Red Hot Salsa Journal

Again poetry surprises me in a very pleasant way! I absolutely loved Red Hot Salsa. I went through a mixture of emotions when reading this book. Every poem tells a different story about being Latino.

I enjoyed the code switching between Spanish ad English. This, as Carlson writes in the editor’s note, shows the language’s “hybrid linguistic beauty.” For many English language learners it is tough to speak their native tongue in schools because they are taught to speak English instead. This book helps to show ELLs (and other Spanish speaking students) that their first language is just as important. It is important to not only their background, but also who they are. It is a wonderful book for Latino students. Poems are included that not only talk about “being young and Latino,” but there are also poems that talk about being who you are, identity, stereotypes, living in the barrio, violence, Chicanos, and more. These are topics that have surrounded the Latino community for years.

This is also a wonderful book for English speaking students. It exposes them to another language and the experiences of Latinos. Many students get so caught up in their own lives that they don’t take the time to stop and realize what is going on with the other people around them. This book helps students see the same world they live in through another point of view. In the same way that this book is important for Latino young adults it is also important for young adults of other ethnicities and backgrounds. The history of Mexican-Americans is not something that is taught in schools on a regular basis, and this book opens the door for that to happen. While you can just take the poems at face value, the deeper you look at them the more you will learn about the Latino culture.

In addition, the poetry in this book is so beautiful and well written; it is a great book to use to teach poetry lessons. I enjoy that the poems are all by different authors–not only do you get many different perspectives you also get to see and show students many different types of poetry. You can show them that there is not merely one way to write poetry.

Miracle's Boys Reading Journal 3

This book was a very emotional one for me. There was a lot of loss and sadness for the characters and for the reader as you watch the brothers go through their grief and pain. However, I would recommend this book for adolescents for that very reason. Although loss is a very hard topic to talk about and deal with students need to be able to face it.
There were a few things that really caught my attention in Miracle’s Boys. From the beginning I noticed the character’s names and how they each had meaning. After robbing a store Charlie is sent to Rahway for two years and when he comes back he is a different person. For this reason Lafayette, his brother, begins calling him NewCharlie. If you notice it is spelled in the book as one name, because this is now what Lafayette calls him. Throughout the book he distinguishes between Charlie (pre-Rahway) and NewCharlie. When he is talking about the days before Charlie was sent away and before his mother died he still uses the name Charlie. I think he does this because he is still hoping his brother will come back. He never gives up hope. At the end there is a pivotal moment when Lafayette stops using NewCharlie and reverts back to Charlie. This moment happens when they are sitting on the stoop talking like they used to and Charlie says that he will not burn the pictures Lafayette has left of his mother. To Lafayette his brother is finally back.
Lafayette is named after his father who died before he was born after saving a woman and her dog from a frozen lake. Ty’ree (the older brother) was there when their father died and he feels responsible for their father’s death. When their mother died Ty’ree decided to stay home to care for his brothers and in a way I think he did this to make everything up to his father. I think this is the significance of Lafayette’s name in the story. By staying home from MIT and taking care of Lafayette he felt he could right what he thought he had done wrong when their father died.
Their mother’s name was Milagro, which translates to Miracle. In the end even though she died she was still the boy’s miracle. She is the reason Lafayette went back down to the stoop where Charlie was sitting, because he made her a promise not to fight with his brother anymore. She was one of the reasons the brothers became a family again.
Something else that caught my attention, but I did not fully realize it until the end of the book. I had feelings of anger toward Charlie nearly the entire book. Not because he robbed a store and went to Rahway, I had a feeling there was an underlying reason for him needing the money. I was angry because of how he treated Lafayette, like they were not even brothers.
Throughout the book Lafayette has flashbacks of Charlie, before he became NewCharlie in Lafayette’s eyes. Charlie had always had a soft spot for stray dogs. I always assumed this was because of how his father died, and partly I think it was. However, as the story goes on you realize that Charlie feels very alone. He was not there when his father died and he was in Rahway when his mother died. So, while Ty’ree feels responsible for his their father’s death and Lafayette feels responsible for their mother’s death, Charlie has nothing. While these are not good memories for anyone, he wasn’t there for any of it. He feels like he is nothing and he doesn’t matter. That was the significance, in my opinion, for his affection for stray dogs. He feels like he is nothing and had no one and they are kind of the same way, hence why he always wanted to help them. When he was younger he even tried to save a dog, but the dog ended up dying anyway and this made him feel even more useless. That is why at the end Lafayette keeps telling Charlie that it was not his fault the dog died. This was a parallel to their parent’s deaths. It was his way of letting Charlie know that none of this was his fault. That their parent’s deaths were not anyone’s fault.

A Step From Heaven

This is great book for any classroom. Many classrooms today have students who have immigrated from another country. When reading A Step From Heaven, these students are able to watch Young Ju struggle with wanting to become an American and also being ashamed of that same want. Even non-immigrant students can share some of Young Ju's joys and her pain as they watch her grow into a young woman who can embrace her past and her future. It is also a chance for non-immigrant students to see what other students may be going through at school and in their personal lives.

In addition, the beautiful language of this book really catches the reader's attention from the beginning. What really intrigued me was the way An Na ended every chapter. Almost every chapter ended with Young Ju thinking inadvertantly about what she was learning through her experiences, good or bad.

Standing Against the Wind (RJ1)

In Standing Against the Wind Patrice is taken, by her mother, from a home she loves with her grandmother and ends up living with her aunt. In this new place she faces ridicule by her peers, harassment, and chores galore. She has a tough time standing up for herself, but everything begins to change when she meets Monty, a boy who lives in the same building as her aunt. With Monty's help and through her own strength she comes to have a voice of her own and chooses education over her current situation.

This book is wonderfully written and is a wonderful tool to show students that they can accomplish anything by going about it the right way and standing up for themselves.

I especially loved the way Traci Jones uses Patrice's surroundings,such as the wind and the facets of the salon to show time and again what she is up against and how she perseveres.