Huck Finn and the Canon

I got to school early today to sit in on an interesting discussion. Lisa Keller visited Andy’s 10th grade English class to talk about why they read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and why they maybe shouldn’t. Mark Twain’s classic novel has been required reading in many high school English classes for decades, but it’s also controversial because of its use of racial slurs and its portrayal of Jim. Lots of important questions got asked, such as:

• Why is it important to read classic literature?
• What is it about some books that makes people want to ban them?
• Why is it important to read things that may make us uncomfortable?
• Who decides what we “should” and “should not” read in school?
• What if Young Adult novels were added to the English curriculum?

It was great to see Lisa advocate for YA literature. At the end of the class she offered to send the teacher a bibliography of great YA books. Maybe he’ll consider adding one (or two or three) to the curriculum? Time will tell. In the meantime, here are a couple YA books that would be worthy of being taught in IMHO:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Touching Snow by M. Sindy Felin
• The Pigman by Paul Zindel

Today was also my day to teach 3rd grade classes how to use the catalog. It was much harder than I thought it would be, particularly because the kids seemed to have a bad case of the wiggles. Still, I got through it. I’ll look at their worksheets on Friday and go over things they didn’t get next Wednesday.Jody and I talked about Groundhog Day with the Kindergarteners and 2nd graders. I read aloud several different books about groundhogs (including a book from the Fluffy series that was a big hit). Because of the Kindergarten bake sale, we had quite a few interruptions, so it was a bit of a challenge to keep the kids focused on the stories.

I have noticed that I haven’t been asked many true reference questions since I’ve been working at Bush. The most common question I answer is how to find a particular book (which we call a “known item” question at the Engineering Library at UW). It’s usually a matter of looking the book up in the catalog and then locating it on the shelf. I make an effort to demonstrate to the younger kids what I’m doing so it will be more familiar to them when they learn it. And for the older kids, now that they’ve had their lesson I’ll be asking them to try to find the book themselves before I help.

The other kind of questions I get are readers’ advisory, which means suggesting something to read for fun (I never get to answer these kinds questions at the Engineering Library!). I tend to automatically suggest books I myself have enjoyed, but I’m trying to train myself not to jump right into “Oh I just love so-and-so” and instead ask more questions and think harder about what would be best to recommend. So far I’ve pushed:

• Encyclopedia Brown on a 3rd grade mystery-seeker
• Clarice Bean on a boy looking for a picture book about a girl
• The Stinky Cheese Man on a kid in search of fractured fairy tales.

Happily, a lot of the Batchelder Award winners I book talked have been checked out. Jenine and I filled the display table up again with more award winners today.