I received an email at the beginning of the school year from a friend who is a public librarian. Her sister teaches in a public middle school in Texas. The sister was writing because her school wanted to replace The Diary of a Young Girl with The Book Thief as a required literature selection. My friend asked me to weigh in and offer suggested titles. I agreed thatThe Book Thief is not an appropriate book to introduce the Holocaust to middle school students both because it is too challenging a book, but even more so because it would not be appropriate to introduce the Holocaust through the eyes of a German protagonist. (My analogy was that it would be like teaching about slavery by having them read Gone with the Wind). I disagreed with them that Diary of a Young Girl is too "old-fashioned" and offered some other suggested titles.
Last week I received a booklet with my Oct. issue of Book Links magazine called "Holocaust Remembrance: An Educator's Guide to Discussing the Holocaust and Using Literature to Learn from the Past". I was shocked to see that of the five titles featured in the booklet, not one of them had a Jewish protagonist! The titles are: Number the Stars by Lowry The Book Thief by Zusak The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by Boyne Milkweed by Spinelli In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Opdyke The booklet is published by Random House so I thought maybe all the books included were published by them. That's not the case. Have any of you noticed this? Is it a trend? I'm thinking that Random House (and Book Links) need to hear about this--and maybe AJL andSchool Library Journal. What do you think? Marcia Marcia Lovelace Librarian Tehiyah Day School Library 2603 Tassajara Avenue El Cerrito, CA 94530-1500 510 233 3013 x 111 --- Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: [email protected] SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
