As part of my critical read I want to make sure I attend to the basics of representation of marginalized characters. In addition to the reader stance, I also take a critical stance with this book because the main character represents a marginalized community with a long history of erasure, misrepresentation, and tokenism – in this case, he has a physical disability. He is bullied and betrayed throughout his school year but in the end he gets an award and everyone learns that he is human – just like everyone else. In fact he is a saintly character – his motivations are only to protect others from his appearance, to make others comfortable when they are near him, and to make himself less bothersome. The boy’s voice is consistent, strong, patient, and extremely mature. The book is written from multiple points of views, including the boy, his parents, sister, and peers. The novel follows one school year in the life of a boy with massive cranial deformities. If you have been living under a rock and have missed the book … I will provide a brief synopsis: Ten years after publication and it is still being used as school wide reads and is solidly embedded in the middle school literary cannon. The book has won multiple awards, had a movie adaptation starring Julia Roberts, and spawned a series of follow-up books. In this case, I have been reading and rereading Wonder by R.J.
How does the craft, dialogue, language, rhythm hit?.When I started reading Wonder, I assumed this familiar reader stance and asked myself these questions Instead, I have to read it, set it aside, and think about the book as it fits within the genre expectations, language and socio-emotional expectations of the readers, the context of school and curricular constraints. So, when it comes to middle grade fiction, I have to take a step back and NOT trust my initial judgement. I think I have some sort of block – like, I had such a terrible time with middle school I can’t revisit it without experiencing dry heaves. I need to admit at the onset, the hardest literature for me to judge, to get into, to teach has always been middle grade fiction.
0 kommentar(er)
