Lit. Circle: Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

I loved this book! As a genre, verse novels appeal to me because poems employ language in a way that astounds me with its beauty, unique word choice, exceptional description and gorgeous figurative language. I appreciate the sensitivity to the characters which are often found in verse novels. By their very nature, verse novels seem more introspective. They require engagement by the reader in a way that prose often does not. Generally, in verse novels, the action happens within the characters’ consciousness. It is in consciousness where the character struggles, works through dilemmas, grows and triumphs. As a reader I enjoy the privilege of peeking into a character’s deepest thoughts and emotions. Home of the Brave never let me down. It is a sensitive novel about Kek, a Somali boy, who witnesses his family and many members of his village being killed in a war that is senseless to him. He and his mother escape to a refugee camp but they are not safe there, either. During one incident of violence he and his mother are separated. He is sent to Minneapolis to live with his aunt and cousin, also recent refugees. The book chronicles Kek’s first glimpse of America from when the ‘flying boat’ lands on the tarmac and traces his journey forward into a new life of public school, apartment buildings, technology, and friendships and his journey backwards into longing for his family and the familiarity and comfort of his homeland.

Our literature circle was comprised of three people. We found we were all in awe of the way the author used the language of poetry to communicate Kek’s experiences. Our conversation was natural and flowed. In fact, we started the discussion informally because we were overflowing with a need to discuss the novel and didn’t need a formal direction. After a few minutes of sharing our thoughts about the novel, we decided we needed to regroup and actually focus on the roles we had chosen. We found we were all drawn to the role of literary luminary because of the figurative language the author uses was so touching. Towards the end of the discussion we relinquished our roles again and discussed ways to use this novel in teaching school as a model of what authors do to ‘show’ and not ‘tell’. I thought the literature discussion worked well for our group. None of us felt the movie-themed discussion would have worked well for this novel because most of the action occurs within Kek’s thoughts.

For our next discussion, we all switched roles. The discussion director and literary luminary were still represented but the illustrator chose to move on to the task of researcher because she was interested in finding out more about the Somali situation. Because the book is so rich in imagery and figurative language the literary luminary had to constantly pick and choose the best of the best of gorgeous phrases to share. Being a verse novel, it is rather spare in words, therefore it lends itself to performative thinking where the author hands the reader the job of moving beyond the written words to thinking more deeply about the situation presented. As discussion director for the second literature circle, I developed discussion questions that focused on higher order thinking skills; questions which would make the participant think deeply and connect with the characters or experience the book in some way. I also developed questions that focused on analysis of the text, the meaning of the symbols, and the author’s intentions in employing these devices. It was wonderful to have Logan and Kristin to bounce ideas off of and to discuss this book with. It was wonderful to have others to work with to try to discuss and figure out some of the symbolism in the book. There was one point in the book where I was stumped in trying to figure out why the author included a particular description. One of the other group members shared her ideas and helped me to understand the symbolism better. I was grateful that Kristin brought her research of the Somali culture to the group. I believe literature circles, with proper monitoring by a teacher, are rich and rewarding response devices for those who are reading beyond the third grade level.

I love discussing literature with others and thoroughly enjoyed being part of this literature circle.