Unit+5+Literature+Circle+Unit



Reading Schedule Day One -- Monday 1. Create Reading Schedule and post below 2. As a group, read aloud the first 2 pages. 3. Assign research subjects for next class period
 * a. Make predictions and base this on the text.
 * b. Discuss tone, setting, character?,
 * c. words you don't know,
 * d. what might be unusual or difficult about the book and reading strategies.

Groups One Day in the Life of Ivan Denosovich Insun, Chris, Brendan, Sung-Woo, Connie, Joe

The Sound of Waves Kyu, Yunji, Michael, John, Justin Reading Schedule

The Power of One Claire, Andrew, Minae, Jenny K. Reading Schedule CAMJ Assignment CAMJ

City of Beasts Joshua, Jay, Michelle, Jack, Austin Reading Schedule ___ Sound of Waves Christine, Jennifer Suh, Jane, Erika, Jenny Hwang JCJEJ Sound of Waves Work Page

The City of Beasts James, Michelle, John Jun, Jenny Jang Reading Schedule E COB

All Quiet on the Western Front Ryan, Sarah, Bobby, Minji

July's People -> The Sound of Waves Nicole, Hyun Sun, Ian, Eunice, Jinhee

Literature Circle Choices All synopses quoted from Amazon.com.

The Sound of Waves (Asia; 192 pages) by Yukio Mishima Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. A young fisherman is entranced at the sight of the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. They fall in love, but must then endure the calumny and gossip of the villagers.

When the Emperor Was Divine (Japan, U.S.; 160 pages) A precise, understated gem of a first novel, Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine tells one Japanese American family's story of internment in a Utah enemy alien camp during World War II. We never learn the names of the young boy and girl who were forced to leave their Berkeley home in 1942 and spend over three years in a dusty, barren desert camp with their mother. Occasional, heavily censored letters arrive from their father, who had been taken from their house in his slippers by the FBI one night and was being held in New Mexico, his fate uncertain. But even after the war, when they have been reunited and are putting their stripped, vandalized house back together, the family can never regain its pre-war happiness. Broken by circumstance and prejudice, they will continue to pay, in large and small ways, for the shape of their eyes. When the Emperor Was Divine is written in deceptively tranquil prose, a distillation of injustice, anger, and poetry; a notable debut.

Nectar in a Sieve (India; 192 pages) Kamala Markandaya Rukmani, a peasant from a village in India, lives a life of constant struggle, yet she is a source of strength for many. At age twelve she marries a man she has never met and moves with him to his rented farmland. Over the years their marriage fills with love, mutual respect, and children: one daughter and many sons. A tannery built near their village forever alters Rukmani's life, for the tannery takes away farmland and silence, and while it provides jobs, they come with great costs. The changes in village life from an agricultural to an industrial community frighten Rukmani; her life becomes one of "Hope and fear. Twin forces that tugged at us first in one direction and then in another...Fear, constant companion of the peasant. Hunger, ever present to jog his elbow should he relax. Despair, ready to engulf him should he falter." Kenny, a white doctor in Rukmani's village, watches with a palpable foreboding his patients' daily struggle to survive. He leaves the village suddenly and often, and just as suddenly reappears, as if life there is too much for him yet he can't stay away. Rukmani and Kenny's conversations make apparent their individual and shared suffering, and while their experiences of the world are completely different, their friendship is based on respect and mutual reliance. Nectar In A Sieve is a powerful, depressing, but ultimately hopeful novel of a life lived with love, faith, and inner strength.

All Quiet on the Western Front (Europe; 296 pages) by Erich Maria Remarque "All Quiet on the Western Front" is probably the most famous war novel ever written. The story is told by a young 'unknown soldier' in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. Through his eyes we see all the realities of war; under fire, on patrol, waiting in the trenches, at home on leave, and in hospitals and dressing stations. Although there are vividly described incidents which remain in mind, there is no sense of adventure here, only the feeling of youth betrayed and a deceptively simple indictment of war - of any war - told for a whole generation of victims.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Europe; 158 pages) by Aleksander Solshenitsyn Solzhenitsyn's first book, this economical, relentless novel is one of the most forceful artistic indictments of political oppression in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The simply told story of a typical, grueling day of the titular character's life in a labor camp in Siberia, is a modern classic of Russian literature and quickly cemented Solzhenitsyn's international reputation upon publication in 1962. It is painfully apparent that Solzhenitsyn himself spent time in the gulags--he was imprisoned for nearly a decade as punishment for making derogatory statements about Stalin in a letter to a friend.

The Power of One (S. Africa; 533) by Bryce Courtenay Obviously, a larger book, but truly worth it. The Power of One is without a doubt, one of most compelling novels I've ever read, and what prompted me into researching a bit into the history of the African (and European) people under Apartheid living in South Africa. The book, although from a British perspective, seems very unbiased, unlike what you might be thinking. The Power of One begins with the main character (who names himself Peekay) heading off to boarding school, away from his beloved nanny, and into the arms of Boers (Dutch, also called Afrikaners), who not only despise him for being British but despise him as a human being. Throughout boarding school, Peekay is ridiculed but promises himself that he'll never cry again. Although Peekay looses a friend (Grandpa Chook- a chicken of all things), he comes to realize the horrible riff that lies between the Dutch and the British. After leaving boarding school, Peekay encounters a man who teaches him about some of the essentials of what he believed was the power of one, and from this man (a Boer) he discovers his love of boxing, which became his obsession, becoming Welterweight Champion of the World became his goal and his life. This is just the idea behind the power of one, and the introduction of the story.

July's People (Africa; 176 pages) by Nadine Gordimer When war break out in South Africa, a fugitive white family takes refuge with their black servant, July. So imagine their quandary when the blacks stage a full-scale revolution that sends the Smaleses scampering into isolation. The premise of the book is expertly crafted; it speaks much about the confusing state of affairs of South Africa and serves as the backbone for a terrific adventure.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Asia; 192 pages) by Dai Sijie (Author) The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons, and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, carrying pails of excrement daily up a hill. Only their ingenuity helps them to survive. The two friends are good at storytelling, and the village headman commands them to put on "oral cinema shows" for the villagers, reciting the plots and dialogue of movies. When another city boy leaves the mountains, the friends steal a suitcase full of forbidden books he has been hiding, knowing he will be afraid to call the authorities. Enchanted by the prose of a host of European writers, they dare to tell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo to the village tailor and to read Balzac to his shy and beautiful young daughter. Luo, who adores the Little Seamstress, dreams of transforming her from a simple country girl into a sophisticated lover with his foreign tales. He succeeds beyond his expectations, but the result is not what he might have hoped for, and leads to an unexpected, droll and poignant conclusion. The warmth and humor of Sijie's prose and the clarity of Rilke's translation distinguish this slim first novel, a wonderfully human tale.

The City of Beasts (S. America; 416 pages, YA) Isabella Allende Adventure seekers will find plenty of thrills in Allende's first novel for young readers. When 15-year-old Alexander Cold is sent to stay with his eccentric, gruff grandmother, Kate, while his mother is being treated for cancer, he is more than a little reluctant to accompany Kate on a writing assignment in South America to search for a legendary nine-foot-tall "Beast." However, once the expedition down the Amazon begins, Alexander's doubts are pushed out of his mind by more immediate concerns, such as keeping an eye on two suspicious members of the party: a native named Karakawe and Mauro Cari as, a wealthy entrepreneur. After Alexander's mysterious encounter with a caged jaguar, another teen, Nadia, explains its importance to him, and begins calling Alexander "Jaguar." This marks the beginning of their somewhat surreal journey: the two teens are kidnapped by the "People of the Mist," a tribe possessing the power of turning invisible, and enter a mountain to discover the mythical city of El Dorado and the enigmatic "Beasts." Reluctant readers may be intimidated by the thickness of this volume, but the plot moves at a rapid pace, laced with surprises and ironic twists. The action and outcome seem preordained, cleverly crafted to deliver the moral, but many readers will find the author's formula successful with its environmentalist theme, a pinch of the grotesque and a larger dose of magic.