went into the bathroom I ran over to Frankie's house. His brother Gary had rigged up an electric chair with a train transformer. He ran copper leads from the transformer to chicken wire on the chair and duct-taped it down. "Don't be a chicken," he said demonically when he saw me. "Take a seat." I did and it was torture at its most challenging. When I got home I looked at my naked butt in the mirror, and it was singed with the same chicken wire pattern that was on the chair. "Wow," I said. "Pretty cool." The next day my mother did the laundry. She came to me with my pants, which were singed with the same wire pattern. "You don't have to tell me how this happened," she said. "You just have to stop. Whatever drives you to do this stuff is a sickness. So I'm grounding you for a while until you start displaying some sense." Maybe I was sick. Maybe I was a follower. But I couldn't help myself. I wanted to sneak back for more. I was just thinking of crawling out the window when I looked over at the Pagoda house, and Frankie had his bike up on the peak of his roof. He was poised to pedal down the slope and land in the pool, which was quite a distance from the eaves of the house. "Go'." Gary demanded. Frankie did. He pedaled as far as he could and yelled all the way down and then was in the air. My vision was blocked bv a bush, and instead of a splashing sound there was the springy metal sound of his bike hitting the concrete patio and clattering around. In a minute Gary was hollering at him to stop being a sissy and to get up and the dent in his forehead wasn't anything to cry over. I rubbed my hand over my forehead. Perhaps a little dent in my own would look good, I thought. The ambulance arrived in a few minutes. After some begging, Mom allowed me to visit Frankie in the hospital, and later, once Scary Gary was sent off to a special 91

program for dangerous boys, I even snuck over to Frankie's house a few times. He recovered just fine. And because he stopped doing dumb things for Gary, I stopped doing dumb things for him. He was a follower too, like me. And when you put two followers together nothing really bad happens. We didn't get hurt for a while or do anything too stupid. About a month went by before I secretly hoped Scary Gary would return home and rescue us from being so dull. I was bored out of my mind.

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Vocabulary in “The Follower” by Jack Gantos Word/Phrase

Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading Part of Speech Definition – in your own words Etymology1

catapult (noun)

noun

*

catapult (verb)

verb

*

debilitate

*

demonically

*

descent

* prefix “de-“ and “descend”

Notes

See definitions for “demoniac” and “demon” Need to look at etymology for both “de” and “descend”

eave gyrate

* gyr-

Etymology can be found for the root “gyr-“

machete poised putty in the wrong hands

N/A

This is an “idiom”2

Quasimodo singe

*

Literary reference; need to use Benet’s Readers Guide There are two homonyms for this word

totem pole trampoline proper noun (historical) ; common noun (modern)

Vandals

Tribespeople who “sacked” Rome in 455 A.D.; wild, destructive people

Example lesson

wince winch (noun)

noun

winch (verb)

verb

1.

2.

*

You only have to fill this space in if there is an asterisk (*) in the space. If there is no asterisk, leave this part blank. See handout, “What Is an Idiom?”

Hint: look at the Middle English (ME) etymology Hint: look at the Middle English (ME) etymology

What Is an Idiom? An idiom is a word or phrase which means something different from what it says. It is a phrase whose meaning cannot be understood from the dictionary definitions of each word taken separately. It is usually a metaphor. For example, the idiom “spill the beans” means to tell a secret. It is difficult for someone new to a language to understand and use idioms in that language properly. In the above example, someone who is just learning English may wonder what spilling beans and secrets have in common! Here are some other common idioms:



Break a leg A way to wish someone good luck



Bark up the wrong tree To choose the wrong course of action



Live it up To enjoy life, to live wildly



It's raining cats and dogs It's raining hard



Kick the bucket To die



Get into hot water To get into trouble To be chicken-hearted To be scared

 

Shape up or ship out Used to tell someone that they should leave if they don't improve their behavior or performance



Shed crocodile tears To cry about something but without actually caring



Wild goose chase A useless journey or pursuit There's no room to swing a cat There is not a lot of space







Top dog A leader



To smell a rat To think that something is wrong



To chicken out Not doing an activity because of fear



Eat like a horse To eat a lot

Pay through the nose To pay a lot of money, more than is normal

Go to http://www.idiomsite.com/ for more idioms! —adapted from Wikipedia

Literal and Inferential Questioning in “The Follower” Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading LITERAL QUESTIONS FOR “The Follower” by Jack Gantos WHO was Scary Gary? WHAT is Jack’s mother’s opinion of Frankie and Gary? WHEN was the first time Jack got hurt playing around with Frankie and Gary? WHERE was Jack when Frankie pedaled himself off the roof? WHY is Jack bored at the end of the story? HOW was Jack able to visit Frankie in the hospital? INFERENTIAL QUESTIONS FOR “The Follower” by Jack Gantos WHO has the most power in this story? WHAT does this story say about boys? About girls? WHEN might a reader laugh and why? WHERE do you think Frankie’s and Gary’s parents are? WHY are these boys driven to do the kind of self-destructive things they do? HOW might the next chapter of this story go?

Now YOU Try! Literal and Inferential questions for ____________________________________________ LITERAL WHO____________________________________________________________? WHAT ___________________________________________________________? WHEN ___________________________________________________________? WHERE __________________________________________________________? WHY ____________________________________________________________? HOW ____________________________________________________________? INFERENTIAL WHO ____________________________________________________________? WHAT ___________________________________________________________? WHEN ___________________________________________________________? 95

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The Little Boy and the Old Man by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon." Said the old man, "I do that too." The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants." "I do that too," laughed the little old man. Said the little boy, "I often cry." The old man nodded, "So do I." "But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems Grown-ups don't pay attention to me." And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand. "I know what you mean," said the little old man.

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The Marble Champ by Gary Soto Lupe Medrano, a shy girl who spoke in whispers, was the school’s spelling bee champion, winner of the reading contest at the public library three summers in a row, blue ribbon awardee in the science fair, the top student at her piano recital, and the playground grand champion in chess. She was a straight-A student and—not counting kindergarten, when she had been stung by a wasp—never missed one day of elementary school. She had received a small trophy for this honor and had been congratulated by the mayor. But though Lupe had a razor-sharp mind, she could not make her body, no matter how much she tried, run as fast as the other girls’. She begged her body to move faster, but could never beat anyone in the fifty-yard dash. The truth was that Lupe was no good in sports. She could not catch a pop-up or figure out in which direction to kick the soccer ball. One time she kicked the ball at her own goal and scored a point for the other team. She was no good at baseball or basketball either, and even had a hard time making a hula hoop stay on her hips. It wasn’t until last year, when she was eleven years old, that she learned how to ride a bike. And even then she had to use training wheels. She could walk in the swimming pool but couldn’t swim, and chanced roller skating only when her father held her hand. “I’ll never be good at sports,” she fumed one rainy day as she lay on her bed gazing at the shelf her father had made to hold her awards. “I wish I could win something, anything, even marbles.” At the word “marbles,” she sat up. “That’s it. Maybe I could be good at playing marbles.” She hopped out of bed and rummaged through the closet until she found a can full of her brother’s marbles. She poured the rich glass treasure on her bed and picked five of the most beautiful marbles. She smoothed her bedspread and practiced shooting, softly at first so that her aim would be accurate. The marble rolled from her thumb and clicked against the targeted marble. But the target wouldn’t budge. She tried again and again. Her aim became accurate, but the power from her thumb made the marble move only an inch or two. Then she realized that the bedspread was slowing the marbles. She also had to admit that her thumb was weaker than the neck of a newborn chick. She looked out the window. The rain was letting up, but the ground was too muddy to play. She sat cross-legged on the bed, rolling her five marbles between her palms. Yes, she thought, I could play marbles, and marbles is a sport. At that moment she realized that she had only two weeks to practice. The playground championship, the same one her brother had entered the previous year, was coming up. She had a lot to do. To strengthen her wrists, she decided to do twenty push-ups on her fingertips, five at a time. “One, two, three . . .” she groaned. By the end of the first set she was breathing hard, and her muscles burned from exhaustion. She did one more set and decided that was enough push-ups for the first day. She squeezed a rubber eraser one hundred times, hoping it would strengthen her thumb. This seemed to work because the next day her thumb was sore. She could hardly hold a marble in her hand, let alone send it flying with power. So Lupe rested that day and listened to her brother, who gave her tips on how to shoot: get low, aim with one eye, and place one knuckle on the ground. “Think ‘eye and thumb’—and let it rip!” he said. After school the next day she left her homework in her backpack and practiced three hours straight, taking time only to eat a candy bar for energy. With a popsicle stick, she 99

drew an odd-shaped circle and tossed in four marbles. She used her shooter, a milky agate with hypnotic swirls, to blast them. Her thumb had become stronger. After practice, she squeezed the eraser for an hour. She ate dinner with her left hand to spare her shooting hand and said nothing to her parents about her dreams of athletic glory. Practice, practice, practice. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Lupe got better and beat her brother and Alfonso, a neighbor kid who was supposed to be a champ. “Man, she’s bad!” Alfonso said. “She can beat the other girls for sure. I think.” The weeks passed quickly. Lupe worked so hard that one day, while she was drying dishes, her mother asked why her thumb was swollen. “It’s muscle,” Lupe explained. “I’ve been practicing for the marbles championship.” “You, honey?” Her mother knew Lupe was no good at sports. “Yeah. I beat Alfonso, and he’s pretty good.” That night, over dinner, Mrs. Medrano said, “Honey, you should see Lupe’s thumb.” “Huh?” Mr. Medrano said, wiping his mouth and looking at his daughter. “Show your father.” “Do I have to?” an embarrassed Lupe asked. “Go on, show your father.” Reluctantly, Lupe raised her hand and flexed her thumb. You could see the muscle. The father put down his fork and asked, “What happened?” “Dad, I’ve been working out. I’ve been squeezing an eraser.” “Why?” “I’m going to enter the marbles championship.” Her father looked at her mother and then back at his daughter. “When is it, honey?” “This Saturday. Can you come?” The father had been planning to play racquetball with a friend Saturday, but he said he would be there. He knew his daughter thought she was no good at sports and he wanted to encourage her. He even rigged some lights in the backyard so she could practice after dark. He squatted with one knee on the ground, entranced by the sight of his daughter easily beating her brother. The day of the championship began with a cold blustery sky. The sun was a silvery light behind slate clouds. “I hope it clears up,” her father said, rubbing his hands together as he returned from getting the newspaper. They ate breakfast, paced nervously around the house waiting for 10:00 to arrive, and walked the two blocks to the playground (though Mr. Medrano wanted to drive so Lupe wouldn’t get tired). She signed up and was assigned her first match on baseball diamond number three. Lupe, walking between her brother and her father, shook from the cold, not nerves. She took off her mittens, and everyone stared at her thumb. Someone asked, “How can you play with a broken thumb?” Lupe smiled and said nothing. She beat her first opponent easily, and felt sorry for the girl because she didn’t have anyone to cheer for her. Except for her sack of marbles, she was all alone. Lupe invited the girl, whose name was Rachel, to stay with them. She smiled and said, “OK.” The four of them walked to a card table in the middle of the outfield, where Lupe was assigned another opponent. She also beat this girl, a fifth-grader named Yolanda, and asked her to join their group. They proceeded to more matches and more wins, and soon there was a crowd of

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people following Lupe to the finals to play a girl in a baseball cap. This girl seemed dead serious. She never even looked at Lupe. “I don’t know, Dad, she looks tough.” Rachel hugged Lupe and said, “Go get her.” “You can do it,” her father encouraged. “Just think of the marbles, not the girl, and let your thumb do the work.” The other girl broke first and earned one marble. She missed her next shot, and Lupe, one eye closed, her thumb quivering with energy, blasted two marbles out of the circle but missed her next shot. Her opponent earned two more before missing. She stamped her foot and said “Shoot!” The score was three to two in favor of Miss Baseball Cap. The referee stopped the game. “Back up, please, give them room,” he shouted. Onlookers had gathered too tightly around the players. Lupe then earned three marbles and was set to get her fourth when a gust of wind blew dust in her eyes and she missed badly. Her opponent quickly scored two marbles, tying the game, and moved ahead six to five on a lucky shot. Then she missed, and Lupe, whose eyes felt scratchy when she blinked, relied on instinct and thumb muscle to score the tying point. It was now six to six, with only three marbles left. Lupe blew her nose and studied the angles. She dropped to one knee, steadied her hand, and shot so hard she cracked two marbles from the circle. She was the winner! “I did it!” Lupe said under her breath. She rose from her knees, which hurt from bending all day, and hugged her father. He hugged her back and smiled. Everyone clapped, except Miss Baseball Cap, who made a face and stared at the ground. Lupe told her she was a great player, and they shook hands. A newspaper photographer took pictures of the two girls standing shoulder-to-shoulder, with Lupe holding the bigger trophy. Lupe then played the winner of the boys’ division, and after a poor start beat him eleven to four. She blasted the marbles, shattering one into sparkling slivers of glass. Her opponent looked on glumly as Lupe did what she did best—win! The head referee and the President of the Fresno Marble Association stood with Lupe as she displayed her trophies for the newspaper photographer. Lupe shook hands with everyone, including a dog who had come over to see what the commotion was all about. That night, the family went out for pizza and set the two trophies on the table for everyone in the restaurant to see. People came up to congratulate Lupe, and she felt a little embarrassed, but her father said the trophies belonged there. Back home, in the privacy of her bedroom, she placed the trophies on her shelf and was happy. She had always earned honors because of her brains, but winning in sports was a new experience. She thanked her tired thumb. “You did it, thumb. You made me champion.” As its reward, Lupe went to the bathroom, filled the bathroom sink with warm water, and let her thumb swim and splash as it pleased. Then she climbed into bed and drifted into a hard-won sleep.

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The Rider by Naomi Shihab Nye A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.

from Fuel: Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1998 Boa Editions, Rochester, NY

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Reading Guide – “The Rider” Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading Evidence For

Evidence Against The speaker in this poem is in a bike race.

Naomi Shihab Nye writes about loneliness as if it were a person.

The speaker in the poem is a cyclist champion.

The speaker is lonely.

When people feel lonely, they think they are unattractive.

A true champion takes action.

The speaker escapes loneliness.

You might be able to escape feeling lonely by ignoring the problem. 103

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;

5

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

10

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

15

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

20

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They Are My Friends by Margaret Atwood The black door opens. I'm sitting in the mouse-dropping and formaldehyde smell of the building, on the window-ledge, with the heat from the radiator going up my legs, watching out the window as the fairies and gnomes and snowballs below me slog through the drizzle to the tune of "Jingle Bells" played by a brass band. The fairies look foreshortened, damaged, streaked by the dust and rain on the window glass; my breath makes a foggy circle. My brother isn't here, he's too old for it. This is what he said. I have the whole window-ledge to myself On the window-ledge beside mine, Cordelia and Grace and Carol are sitting, jammed in together, whispering and giggling. I have to sit on a window-ledge by myself because they aren't speaking to me. It's something I said wrong, but I don't know what it is because they won't tell me. Cordelia says it will be better for me to think back over everything I've said today and try to pick out the wrong thing. That way I will learn not to say such a thing again. When I've guessed the right answer, then they will speak to me again. All of this is for my own good, because they are my best friends and they want to help me improve. So this is what I'm thinking about as the pipe band goes past in sodden fur hats, and the drum majorettes with their bare wet legs and red smiles and dripping hair: what did I say wrong? I can't remember having said anything different from what I would ordinarily say. My father walks into the room, wearing his white lab coat. He's working in another part of the building, but he's come to check on us. "Enjoying the parade, girls?" he says. "Oh yes, thank you," Carol says, and giggles. Grace says, "Yes, thank you." I say nothing. Cordelia gets down off her windowsill and slides up onto mine, sitting close beside me. "We're enjoying it extremely, thank you very much," she says in her voice for adults. My parents think she has beautiful manners. She puts an arm around me, gives me a little squeeze, a squeeze of complicity,' of instruction. Everything will be all right as long as I sit still, say nothing, reveal nothing. I will be saved then, I will be acceptable once more. I smile, tremulous with relief, with gratitude. But as soon as my father is out of the room Cordelia turns to face me. Her expression is sad rather than angry. She shakes her head.' "How could you?" she says. "How could you be so impolite? You didn't even answer him. You know what this means, don't you? I'm afraid you'll have to be punished. What do you have to say for yourself?" And I have nothing to say. I'm standing outside the closed door of Cordelia's room. Cordelia, Grace, and Carol are inside. They're having a meeting. The meeting is about me. I am just not measuring up, although they are giving me every chance. I will have to do better. But better at what? Perdie and Mirrie come up the stairs, along the hall, in their armour of being older. I long to be as old as they are. They're the only people who have any real power over Cordelia, that I can see. I think of them as my allies; or I think they would be my allies if they only knew. Knew what? Even to myself I am mute.' "Hello, Elaine," they say. Now they say, "What's the little game today? Hide and Seek?" "I can't tell," I answer. They smile at me, condescending and kind, and head towards their room, to do their toenails and talk about older things. 105

I lean against the wall. From behind the door comes the indistinct murmur of voices, of laughter, exclusive and luxurious. Cordelia's Mummie drifts by, humming to herself. She's wearing her painting smock. There's a smudge of apple-green on her cheek. She smiles at me, the smile of an angel, benign but remote. "Hello, dear," she says. "You tell Cordelia there's a cookie for you girls, in the tin." "You can come in now," says the voice of Cordelia from inside the room. I look at the closed door, at the doorknob, at my own hand moving up, as if it's no longer a part of me.... It turns colder and colder. I lie with my knees up, as close to my body as I can get them. I'm peeling the skin off my feet; I can do it without' looking, by touch. I worry about what I've said today, the expression on my face, how I walk, what I wear, because all of these things need improvement. I am not normal, I am not like other girls. Cordelia tells me so, but she will help me. Grace and Carol will help me too. It will take hard work and a long time. ' In the mornings I get out of bed, put on my clothes, the stiff cotton waist' with the garters, the ribbed stockings, the nubbled wool pullover, the plaid skirt. I remember these clothes as cold. Probably they were cold. I put my shoes on, over my stockings and my peeled feet. I go out to the kitchen, where my mother is cooking breakfast. There's a pot with porridge in it, Red River cereal or oatmeal or Cream of Wheat, and a glass coffee percolator. I rest my arms on the edge of the white stove and watch the porridge, simmering and thickening, bubbles coming up out of it one at a time and releasing their small puffs of steam. The porridge is like boiling mud. I know that when it comes time to eat the porridge I will have trouble: my stomach will contract, my hands will get cold, it will be difficult to swallow. Something tight sits under my breastbone. But I will get the porridge down somehow, because it's required. Or I watch the coffee percolator, which is better because I can see everything, the pinpoint bubbles gathering under the upside-down glass umbrella, then hesitating, then the column of water shooting upwards through the stem, falling down over the coffee in its metal basket, the drops of coffee dripping down into the clear water, inking it brown. Or I make toast, sitting at the table where the toaster is. Each of our spoons has a dark-yellow halibut liver oil capsule in it, shaped like a small football. There are the plates, gleaming whitely, and the glasses of juice. The toaster is on a silver heat pad. It has two doors, with a knob at the bottom of each, and a grid up the centre that glows red-hot. When the toast is done on one side I turn the knobs and the doors open and the toast slides down and turns over, all by itself I think about putting my finger in there, onto the red-hot grid. All of these are ways of delaying time, slowing it down, so I won't have to go out through the kitchen door. But no matter what I do, and despite myself, I am pulling on my snowpants, wadding my skirt in between my legs, tugging thick woollen socks on over my shoes, stuffing my feet into boots. Coat, scarf, mittens, knitted hat, I am encased, I am kissed, the door opens, then closes behind me, frozen air shoots up my nose. I waddle through the orchard of leafless apple trees, the legs of my snowpants whisking against each other, down to the bus stop. Grace is waiting there and Carol, and especially Cordelia. Once I'm outside the house there is no getting away from them. They are on the school bus, where 106

Cordelia stands close beside me and whispers into my ear: "Stand up straight! People are looking?" Carol is in my classroom, and it's her job to report to Cordelia what I do and say all day. They're there at recess, and in the cellar at lunchtime. They comment on the kind of lunch I have, how I hold my sandwich, how I chew. On the way home from school I have to walk in front of them, or behind. In front is worse because they talk about how I'm walking, how I look from behind. "Don t hunch over," says Cordelia. "Don't move your arms like that." They don't say any of the things they say to me in front of others, even other children: whatever is going on is going on in secret, among the four of us only. Secrecy is important, I know that: to violate it would be the greatest, the irreparable sin. If I tell I will be cast out forever. But Cordelia doesn't do these things or have this power over me because she's my enemy. Far from it. I know about enemies. There are enemies in the schoolyard, they yell things at one another and if they're boys they fight. In the war there were enemies. Our boys and the boys from Our Lady of Perpetual Help are enemies. You throw snowballs at enemies and rejoice if they get hit. With enemies you can feel hatred, and anger. But Cordelia is my friend. She likes me, she wants to help me, they all do. They are my friends, my girlfriends, my best friends. I have never had any before and I'm terrified of losing them. I want to please. Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.

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Reading Guide #1- “They Are My Friends” Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading I. VOCABULARY BEFORE READING: Put a plus sign (+) on the line to the left of any word whose definition you think you know, a minus sign (–) if you don’t know it. AFTER READING: If you’ve figured out a word put a plus sign (+) after the word, and if you still don’t know it put another (–) after it. If you’ve learned a different definition for the word, put a double plus sign (++) after the word. ______ formaldehyde ______ ______ gnomes ______ ______ slog ______ ______indistinct ______ ______ exclusive ______ ______ luxurious ______ ______ unwavering ______ I. COMPREHENSION Directions: Scan the statements on this study guide before reading. Then, during or after you read, put a check mark ( ) next to any statement with which you agree. Be sure to be able to point to the text to support your choices whether you agree with the statement or not. LEVEL I: RIGHT THERE ON THE PAGE 1. ______It is summertime, and there is a parade going on. 2. ______Elaine lives in a bad-smelling, dirty building. 3. ______Elaine does not know why her friends are angry with her. 4. ______Perdie and Mirrie are older girls, probably teenagers. LEVEL II: READING BETWEEN THE LINES 6. ______Cordelia, Elaine, and Carol—the “friends”—are actually bullies. 7. ______ Cornelia’s mother doesn’t know that her daughter is a bully. 8. ______Cordelia is desperate to be accepted. 9. ______Elaine is made to feel like a freak. 10. ______Cordelia is the bully; Carol and Grace are followers. 11. ______The bullying has made Elaine stronger as a person. 12. ______Elaine escapes to a world of her own to get away from the pain. 13. ______Elaine is a child; not even a pre-teen. LEVEL III: READING BEYOND THE LINES 14. ______Bullies always carry out their work right in the open so everyone can see it. 15. ______Victims of bullying sometimes think that there can be no help for them. 16. ______ Being a friend carries a great responsibility with it. 17. ______ A bad friend is better than no friend at all.

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Reading Guide #1 - “They Are My Friends” – Suggested Answers I. VOCABULARY formaldehyde – chemical used for preserving living tissue; used in biology labs with specimens gnomes – little elves; statues in the garden slog – to move slowly and with great difficulty, like walking through snow drifts indistinct – not clear. Not distinct. exclusive – not for everybody; only for special people; others are “excluded” luxurious – beautiful, comfortable, and expensive unwavering – sticking to one’s principles; not giving way to pressure; stubborn in a good way II. COMPREHENSION LEVEL I: RIGHT THERE ON THE PAGE 1. ______It is summertime, and there is a parade going on. – it’s winter 2. ______Elaine lives in a bad-smelling, dirty building. – The scene changes several times; first they’re in the building where he works – that’s where the smell comes from because he’s some sort of laboratory person or doctor; then they’re in Cordelia’s room; then they’re in Elaine’s house. 3. __ ____Elaine does not know why her friends are angry with her. 4. __ ____Perdie and Mirrie are older girls, probably teenagers. LEVEL II: READING BETWEEN THE LINES 5. ______Cordelia, Elaine, and Carol—the “friends”—are actually bullies. Cordelia Grace and Carol are the bullies. 6. ___ ___ Cordelia’s mother doesn’t know that her daughter is a bully. 7. ______Cordelia is desperate to be accepted. Elaine is desperate to be accepted 8. ___ ___Elaine is made to feel like a freak. 9. ______Cordelia is the bully; Carol and Grace are followers. 10. ______The bullying has made Elaine stronger as a person. No – it ruins her self-esteem 11. ___ ___Elaine escapes to a world of her own to get away from the pain. She peels her feet; she dreams over the coffee pot in her kitchen. 12. ___ ___Elaine is a child; not even a pre-teen. Probably grammar school- they call themselves “children.” LEVEL III: READING BEYOND THE LINES 13. ______Bullies always carry out their work right in the open so everyone can see it. They do it in secret—like when they act nice in front of the adults. 14. __ ____Victims of bullying sometimes think that there can be no help for them. Elaine doesn’t know what to do. 15. ___ ___ Being a friend carries a great responsibility with it. Friends have the capacity to hurt each other if they are insincere. 1. ______ A bad friend is better than no friend at all. Better to have no friends than to be treated so badly. Theme – Bullies operate in the dark. 109

Reading Guide #2 - “They Are My Friends” by Margaret Atwood Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading I. VOCABULARY BEFORE READING: Put a plus sign (+) on the line to the left of any word whose definition you think you know, a minus sign (–) if you don’t know it. AFTER READING: If you’ve figured out a word put a plus sign (+) after the word, and if you still don’t know it put another (–) after it. If you’ve learned a different definition for the word, put a double plus sign (++) after the word. ______ formaldehyde ______ ______ gnomes ______ ______ slog ______ ______indistinct ______ ______ exclusive ______ ______ luxurious ______ ______ unwavering ______

I. COMPREHENSION Directions: Scan the statements on this study guide before reading. Then, during or after you read, put a check mark ( ) next to any statement with which you agree. Be sure to be able to point to the text to support your choices whether you agree with the statement or not. LEVEL I: RIGHT THERE ON THE PAGE 2. ______It is summertime, and there is a parade going on. 3. ______Elaine lives in a bad-smelling, dirty building. 4. ______Elaine does not know why her friends are angry with her. 5. ______Perdie and Mirrie are older girls, probably teenagers. LEVEL II: READING BETWEEN THE LINES 6. ______Cordelia, Elaine, and Carol—the “friends”—are actually bullies. 7. ______ Cornelia’s mother wonders whether her daughter is a bully. 8. ______Cordelia is desperate to be accepted. 9. ______Elaine is made to feel like a freak. 10. ______Cordelia is the bully; Cordelia and Grace are followers. 11. ______How the other girls act has made Elaine stronger as a person. 12. ______Elaine escapes to a world of her own to get away from the pain. 13. ______The main characters are young children. LEVEL III: READING BEYOND THE LINES 14. ______Cordelia, Elaine and Carol are like lots of kids. 15. ______Boy bullies are different from girl bullies. 16. ______Bullying changes people. 17. ______Bullying is always obvious; you can tell when it’s happening. 18. ______All victims of bullying have to do is say “Stop!” 19. ______ Being a friend carries a great responsibility with it. 110

“They Are My Friends” - Discussion Statements Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading EVIDENCE FOR

EVIDENCE AGAINST 1) In the story’s opening scene, Elaine, the main character and narrator, feels her physical surroundings are comfortable.

2) The story’s opening setting is cheerful and celebratory.

3) In the story’s opening, the author places the girls in a stereotypical setting where you could expect the girls to be spending time together

4) Elaine wants to improve, to become better.

5) Elaine and her dad are close.

Please turn this page over to continue

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EVIDENCE FOR

EVIDENCE AGAINST

6) Being a child means being protected.

7) Elaine, Cordelia, Carol, and Grace are elementary school- aged.

8) Elaine’s mind, voice, and body are disconnected.

9) In this space, write an explanation for why you think Statement 8 is true or false.

10) So far, another title for this story could be :

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Vacation by Rita Dove I love the hour before takeoff, that stretch of no time, no home but the gray vinyl seats linked like unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall be summoned to the gate, soon enough there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers and perforated stubs—but for now I can look at these ragtag nuclear families with their cooing and bickering or the heeled bachelorette trying to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s exhausted mother waiting to be called up early while the athlete, one monstrous hand asleep on his duffel bag, listens, perched like a seal trained for the plunge. Even the lone executive who has wandered this far into summer with his lasered itinerary, briefcase knocking his knees—even he has worked for the pleasure of bearing no more than a scrap of himself into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late, they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning —a little hope, a little whimsy before the loudspeaker blurts and we leap up to become Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.

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Vocabulary Lesson by Ann Wagner We don’t have wars,

We don’t have mistakes in combat,

We have

We have

Conflicts

Incidents

Campaigns

Accidents

Operations

Friendly fire

Escalations

Flawed intelligence.

Missions And we don’t have death.

Offensives Preemptive strikes.

We have We don’t have soldiers, Casualties We have

Loss of life Collateral damage

Peace keepers Troops

What we do have is

Servicemen Servicewomen

A careful vocabulary.

Forces Coalitions Units,

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Priscilla and the Wimps by Richard Peck Listen, there was a time when you couldn't even go to the rest room around this school without a pass. And I'm not talking about those little pink tickets made out by some teacher. I'm talking about a pass that cost anywhere up to a buck, sold by Monk Klutter. Not that Mighty Monk ever touched money, not in public. The gang he ran, which ran the school for him, was his collection agency. They were Klutter's Kobras, a name spelled out in nailheads on six well-known black plastic windbreakers. Monk's threads were more ... subtle. A pile-lined suede battle jacket with lizard-skin flaps over tailored Levi's and a pair of ostrich-skin boots, brassed-toed and suitable for kicking people around. One of his Kobras did nothing all day but walk a half step behind Monk, carrying a fitted bag with Monk's gym shoes, a roll of rest-room passes, a cash-box, and a switchblade that Monk gave himself manicures with at lunch over at the Kobras' table. Speaking of lunch, there were a few cases of advanced malnutrition among the newer kids. The ones who were a little slow in handing over a cut of their lunch money and were therefore barred from the cafeteria. Monk ran a tight ship. I admit it. I'm five foot five, and when the Kobras slithered by, with or without Monk, I shrank. And I admit this, too: I paid up on a regular basis. And I might add: so would you. This school was old Monk's Garden of Eden. Unfortunately for him, there was a serpent in it. The reason Monk didn't recognize trouble when it was staring him in the face is that the serpent in the Kobras' Eden was a girl. Practically every guy in school could show you his scars. Fang marks from Kobras, you might say. And they were all highly visible in the shower room: lumps, lacerations, blue bruises, you name it. But girls usually got off with a warning. Except there was this one girl named Priscilla Roseberry. Picture a girl named Priscilla Roseberry, and you'll be light years off. Priscilla was, hands down, the largest student in our particular institution of learning. I'm not talking fat. I'm talking big. Even beautiful, in a bionic way. Priscilla wasn't inclined toward organized crime. Otherwise, she could have put together a gang that would turn Klutter's Kobras into garter snakes. Priscilla was basically a loner except she had one friend. A little guy named Melvin Detweiler. You talk about The Odd Couple. Melvin's one of the smallest guys above midget status ever seen. A really nice guy, but, you know, little. They even had lockers next to each other, in the same bank as mine. I don't know what they had going. I'm not saying this was a romance. After all, people deserve their privacy. Priscilla was sort of above everything, if you'll pardon a pun. And very calm, as only the very big can be. If there was anybody who didn't notice Klutter's Kobras, it was Priscilla. Until one winter day after school when we were all grabbing our coats out of our lockers. And hurrying, since Klutter's Kobras made sweeps of the halls for after-school shakedowns. 115

Anyway, up to Melvin's locker swaggers one of the Kobras. Never mind his name. Gang members don't need names. They've got group identity. He reaches down and grabs little Melvin by the neck and slams his head against his locker door. The sound of skull against steel rippled all the way down the locker row, speeding the crowds on their way. "Okay, let's see your pass,” snarls the Kobra. "A pass for what this time?" Melvin asks, probably still dazed. "Let's call it a pass for very short people," says the Kobra, “a dwarf tax.” He wheezes a little Kobra chuckle at his own wittiness. And already he’s reaching for Melvin's wallet with the hand that isn't circling Melvin's windpipe. All this time, of course, Melvin and the Kobra are standing in Priscilla's big shadow. She's taking her time shoving her books into her locker and pulling on a very large-size coat. Then, quicker than the eye, she brings the side of her enormous hand down in a chop that breaks the Kobra's hold on Melvin's throat. You could hear a pin drop in that hallway. Nobody’s ever laid a finger on a Kobra, let alone a hand the size of Priscilla’s. Then Priscilla, who hardly every says anything to anybody except to Melvin, says to the Kobra, "Who's your leader, wimp?” This practically blows the Kobra away. First he's chopped by a girl, and now she's acting like she doesn't know Monk Krutter, the Head Honcho of the World. He's so amazed, he tells her, "Monk Klutter. "Never heard of him," Priscilla mentions. "Send him to see me.” The Kobra just backs away from her like the whole situation is too big for him, which it is. Pretty soon Monk himself slides up. He jerks his head once, and his Kobras slither off down the hall. He's going to handle this interesting case personally. "Who is it around here doesn't know Monk Klutter?" He's standing inches from Priscilla, but since he'd have to look up at her, he doesn't. "Never heard of him," says Priscilla. Monk's not happy with this answer, but by now he's spotted Melvin, who's grown smaller in spite of himself. Monk breaks his own rule by reaching for Melvin with his own hands. “Kid," he says, “you're going to have to educate your girlfriend." His hands never quite make it to Mervin. In a move of pure poetry Priscilla has Monk in a hammerlock. His neck's popping like gunfire, and his head's bowed under the immense weight of her forearm. His suede jacket's peeling back, showing pile. Priscilla's behind him in another easy motion. And with a single mighty thrust forward, frog-marches Monk into her own locker. It's incredible. His ostrich-skin boots click once in the air. And suddenly he's gone, neatly wedged into the locker, a perfect fit. Priscilla bangs the door shut, twirls the lock, and strolls out of school. Melvin goes with her, of course, trotting along below her shoulder. The last stragglers leave quietly. Well this is where fate, an even bigger force than Priscilla, steps in. It snows all that night, a blizzard. The whole town ices up. And school closes for a week.

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Reading Guide #1 - “Priscilla and the Wimps” Name: ____________________________________Period ____ Critical Reading

Part I: What do you think a girl named Priscilla Roseberry would look like? Write your ideas here.

Part II: There is a reference to the Garden of Eden in the story. Such a reference to a story that the author expects the reader to understand is called an allusion. Can you retell the story of the Garden of Eden for the class? Let’s see how it fits into the story! Part III: After reading the story, put a check mark ( ) next to the statements you agree with, and be prepared to support your opinion with information from the text. ______ The author continually reminds us that Priscilla is just an ordinary girl. ______ The author sympathizes with Priscilla. ______ The main character in this story is Monk. ______ Traditional ideas associated with gender have been upset in this story. ______ By switching of gender roles in this story, the author is able to make the ending dark but humorous.

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Reading Guide #2 for “Priscilla and the Wimps” by Richard Peck Your name: ________________________ Period: _____ Critical Reading Part I: Predicting Directions: Read the title and the statements in the chart below. What do you think the story is about? Make three smart predictions below: 1. ____________________________________________________ 2. ____________________________________________________ 3. ____________________________________________________ Part II: Vocabulary Directions: Use the + and – system before, during and after reading. before reading

word

after reading

collection agency threads subtle suede tailored malnutrition barred ran a tight ship Garden of Eden lacerations bionic inclined organized crime the Odd Couple sweeps shakedown head honcho hammerlock a move of pure poetry pile straggler Please continue on the next page

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Part III: Statements - Read each statement below. Then, while you re-read the story, collect evidence for and/or against each statement, writing down the ¶ numbers ONLY – not the lines from the text – where you found that evidence. Write down as much evidence as you can – and for both sides whenever possible. evidence for

statement The narrator is a girl.

The story takes place in a middle school.

The story is believable.

The narrator is a victim of bullying.

Monk Klutter and the Kobras are friends.

Monk cares about what other people think.

Priscilla is a good person.

Things have changed at this school.

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evidence against

Verbs List for Open-Ended Response – “Priscilla”

Character = Idea

Character ≠ Idea

(ex: Monk + male stereotype)

(ex: Priscilla + female stereotype)

reinforces (makes stronger) undermines (weakens) embodies (makes defies (to rebel against) noticeable) negates (makes not true) exemplifies (act as an challenges (questions the example) power of) typifies (represent) demonstrates (shows)

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“Priscilla” Student Response Samples Most people would think that women should be very fragile, well-mannered, fearful beings. Not Priscilla. In the story, she negates most female stereotypes. For instance, men are expected to be fearless but Priscilla challenges Monk’s power and engages in physical combat. In doing so she looks straight into the face of danger. An excerpt that shows this is, “His neck’s popping like gun-fire and his head’s bowed under the immense weight of her forearm.” Another way she defies female stereotypes is showing how tough and non-dainty she is. For example, “Never heard of him…Send him to see me…” These stone-hard exclamations undermine the power of the Kobras. Also Priscilla is not too well mannered for a girl. For example, “And suddenly he’s gone, neatly wedged into the locker…”

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Score: In the story, “Priscilla and the Wimps” Priscilla defies stereotypical females. For example, she is ok with violence. In the text it states: “Then, quicker than the eye, she brings the side of her enormous hand down in a chop that breaks the Kobra’s hold on Melvin’s throat.” This shows Pricilla defies females stereotypes. She is not afraid of violence, like most girls are. Another example that Pricilla undermines female sterotypes is she is quite large. The story states: “Pricilla was, hands down, the largest student….” Most girls are not very tall. If Pricilla is the tallest girl in their “particular institution of learning,” she most definitely challenges female stereotypes. A final example that Pricilla negates female sterotypes is she does not gossip much. In the text it states, “Pricilla was sort of above everything,” this means she did not really invole herself in gossip. It also states, later in the text, “…anybody who didn’t notice Klutter’s Kobras, it was Priscilla.” This shows Priscilla defies female stereotypes because everyone at their school knows the Klutter’s Kobra’s. Therefore Pricilla does defy female stereotypes.

Strengths:

Weaknesses: Score:

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Girl stereotypes states that women have manners, gossip, attention to detail with the way they look/dress, and to not be violent or tall. Priscilla is not the stereotypical girl. She is a rough and tumble type girl. Pricilla does not like to gossip or practically be around girls she is quite a loner. She has only one friend Melvin. A exerpt that shows that is “Priscilla was basically a loner except she had one friend Melvin Detweiler.”..Another thing is she is a huge girl. Now she basically is just short of a giant and that definitely challenges the fact of her being a stereotypical girl. A exerpt that shows her true height, how big she is “Priscilla is, hands down, the largest student in our particular institution of learning.” Another fact that negates Pricilla being a stereotypical girl is that she is a violent girl. When Melvin was being shoved into a locker and beat up by one of the gang members of the Kobras, Priscilla stops the hand of the Kobra and then Pricilla says out to him, “Who is your leader wimp.” Also when Monk Klutter and Pricilla fought and Pricilla ended up shoving Monk in the locker over the blizzard. All these facts that I’ve stated are key to knowing that Pricilla defies against being a stereotypical girl/woman.

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Score: In the story: “Priscilla and the Wimps” Priscilla negates female stereotypes. For one thing, if you get on her bad side, she can be very violent. One exert from the story that shows this is “In a move of pure poetry, Priscilla has Monk in a hammerlock.” This shows that Priscilla challenges female stereotypes because she doesn’t mind violence at all, when in society, the expectations of a female are to think of violence as gross, and not want to have anything to do with it. Priscilla also defies female stereotypes by her physical appearence. She is big, and tough looking. Many people don’t want to be near her for that. It said in the story that she was “hands down the largest student in our particular institution of learning” which proves that she is big. Not fat, but big. That’s why she goes against female stereotypes. Women are supposed to be cut, thin, pretty (at least they are expected to be). However Priscilla shows that this does not go for all girls. Another way Priscilla goes against female stereotypes is that she is very brave. Not brave like people who are loud, but brave because she has the nerve to say she has never heard of Monk Clutter! One exert from the story that shows this is: “‘Monk Clutter’.... ‘Never heard of him’ Priscilla mentions, “‘Send him to see me.’” This proves that Priscilla has the nerve to say to a Kobra she doesn’t know Monk, even so she goes to that school and Monk practically runs it! Priscilla was very brave to do what she did. All of this proves that Priscilla undermines female stereotypes. She is not the typical girl you would expect to see. There is nothing wrong with that. It could even be a good thing. These are all the reasons why in the story: “Priscilla and the Wimps,” Priscilla is not stereotypical girl. (Use back to note strengths, weaknesses, and Score.)

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I, Too by Langston Hughes I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes, “I, Too” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes.

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Theme for English B by Langston Hughes The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you— Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page: It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you. hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) Me—who?

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write? Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white— yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That’s American. Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that’s true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me— although you’re older—and white— and somewhat more free. This is my page for English B.

Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Source: Selected Poems (Vintage Books, 1959)

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Additional Resources PowerPoint: How to Use the Dictionary, Lesson 3: “Vandals” (from “The Follower” by Jack Gantos) Context Clues Exercises Online http://www.gamequarium.org/dir/Readquarium/Vocabulary/Context_Clues/ http://www.quia.com/pop/35971.html http://www.quia.com/rr/151544.html http://www.mcauliffe.brevard.k12.fl.us/TEACHERS/LabbeK/021context_clues.htm http://www.spellingcity.com/whichword.html http://www.aasd.k12.wi.us/staff/boldtkatherine/ReadingFun36/ReadingFun_ReadingSkills.htm

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Active Reading Strategies Activate Background Knowledge Think about what you already know about what you’re reading. Connect with what you’re reading. Think of the descriptions in the reading and what you have personally experienced, heard about, seen, and/or read about. Predict Preview the text and try to anticipate the key ideas. Stop frequently when reading and Summarize to confirm or reject predictions, and combine key ideas you identified in the predicting process. Remember, it’s better to predict and be incorrect than not to predict at all! Question what is happening while you read. Searching for reasons behind events and characters’ can help you better understand what you are reading. It’s not enough to write that you don’t understand. Be specific about what it is that you find confusing. Infer Take what the text tells you and put it together with what you already know to form an opinion about it. This is called making an inference and it helps you understand what the writer is implying rather than what he/she may be stating explicitly. Visualize Create in your mind the characters/people, events, and setting to help you understand what’s happening. Even when you read nonfiction, pay attention to the images that form in your mind as you read. Reread Stop occasionally and use resources to review what you understand, and expect to have your understanding change and develop as you read on. You will also want to go back through and reread some of your earlier annotations and try to answer any questions you posed. Try using a different colored pen for your answers. Evaluate Form and share opinions about what you read, both while you’re reading and after you’ve finished. Develop your own ideas about characters/people, settings, events, etc. Analyze Use the evaluations you’ve determined and state a “claim” about the text that can be supported by textual evidence (e.g. quote(s)). Original and insightful ideas are the key to analysis and they will be the basis for our discussions and writing. 126

Annotating a Text 1. Pick up a pencil or pen. 2. Read EVERYTHING and begin to annotate:  Underline or make a  next to important ideas.  Write a ? next to anything you find confusing.  Circle unfamiliar words or phrases then try to define them from context or look the definition up in a dictionary. 3. Find some white space in the margin, at the bottom of a page, or even the end of a chapter and WRITE OUT your thoughts. 4. Active readers: Question, Connect, Predict, Summarize, Infer, Evaluate, & Analyze Your annotations should include any questions you have. These can be questions you want the teacher to answer or the class to discuss. Also write any connections you have to the text as they occur to you. Think about connections between this text and other texts you have read, seen, or heard in your life. Sometimes when you read you just get a “feeling” about what you think will happen next. Write out these predictions. You can come back later and confirm or reject them once you’ve read further. In addition, most well-written texts require you to infer information, so you’ll need to take what you know and add it to what the writer is telling you to come to a new understanding. Also, sharing your opinions and making intelligent claims is essential when you evaluate and analyze a text. You can note passages or sections that seem inconsistent and write why you find them “weird”. Write how/why you got that response and even include specific reasons for why you feel a strong positive or negative response, or simply write notes you want to keep as a reminder of what you were thinking right then. Finally, remember that annotating is more about quality than quantity! The more complete your annotations, the better, as your insights will be invaluable fodder for our Reading & Writing Workshop learning experiences!

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Critical Reading Literacy Survey Your name: ________________________________________________ Period: _________ Directions: 1. Check off your favorite(s) in each category (you may choose more than one). 2. Put a STAR next to THE one you like best within each category. 3. Write your responses to the questions that follow. Short Stories (short fiction) “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury “Bad Blood” by Will Weaver “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros “Mr. Entwhistle” by Jean Little “Priscilla and the Wimps” by Richard Peck “Shells” by Cynthia Rylant “Smoky Night” by Eve Bunting “Taco Head” by Viola Canales “Thank You, M’am” by Langston Hughes “The Candy Bite” by Viola Canales “The Follower” by Jack Gantos “The Marble Champ” by Gary Soto “The Street That Got Mislaid” by Patrick Waddington “They Are My Friends” by Margaret Atwood Poetry “Abandoned Farmhouse” by Ted Kooser “Changed” by Naomi Shihab Nye “Dreams” by Langston Hughes “Harlem (dream deferred)” by Langston Hughes “Hope” by Gary Soto “I Said to Dana’s Mother” by Naomi Shihab Nye “I, Too” by Langston Hughes “I’m Nobody” by Emily Dickinson “In New Jersey Once” by Maria Mazziotti Gillan “Learning English” by Luis Alberto Ambroggio (Apprender el Inglés) “Meteor Watch” by Naomi Shihab Nye “Momentum” by Catherine Doty “Nelson, My Dog” by Gary Soto “Old Lilacs” by Ted Kooser “Oranges” by Gary Soto “Public School #18: Paterson, New Jersey” by Maria Mazziotti Gillan “Purple” by Alexis Rotella “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes “The Little Boy and the Little Old Man” by Shel Silverstein “The Rider” by Naomi Shihab Nye “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes 128

“Vacation” by Rita Dove Personal Essays Continue to next page, please. “A Day at the Zoo” by Jack Prelusky “Failure is a Good Thing” by Jon Carroll “My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad” by Andy Griffiths “Survival of the Fittest” by Soledad O’Brien “The Lost Art of Building With Your Hands” by Mitch Albom 17 Going on 18 by Anna Quindlen Non-fiction Articles “Lexi Youngberg: Invincible” (Scholastic Scope) “Lunch Line Redesign” by Brian Wansink, David R. Just, & Joe McKendry “Where Would You Rather Live?” (Miami v. Southern California) Questions: 1. Which story, poem or article generated the most discussion? Why do you think it did that?

2. Describe this class to an incoming sixth grader. Cover what we do in class and why.

3. What are the “secrets” of writing effectively about a text?

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Critical Reading – Course Evaluation Please help us to determine whether we met the goals we set for it. Read each of the goals and then circle the answer that you think best fits your experience in this class. Your honest answers will help us improve this for other students. Thank you! A.

This class showed me: 1. How to make meaning from my reading Definitely

Pretty Well Partly

A Little Bit Not At All

2. How to analyze texts through various lenses and uncover deeper, possibly hidden, meanings Definitely

Pretty Well Partly

A Little Bit Not At All

3. How to summarize and reflect on a text, verbally and in writing Definitely

Pretty Well Partly A Little Bit

Not At All

4. How to write about reading, supporting my ideas with evidence from the text Definitely

Pretty Well Partly A Little Bit

Not At All

5. How to conduct a classroom discussion in which different viewpoints are presented, considered, and respected Definitely

Pretty Well Partly A Little Bit

Not At All

6. How to work with peers in uncovering meanings from texts Definitely

Pretty Well Partly A Little Bit

Not At All

7. How to compare and contrast texts—verbally and in writing—to gain deeper insights Definitely

Pretty Well Partly A Little Bit

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Not At All

B.

As a result of this class, now I can: 8. Compose brief critical responses to my reading Definitely

Pretty Well Partly A Little Bit

Not At All

9. Compare and contrast my own viewpoint with those of my classmates Definitely

Pretty Well Partly A Little Bit

Not At All

10. Write critically about ideas found in reading and support my ideas with textual evidence Definitely

Pretty Well Partly A Little Bit

Not At All

11. Share ideas and enhance my understandings through respectful and orderly classroom discussion Definitely

Pretty Well Partly A Little Bit

Not At All

12. Practice a variety of comprehension strategies – circle the one(s) that you feel you now can do as a result of this course: making inferences making predictions visualizing responding to reading through short and long writing figuring out figurative language learning new words through context clues learning new words through word roots learning new words through connotation Use this space to write anything else you’d like to tell us about your learning experience in this class.

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