Speak / Anne of Green Gables / Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Melissa)

Caveat: I have been influenced by the many discussions of ethics and the need to start reading texts from the perspectives of the marginalised and Other.
 

SPEAK

But... there are several other reasons why I have chosen Speak as my chosen contender secondary school text - the convenient fact that it was a book on our syllabus being the least compelling.

This is a text that offers a fresh take on the universal teenage struggle to fit into a community – thus something that many secondary students can relate to. It can be frustrating to read, because despite how much access readers are granted to the protagonist’s inner thoughts, they remain powerless to influence her decisions and mindsets. This is perhaps deliberate as it forces readers to come to terms with the stubborn and often ignorant mental processing of adolescent teenagers. It reminds me very much of Catcher in the Rye, in that both protagonists are on a journey to learn to cope with a damaged past, and both act out in wilful and often ineffective ways. The key thing is that Speak is much more censored in terms of language use, and suitable for discussion at the secondary school level. The frustration it generates may also be productive because readers instinctively reach for better alternatives that the protagonist could have sought for her situation, and these problem-solving skills may very well develop tenacity and maturity in students, which they can apply to dealing with trials in their own lives. At the same time, the text opens up opportunities to discuss real issues that teenagers face today -- date rape, victim-blaming and bullying being some of them. These have the potential to cultivate seeds of empathy and teaching moments.

Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Green Gables is a bildungsroman novel which deals richly with the narrative elements in the MOE syllabus – plot, setting, character, style. It is intertextual – there is even scope for discussion of poetry, seeing as the text weaves some of these in too – and deals with themes like love and loss. Descriptive language and symbolism are integral characteristics of the text, and I imagine that it might be fairly engaging to involve students in representing the different settings in the text through drawings/blueprints to check for understanding. However, I imagine that the language may be a tad dry for some students, especially those who are not regular readers. The non-modern context is also less relatable to students in the 21^st centuray, which may pose a challenge in getting students to plough through the text willingly.

Harry Potter series

Pick a book from the Harry Potter series and you’ll find a masterful treatment of characterisation, setting, plot and theme. The great thing about it is that students are likely to have an intrinsic motivation to read it, seeing as it is popular among them and has been made into film. This also opens up multimodal opportunites to teaching Literature – for instance exposing students to visual literacy skills through a discussion of how sound effects add to setting and atmosphere. It also encourages students to evaluate the representations of scenes, for instance how tension is created differently in text and film. For the sake of chronology, it would be best to examine the 1st book. The film adaptation also depicts a much less distracting version of Emma Watson at that stage - something to consider if you've boys in the classroom.