(This won’t be my best blog entry, since I have a screaming horrible headache,\u00c2\u00a0so please do forgive…)\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 5th grade book group met yesterday, and we had a fantastic meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 Nine kids were in attendance (a tenth had to miss the meeting due to soccer practice, and an eleventh joined the group as the group was meeting – he’ll attend next month).\u00c2\u00a0 As I’ve mentioned many times before, this month’s book was one of my personal favorites, The Diamond in the Window <\/em>by Jane Langton.<\/p>\n Based on past book group meetings, and on comments I’ve heard from the kids in the weeks leading up to this meeting, I was really, really afraid the kids would hate the book, and that they would have difficulties with the non-linear plot development.\u00c2\u00a0 I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon concocting ways to discuss the book and delve into its more philosophical elements.\u00c2\u00a0 So our group discussion was a very happy surprise for me.\u00c2\u00a0 The kids all loved the book, passionately and completely, except for one boy who had not finished it because he thought it was realistic fiction (hmmm – go figure on that one).<\/p>\n One girl had memorized a line from the book:\u00c2\u00a0 “Beware how you paint yourself!\u00c2\u00a0 Carve yourself well!”, which led to a wonderful discussion of the mirror dream and what it means.\u00c2\u00a0 Another girl opened her book and read aloud the lines that Uncle Freddy had cross-stitched for his family’s Christmas gifts:\u00c2\u00a0 Longfellow’s “Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime and, departing, leave behind us footprints in the sands of time,” Thoreau’s “Fish in the sky,” Emerson’s “Hitch your wagon to a star.”\u00c2\u00a0 The kids had not figured out that “H.D.T” stood for Henry David Thoreau, or that “R.W.E” for Ralph Waldo Emerson, but that’s of little consequence, since they each processed the meaning of these phrases and now these phrases are a part of each child’s subconscious.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the beauty of this book, that it serves as a bridge from children’s literature to the literature of the Transcendentalists, and in so doing creates a foundation of knowledge that can be drawn upon later in life.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Surprisingly, the kids did miss two things that I thought for sure were obvious: when I asked them a pointed question (the kind I usually try to avoid), no one knew that I was refering to the role of Louisa May Alcott in the story.\u00c2\u00a0 And when we were discussing the dream about the line of great men leaving footprints in the sand, I asked them “Who was the man who left the greatest, deepest footprints in the sand, and who passed on the brightest light to Mrs. Truth?”\u00c2\u00a0 Not one child in the group knew who that man was.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to tell them, “Ummmm, it was Jesus.”\u00c2\u00a0 Which prompted one child to cry out:\u00c2\u00a0 “It’s a RELIGIOUS book??!?!”\u00c2\u00a0 Which led us to discuss that no, it’s not a religious book, really, that this dream is about the impact one has on the world: that one person can be so full of truth and vision and goodness and intelligence that his or her impact on the world is lasting, and many other people walk in the virtual footprints left by that one person.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n We also talked a bit about literature in general, for the benefit of the two kids who joined the group yesterday and therefore had not read the book.\u00c2\u00a0 The general literature discussion quickly became a one-ups-man-ship contest – “I read way above my grade level” and “I have to read REALLY thick books because I read so fast – a skinny book like this doesn’t last me long enough!”\u00c2\u00a0 Cringing, I subtly put the brakes on this conversation, and we talked about the value <\/em>of literature, as opposed to its size and speed and “level.”\u00c2\u00a0 I picked a random passage from TDITW<\/em> and read it out loud to the group as fast as I possibly could.\u00c2\u00a0 Several kids giggled and said, “huh?\u00c2\u00a0 What did you say?”, to which I responded, “Exactly!\u00c2\u00a0 When you’re reading a book really quickly, that’s probably the speed at which you’re reading.\u00c2\u00a0 When you read that fast, you’re getting the plot line, but you’re\u00c2\u00a0not picking up on the beauty of the language and the deeper meaning of the words.”\u00c2\u00a0 And then I read the same passage again, slowly and thoughtfully, lingering on the longer, more delicious words, stopping to contemplate, out loud, the meaning of the phrases.\u00c2\u00a0 I saw a lot of virtual lightbulbs go off over the kids’ heads at that moment.<\/p>\n It was the best book group meeting ever.\u00c2\u00a0 We all had a fabulous time, and it was hard to pack up and leave.\u00c2\u00a0 And the one boy who hadn’t finished the book shyly asked me to renew it, since he thought he’d like to keep reading it, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (This won’t be my best blog entry, since I have a screaming horrible headache,\u00c2\u00a0so please do forgive…)\u00c2\u00a0 The 5th grade book group met yesterday, and we had a fantastic meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 Nine kids were in attendance (a tenth had to miss the meeting due to soccer practice, and an eleventh joined the group as the group … Continue reading The Diamond in the Window<\/span>