YIKES! LET'S TRY POSTING THIS AGAIN: HOME OF THE BRAVE LITERATURE CIRCLE

Home of the Brave
By: Katherine Applegate

Final Reflection: Literature Circle Review

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Home of the Brave because it was a young adult’s book that discussed a very powerful subject. However, I believe that by writing the novel in verse made the format easier and more enjoyable for younger students to read. I thought that the main character, Kek, was a very loveable character that any caring reader would want to reach out and support during his journey to find happiness in his new home. Home of the Brave truly helped me to open up my eyes to the harsh realities that refugees must face when escaping to the United States. As I read this book I found myself stopping to reflect upon my own life and how fortunate I am to know that both of my parents are only a phone call away and all three of my siblings are alive and healthy. There is so much that I take for granted each and every day, and I found it very refreshing to read a book that I can use to remind children in my own classroom just how fortunate many Americans truly are when compared to other children throughout the world.
I also thought that it was very clever of Applegate to create very short and concise “chapters” that closely resemble the length of typical poem. She made sure to give enough detail so that the reader knew what was happening in the story, but never divulged too much information. Therefore, the reader is continuously forced to use his or her imagination to expand upon the open-ended and somewhat lyrical verses. I was also very impressed that Applegate took the time and effort to truly do some research about refugees from Sudan for her novel. She includes an entire “Reader’s Guide” section in the back of her book that answers questions and shares facts about refugees as well as websites you can refer to if you would like to take action and help end violence in Africa.
Laura Matheny, Logan McMaster, and I decided to use the traditional literature circle format as a means to organize our book discussions. In our first meeting we became acquainted with the novel and shared our thoughts, predictions, and reasons for why we chose to read this book over all of the other options. I shared with my group members that I chose to this novel because I found the subject matter and the verse format to be unique and unlike anything I had ever read before. Each one of us had our own personal reasons for choosing to read this novel and immediately we found beliefs and future aspirations that we had in common. There are four parts to the novel so we decided in our first meeting to split up the readings so that we read the first two parts for our next meeting and the final two parts for our last meeting. Laura sent us an e-mail that list the typical roles students can use in traditional literature circles and we used these sheets as a guideline as we read through the first two parts of Home of the Brave.
In our second meeting we went around in a circle first discussing our favorite parts of the book and what are predictions were for the final two sections. Laura was the “Literary Luminary” and she found all sorts of descriptive language that made Applegate’s words come to life. We found many comparisons and differences within our own lives as well as with the various struggles Kek had to face as he was learning how to survive in a foreign land. Logan was the “Discussion Director” and she came up with a list of questions as well as points in the novel that she found intriguing and wished to share with the rest of us. Logan brought up a lot of interesting view points that helped me to understand the language Applegate uses in various verses. I was the “Illustrator” and I drew a section of the novel that I thought really captivated the emotional confusion and excitement Kek was feeling as he was surrounded by snow and the television for the first time. I really tried to draw Kek’s facial descriptions according to Applegate’s wording. I found the traditional literature circle method was appropriate for the novel we chose to read and for the size of the group we had. Since it was so affective we decided to use the same method for our final meeting, but we decided to switch the roles around to add variety and give each one of us the opportunity to try out different roles that appealed to us.
For our final Literature Circle Laura was the “Discussion Director”, Logan was the “Literary Luminary”, and I was the “Researcher”. We once again shared our thoughts about Kek’s new adventures and the trouble he gets into as time passed. We even discussed how there was one part in the novel (where Kek, Ganwar, and Hannah are trying to direct a cow through six lanes of traffic) that would have been very appropriate for students to physically act out in class as a means of sharing a part of the story with their peers. Laura printed out a list of excellent discussion questions that really made Logan and I think critically about our own personal reactions to the novel. Through our intimate reaction with her questions and our own interpretations of the novel we determined that having a “Discussion Director” is absolutely essential for any traditional Literature Circle group. Logan shared with us some incredibly descriptive verses that helped us to appreciate Applegate’s decision to write this novel in verse. We agreed that this novel would have been a lot more dry and monotonous if it were written in prose. By having this novel written in verse we were able to listen to Kek’s thought process and his progression with the American language in more detail. As the “Researcher” I brought in a couple of articles I found about why certain African tribes find cows to be sacred animals as well as informational articles about how one can get involved with Dafur if they or their future students would like to take an immediate active stance against the violent acts occurring in Sudan today.
Overall, I would say that our Traditional Literature Circles were incredibly affective. Even though our book was rather short, it still seemed as though we were always the last group to finish and always wanted to keep talking passed our allotted time limit. I believe that the open-ended discussions were a great way to begin the book discussion and a nice way to ease into the assigned roles. I think that we chose to use roles, such as the “Literary Luminary”, that were appropriate for this particular book. I wish that we could have had more members in our group so that we could have had the opportunity to try using a greater variety of roles in order to see what would work and what would not in our own classroom. I think that this book is more affective as a “hook” activity for students, rather than a read aloud or an independent reading book. I think that her style of verse writing is important for children to get some exposure with and I think I would use it to begin a poetry unit or for a personal memoire unit. Overall I think this was a wonderful book and I think that this type of verse writing is one that all students should be exposed to multiple times while in school.