Final Project

For my final project, I am going to use hard of hearing or deaf books. The reason is because I want to become a teacher for deaf or hard of hearing students. I want to see what this genre of books has to offer for teachers and students in this area. I also want to see if authors' portray this topic in a positive or negative light. It will also be interesting to see the difference of how available this topic is in a well-known book story like Borders compared to Everybody Reads or even the internet. I know when searching the internet that I have already found a ton of books on this topic, although several of them are informational books about being deaf or hard of hearing. I also feel that I will buy these books instead of borrowing them for a library because it is something I have a passion for and would want in a library for my future students.

Al Capone Does My Shirt

While reading Al Capone Does My Shirt, I kept thinking does this book portray the person or the disability first. At the end of the book, I came up with the idea that the book portrays the person, Natalie, and then the disability, autism because Natalie is described in detail with what she likes to do and a very little about her disability. While working on my paper, the only question I could think of is does this book portray traits of autism as generalizations or stereotypes? I based the question of the Cortes' article but also used Claiming Disability by Linton and also The Joan K. Blaska Collection of Children’s Literature Featuring Characters with Disabilities or Chronic Illnesses by S. Williams, C. Inkster, and J. Blaska. These articles all give background to what Gennifer Choldenko had in mind when writing Al Capone Does My Shirt.

After turning in my paper, I thought of another question, does the book portray the person then the disability or the disability then the person?

Also, how does having a person with a disability in your family affect what you can do? Moose many times has to give things he likes to do up in order to take care of Natalie. But at the same time, he builds a really strong relationship with her.

I personally like this book and think that it gives readers a positive view of a person with autism. I also think that it is a great book to go back and talk about values with students, because Moose has things in his life that he wants to do but slowly, he sees whats more important. I would recommend this book to others who want to bring in an underrepresented genre into their classroom.

The Middle East Book Award

The following information is paraphrased from the official website for The Middle East Book Award:
http://socialscience.tyler.cc.tx.us/mkho/MEOC/middle_east_book_award.htm

The Purpose:
MEOC established the Middle East Book Award in 1999 to recognize books for children and young adults that contribute meaning-fully to an understanding of the Middle East.

Selection Criteria:
Books are judged on the authenticity of their portrayal of a Middle Eastern subject, as well as on their characterization, plot, and appeal for the intended audience. (Awards are announced in November for books published during the period from January of the previous year through September of the current year.)
Eligible books are books for children and young adults that contribute meaningfully to an understanding of the Middle East. Award categories include picture books (for ages 3-8), literature for children or young adults, and reference books for children or young adults.Sponsor:
Middle East Outreach Council (MEOC) is the sponsor of the award. Established in 1981, it is a national nonprofit organization working to increase public knowledge about the peoples places, and cultures of the Middle East, including the Arab world, Israel, Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. MEOC is a national network of educators dedicated to disseminating apolitical and nonpartisan information, resources and activities furthering understanding about the Middle East.

While researching The Middle East Book Award, there were only four websites that had helpful information. The information on each website was similar both in information and word usage. Information on the selection committee qualifications could not be found on any website. An interesting fact is that the book winners have no recognition on the cover of the book or on the inside of the book. All the recognition for the Award Winning Books is on the website. Some of the books that won The Middle East Book Award also won other awards; those awards were mention as "An Award-Winning Book" or "An Award-Winning Author" inside of the book jackets.


Other websites that were used are:
http://socialscience.tyler.cc.tx.us/mkho/MEOC/
http://www.outreachworld.org/article.asp?articleid=45
http://cmes.hmdc.harvard.edu/outreach/news/meoc_2006

Bronx Masquerade

I really liked this book. I think Nikki Grimes did a great job getting issues that are hard for students and people in general to talk about. There are several interesting quotes in this book. While reading this book, I had several questions and wanted to get people's thoughts on them.

Question 1: Do you think that the title "Bronx Masquerade" and Open Mike Fridays had any correlation with the idea of inclusion?

My personal thoughts are that a masquerade is where people hind behind costumes so others do not know who you are. Open Mike Fridays was a way for students to express opinions and not really be judge. So in ways, I think that Nikki was really smart with the title.

Question 2: Has to deal with the insider/outsider debate. One of the major debates for outsiders was the face that they can break down stereotypes on the inside group. Nikki Grimes is an insider to this group yet she still used stereotypes in a way to break them down. Which type of author would you use in your classroom based on that finding?

Insider or Outsider

While reading articles based on the topic of being an insider or outsider when writing literature, I kept coming back to a discussion we had in class about generalizations and stereotypes and how they are closely related. These thoughts, lead me to the thinking that when educating a classroom with diverse children's literature that it is best to have an insider of that group write it. The reasons for this are several.


- If a writer is an insider, they know personally how that group feels on a topic and will be able to depict the actual emotions and feelings toward the debate.


- The insider can also give the reader a sense of mental imagery, so the reader can visualize what is going on.



At the same time, it is hard to say that I would pick only literature that is from an insider because having a diversified collection of both insider and outsider works would break down the stereotypes and give more generalizations on a topic. Just because a person is an insider does not mean that they know everything that is going on in the culture. They could have a total opposite view and give the wrong depiction. An outsider can easily do years of research and write a factual book that would actually give truth to a group.



These topic of being an insider or outsider and writing multicultural literature is a tricky one because of these reasons. If I had to make a choice on what to include in my future classroom, I would include both types of writers because having books from both sources that have common truth emphasizes the point even more. Where if you have contradicting points, it would led to research and projects for the students to do.

Post #1

My name is Paula Wade and I am a junior at Michigan State University majoring in Special Education-Deaf Education with a focus in Language Arts.

I am interested in diverse literature because students are not always introduced to literature that focuses on religion, cultural differences/similarities, and races. As a future teacher, I want to have background knowledge of how to introduce and teach diverse literature to students. It is important that students have an understanding of cultures other than their own because in life students will meet people who are different from them everyday and they need to have an understanding and way to deal with differences and even a way to realize that even if we think there might be only differences that we are similar in ways too.

I am interested in exploring how different (diverse) books might be able to shape the idea of other cultures, religions, and lifestyles for children who might not necessarily have the opportunity to actually experience all the population groups in and outside the United States.