Flora and Ulysses: 2014 Newbery Award

The beginning of March 2014 I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book. A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.  Want to keep track of which books I read?  Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - Used for illustration purposes only under the fair use clause

Flora Belle Buckman: The Cynic

"I promise to always turn back toward you."

Comic-book loving Flora Buckman, the only way to cope with her distant mother and her depressed father is to be cynical.  When a squirrel is sucked up into a neighbor's runaway vacuum, Flora comes to his rescue and brings the squirrel back to life. She is then amazed to find that the incident has left the squirrel with super hero powers of flight and super-strength, just like in her beloved comic books.  She names him Ulysses and takes him with her.  With the help of Ulysses, the weird boy next door named William Spiver, and a series of zany events, Flora learns to hope and love again and teaches those around her to do the same.

Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures was an interesting read for me.  The story is fantastic in nature, being a story about a super-hero squirrel.  The zaniness of the story kept me enthralled until the end of the book.  Having already read Kate DiCamillo's first Newbery Award book The Tale of Despereaux and her book Because of Winn-Dixie, I was used to her writing style, which flows freely and reads easily.

The theme of this book is love, family love in particular.  Flora has tried to stop loving those around her because it appears those around her have stopped loving her with all of their heart.  Yet when she saves Ulysses, a little of the cynical wall that she has built up around her heart starts to melt.  Throughout the adventures the tow have, they touch the lives around them, from Flora's parents, to William Spiver and his great-aunt, to the neighbor of her father's.  The story twists and turns and even has an arch-nemesis. Overall, it is a fun read with an ending that seems to mean good things to come for our superhero and his sidekick.

The Giver: 1994 Newbery Award Book

The beginning of March 2014 I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book.  A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.  Want to keep track of which books I read?  Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - The image is used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause.

Jonas: The One Who Sees Beyond

"He is to be alone, apart, while he is prepared by the current Receiver for the job which is most honored in our community."

In the Community where eleven-year-old Jonas lives, everything is the same.  No one is different, though they have different skills, it is rude to comment about something that makes them different.  The Community lacks the ability to feel, due to the choice long ago to go to "Sameness," but everyone is happy, as it is a seemingly Utopian society.  Jonas is discovered to have a gift that allows him to see beyond his Community, even though he does not understand, nor does anyone else in his community.  At the Ceremony of Twelve, when the children who are about to turn twelve receive their assignments for their adult careers, Jonas is selected to become the trainee of the most honored of his Community's Elders, The Receiver of Memory, the only one who knows what feelings, colors, and memories are.  Jonas, as the new Receiver, is given these memories from the old man, who calls himself The Giver, memories of warmth and love, of murder and pain, of life well before "Sameness".   In receiving these memories, Jonas learns that life in his Community isn't as happy as it seems, and he is torn between living the life he knows, or the one he longs for as a result of his memories.

This is the first book that I have read since undertaking this journey of reading all of the Newbery Award winning books that I had already read before.  I have read this book numerous times, and have read two of its sequels.  Every time I read it I notice something else in the story, another layer that makes me think.  The Giver, one of two Newbery Award winners by author Lois Lowry, is a story about what could happen if everything was the same.  I feel that it is a story of the human spirit triumphing over suppression, of love being able to conquer anything it chooses.  While the community is seemingly utopian, with everyone polite and devoid of any true feelings or differences that would make them self-conscious, it is ultimately a dystopian society with many problems, which is only seen by the two in the Community who hold on to the old memories.

A Wrinkle In Time: 1963 Newbery Award

The beginning of March 2014 I started a new undertaking: reading every single Newbery Medal Winner book.  A number of them I have read in the past, but I am reading them with fresh eyes,and reviewing them for others. I am not reading them in order, as some will require some effort on my part to find them all.  Want to keep track of which books I read?  Check them out at Confessions of a Wannabe Reader!

Cover of the book - The image is used for identification purposes only under the fair use clause.

Meg and Charles Wallace Murray: The Misfits

"We tesser.  Or you might say, we wrinkle".

Throughout her life, Meg Murray felt as though she didn't fit in, that her little brother, Charles Wallace, didn't fit in either, and that everyone else was easily able to conform to society's norms.  While her mother and twin brothers can act the part, she and her little brother have nothing in common with the.  So she is surprised one day to find that the popular athlete, Calvin O'Keefe, also feels like an outcast. Add to that the mystery of her father's disappearance and the sudden arrival of three very odd stranger to their town and Meg doesn't know what's serious and what's not.  When the mysterious strangers discuss that there is a wrinkle in time and that Meg's father is caught in it somehow, Meg finds herself journeying with Charles Wallace and Calvin on a very strange and wondrous journey to find her father.

I had never read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle before stating this undertaking.  I had been told I would love it, but just never had the inclination to read it before this.  In fact, I had never read a single one of her books, which may surprise some of my friends given that I love fantasy and science fiction works.  Having just finished the book, I found that I really enjoyed it once I got into it.  I have to admit it did take me a good number of chapters to really be able to get into reading this book.  So much of A Wrinkle in Time reminded me of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy that I found myself pulled in. Knowledge and light overtaking darkness is a major theme of this book.  Love also is a theme of the novel and one could argue that this is an allegory of the Christian faith, such as many of C.S. Lewis' fiction books.  This is not surprising given that L'Engle was Christian. It is a great fantasy read as well, for those who enjoy the previously mentioned trilogies.  Perhaps after I am done with my project I will read the rest of her books, as A Wrinkle In Time is the first in a long serious of books dealing with the Murray and O'Keefe families.

Are we teaching "learned helplessness"?

    In the article “Secret to Raising Smart Kids”, as posted in Scientific American Mind (November 28, 2007), writer Carol S. Dweck states that children who seem gifted in school at a young age and are constantly praised for that gifted intelligence “hold the implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart.  This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.”  In doing so, they develop a “learned helplessness” when the challenges become greater in middle school and beyond because their skill level remains the same while the challenges become greater.  Because their intelligence fails them as the schoolwork becomes harder, they believe they have failed and have become rather unintelligent.  In fact, to these children challenges are to be avoided because challenges lead to having to put forth effort, which in turn leads to mistakes and failure and failures mean that they are dumb.

    However, children who are not constantly praised and see school as something they need to work at no matter what their intelligence may be seem to do well, as they see each challenge as a way to grow and do better.  Even when they make mistakes, they learn from their mistakes, not see them as a failure. They hone their skills and keep trying, even when the challenges become larger.

    The idea  is that kids that are not constantly being told they are naturally intelligent, those that must work harder to get the grade and focus on the effort rather then the end result seem to be happier.  They are able to be more creative because thy must use their creativity to do well.  They don't rely on innate  or “natural” intelligence because they have learned that people are not truly born with such talents, but rather those talents are developed over a lifetime.

    As a leading research psychologist and professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would say, those kids are learning to become one with “flow” or the creative moment when a person is completely in tune with an activity for the sake of doing the activity.  Because they have developed their mindsets to see problems as challenges to better themselves, kids who are creative become focused and gain inner clarity.  They hon their seemingly natural talents and learn new ones as they are suited for whatever challenge lies ahead of them.  They develop a sense of joy for what they are doing, and are motivated not by outside forces but intrinsically.  Because they have learned to apply their imaginations to help them, they gain problem-solving skills and at whatever their skills become. 

    So one may ask himself or herself, what does this mean for teachers?

    We need to stop praising students for how smart they are, and instead praise them for how much effort they put towards working on gaining skills.  We need to be teaching problem solving skills to all children, whether or not we think they need them.  We also need to stop assuming that a child may or may not have a certain amount of intelligence.  Intelligence is not a fixed or tangible thing.  It is ever changing, ever flowing and should be ever growing as well. By constantly praising the intelligence of the child, we aid in the teaching of helplessness, which ends up hindering a student for the rest of their life by teaching them that effort in any shape or form is tantamount to failure.  We also hold that child up as an example of success, which makes it harder for that student to really succeed when the work become harder.

    We as teachers need to tap into the imaginations of our students and use that to help them to become more creative.  As Ken Robinson states chapter three in his book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, is the driving force of creativity and when applied become creativity itself.  We should not look down on children or adults who have their “head in the clouds” as being a little loony, but rather admire and praise them and learn from them.  The Luna Lovegoods of the world may not be in full step with normal society, but they are indeed attuned to the idea of being creative.

    As teachers, we also must get in touch with our own imaginations.  We should not be afraid to daydream and think up the most extraordinary things.  We need to remember what it is like to dream big and connect our big dreams to our students and to those around us.  We need to not be afraid to make mistakes and put forth the effort to do that.  By doing this, we can set the example of our students and peers.