The Arrival

Title: The Arrival

Author: Shaun Tan

Publisher: New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2006

ISBN: 978-0-439-89529-3

 

Summary: The Arrival is Shaun Tan’s graphic novel about the journey of an everyman as he leaves his beloved wife and daughter in order to immigrate to a strange land, meets and befriends many other immigrants in various stages of integration, and finally brings his family to the new home he has created.

Critical Analysis: With the cover pages containing rows of familiar-seeming individual immigrant faces, The Arrival at first blush seems to be another treatment of the well-known exodus from Europe and Asia to America and Australia from the 1890’s and into the 1910’s, but it isn’t.

 

Tan’s wordless odyssey traces the steps of an unnamed man as he establishes himself in a new land and integrates himself into a new culture.  Our everyman hero needs no language as his actions and expressions acutely indicate his emotions and experiences. Tan’s amazing artwork speaks for our hero. 

Realistic sepia illustrations convey not only the underlying purposes of emigration (such as escaping danger or economic hardship), but also the jarring immigrant experience. Tan manages this by incorporating science-fiction elements into illustrations reminiscent of period-style photographs. The result is sheer brilliance as the unexpected elements bring the shock and bewilderment a new immigrant may feel to the heart and mind of a reader in a way words cannot, allowing a deep level of immersion in the story.  

The flow of the story is smooth, beginning with visual details, expanding to wider scenes, and then shrinking back to the details. It is through the smaller illustrations that the pacing of the plot is established. The illustrations for the most part are arranged as a movie story-board, although key moments of peace, understanding, and occasionally terror, are illustrated in panoramic two-page spreads or full panels.  The stories of our immigrant’s friends are treated in the same manner but with a different border style around the panels, making each friend’s back-story distinct within the larger novel. 

The characters are drawn together by more than just a common immigration experience. They are drawn together because of a shared goal--creating a better life for one’s family. We are drawn into their circle because, immigrant or not, it’s a goal we all seek. 

 

Awards:

2008-2009 Virginia Young Readers

2007 New York Times Best Illustrated Book

2007 School Library Journal Best Book

2007 World Fantasy Award, Best Artist

Reviews: 

Kirkus Review: “An astonishing wordless graphic novel blends historical imagery with science-fiction elements to depict—brilliantly—the journey of an immigrant man from his terror-beset land of origin to a new, more peaceful home….It’s an unashamed paean to the immigrant’s spirit, tenacity and guts, perfectly crafted for maximum effect.”

School Library Journal: “Young readers will be fascinated by the strange new world the artist creates…More sophisticated readers, however, will grasp the sense of strangeness and find themselves participating in the man’s experiences. They will linger over the details in the beautiful sepia pictures and will likely pick up the book to pore over it again and again.”

Also by Shaun Tan:

Lost and Found: Three by Shaun Tan. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2011. ISBN: 978-0545229241

Tales from Outer Suburbia. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2009. ISBN: 978-0545055871

Sketches from a Nameless Land: The Art of the Arrival. Lothian Children’s Books, 2012. ISBN: 978-0734411648

Activities:

Discover your family’s immigration story or other key moments by interviewing relatives and/or searching your family history on websites such as familysearch.org or ancestry.com.

Check out Scholastic’s Ellis Island immigration activities at http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/tour/index.htm

Created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Title: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Author: Jacqueline Kelly

Publisher: New York: Macmillan, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-312-65930-1

Summary: Calpurnia Tate is your average Southern eleven-year-old girl in a houseful of brothers, a mother trying to teach her to be a lady, a cantankerous grandfather, and a taste for forbidden books. Actually, this budding scientist isn’t ordinary at all as she strives to learn all she can about the natural world with her grandfather and Mr. Darwin’s help and as she strives to avoid her mother’s attempts at bringing up a proper young lady in 1899.

Critical Analysis: Jacqueline Kelly’s debut novel is full of character and science. Calpurnia and her grandfather are the main characters but Calpurnia’s world does contain others; her parents, brothers, and servant Viola—all well-loved people. To a lesser extent you have a few friends and a love interest of Calpurnia’s brother, characters used primarily to move the book along.

Calpurnia is a great character and narrator; she’s spunky and entertaining. Her grandfather is gruff and mysterious. They’re both interesting and multi-faceted, but together they are dynamic. Calpurnia is polite in a genteel Southern way—mam’ and sir being second nature. The talents and skills expected of her as a Southern lady are accurately described, as well as her distaste for them.

Her grandfather is not only a character, he is also the driving force behind the science contained in the novel. His interest in nature began when he made friends with a bat during the Civil War. The story of the bat in his tent is the only war story you get to here this veteran tell. He pushes Calpurnia’s scientific studies by allowing her to work with him in his field studies.

The book is episodic in its plotline. Short, primarily funny, vignettes occur and in-between the stories Calpurnia grows a little. Kelly’s writing is smooth and vivid, drawing you into the sweltering Texas summer or tension-filled piano recital.

The author makes no reference to sources used for the book, although the acknowledgments section thanks several people and institutions connected with science and history. Kelly was a practicing medical doctor for many years before switching careers; she draws on Charles Darwin’s Evolution of Species and her personal knowledge of the natural world for the science in The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.

Although the novel has a specific setting and time period, it is not focused around a historic event. The historical aspect of this novel comes into play primarily in the attitudes and expectations of society toward young women. Calpurnia’s chafing against those expectations is universal and continues to this day as we push against what society expects of us.

Awards:

2010 Newberry Honor Book

2010 YALSA Best Book for Young Adults

2010 ALA Notable Book

2009 Chicago Public Library Best of the Best

Reviews:

Kirkus Reviews: “Readers will finish this witty, deftly crafted debut novel rooting for ‘Callie Vee’ and wishing they knew what kind of adult she would become.”

The Horn Book: “Kelly, without anachronism, has created a memorable, warm, spirited young woman who’s refreshingly ahead of her time.”

The New Yorker: “…the most delightful historical novel for tweens in many, many years…Callie’s struggles to find a place in the world where she’ll be encouraged in the gawky joys of intellectual curiosity are fresh, funny, and poignant today.”

Neat Stuff to Learn:

Learn more about Grasshoppers:

http://bugguide.net/node/view/73/tree/all

This is a picture of a flower similar to that discovered by Calpurnia and her grandfather. What would you name a plant?

Check out my Book Trailer:

Cotton:

Cotton is THE cash crop of Callie’s Family. Learn more about where your t-shirt comes from by watching this prezi by Matthew Green. Then go to  kqed.org  for more great information about your t-shirt.

review created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21

The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

Title: The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

Author: Laurence Yep

Publisher: New York: Harper Trophy, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-06-000846-8

Summary: Two friends, Henry and Chin, live through the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. The earthquake and resulting fires take all their material possessions, but not their families, not their heroes, and not each other. And not the umbrellas.

Critical Analysis: Henry and Chin are boys connected not only because Henry’s family employs Chin’s father as a houseboy, but also through a love of penny-dreadfuls and a yearning for excitement. They get both a dreadful and exciting event when the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 literally rocks their hometown. However, another character drives the novel—the earth itself, described in Chin’s Chinatown neighborhood as the Earth Dragon.  It is his shaking that causes the earthquake, and it stands to reason that the great fires that sweep through the city in its aftermath are its fiery breath. However, the earth is not personified; Yep explains tectonic plate movement in a way that draws tension to the book as well as to the earth underneath San Francisco.

Yep’s novel is written for young children beginning chapter books. The sentences are short, the chapters are short, and the words are simple. Each chapter begins with a date, time, and place as an orientation. The Earth Dragon Awakes is an adventure novel with lots of action verbs, lots of movement, and just enough characterization to keep the action going. You do not look for deep messages or societal conflicts in this novel. The conflicts are there, but the third person narrator is distinctly child-like in his view, not focusing on details that would reveal any underlying concerns. The theme of this book is discovering heroes. Whereas previous to the earthquake Henry and Chin depended on cheap novels about lawmen and explorers for their heroes, the earthquake reveals real heroes in their parents and neighbors.

Author Laurence Yep’s reputation for well-researched novels continues in The Earth Dragon Awakes. He includes photographs of the fires and aftermath at the end of the book, another reminder that this terrible event is real. His captions under the photos describe the locations in which the photos were taken and where Chin and Henry’s families’ connections to those places. The afterword of The Earth Dragon Awakes continues the story of the quake in an informational text and his personal experiences with more recent quakes in the area. Yep includes a bibliography of research books and reputable websites for learning about the earthquake.

Awards:

2008 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award

Texas Bluebonnet Award Nominee

Newbery Honor Author

Reviews:

ALA Booklist: “Provides a ‘you are there’ sense of immediacy and will appeal to readers who enjoy action-packed survival stories.”

School Library Journal: "Its ‘natural disaster’ subject is both timely and topical, and Yep weaves snippets of information on plate tectonics and more very neatly around his prose.”

Footage of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake:

Review created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21

One Crazy Summer

Title: One Crazy Summer

Author: Rita Williams-Garcia

Publisher: New York: HarperCollins, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-06-076090-8

Summary: “How can you send them to Oakland? Oakland’s nothing but a boiling pot of trouble cooking.” 

–Big Ma

It’s the summer of 1968 and Delphine and her two younger sisters are sent by their father and Big Ma (their grandmother) in Brooklyn, NY, to Oakland, CA, to visit their mother. But their California dreaming crashes down on them as they realize they will not be visiting Disneyland and surfing as they had hoped. Instead they are busy avoiding the crazy mother who abandoned them as babies, attending summer school taught by black panthers, and a learning a few truths they never knew. Just don’t tell their Big Ma.

Critical Analysis: Rita Williams-Garcia creates not so much a world (that was already there) as the people that inhabit it—especially the women. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are sisters ranging in age from 11 to 7, each with her own strong personality. Their mother, Cecile or Nzila, is crazy and distant, a poet quietly caught up in the black power movement of the 1960’s. Their grandmother, Big Ma, is heard throughout the story as a conservative voice in the head of our narrator.

The story is told through the eyes of 11-year-old Delphine. When their mother abandoned them Delphine took on responsibility for her younger sisters. The reader senses her vigilance in guarding Vonetta and Fern, her big-sister ability to press the right buttons in her younger sister’s attitudes, and her resentment toward her mother for leaving them. We see Delphine’s comprehension about the way the world works slowly shift as she is exposed to the ideals of the Black Panthers and her evolving role as a black woman.

The novel revolves around the sisters, especially Delphine, and their relationship with their mother. While the girls essentially wait for their mother to acknowledge their existence beyond people who need to be fed and sleep somewhere, they become involved in a summer education program run by the Black Panthers at the People’s Center.

Their adventures at the People’s Center are just like any other children’s in any summer school; there are friends to be made from enemies, playground games, teachers trying (sometimes succeeding) to help. Then Nzila is arrested with a couple of Black Panthers and the girls are left on their own. Instead of calling Pa and Big Ma, Delphine decides to wait for Cecile to be released from jail. The sisters stay busy with preparations for a rally in the park. The girls discover a poem written by their mother and decide to recite it as their part in the rally. The plot is quickly but powerfully resolved as Cecile finally speaks to Delphine about why she left.

Rita Williams-Garcia writes not only from her personal knowledge of growing up during the civil rights movement, but also from extensive research from a variety of sources. The descriptions of the time and area are accurate. Even the stereotyping is accurate—meaning that some of the characters view other characters as stereotypes, such as one of the Panthers continually calling the police “pigs”.

The book may be written in a certain time and a certain place, but the characters could be in any setting. The girls’ pain and confusion as a consequence of abandonment and how they deal with facing the unknown are emotions we are all familiar with to one extent or another. Delphine is not alone in having to come to terms with the underlying motivations to action; it is something we all must face.

Awards:

Newberry Honor Book

Coretta Scott King Award

National Book Award Finalist

Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction

ALA Notable Book

NAACP Image Award Nominee

Parent’s Choice Gold Award

Reviews:

Monica Edinger, New York Times: “In One Crazy Summer Williams-Garcia presents a child’s-eye view of the Black Panther movement within a powerful and affecting story of sisterhood and motherhood.”

Horn Book: “The setting and time period are as vividly realized as the characters, and readers will want to know more about Delphine and her sisters after they return to Brooklyn.”

Linda Sue Park, Newbery Medal-winning author of A Single Shard: “A genuine rarity: a book that is both important in its contents and utterly engaging in its characters…with the tremendous bonus of being beautifully written.”

Author Quote:

“I wanted to share an era in which I had enjoyed my childhood—the late 1960’s…My siblings and I indulged in now-vanishing pastimes. We played hard. Read books. Colored with crayons. Rode bikes. Spoke as children spoke. Dreamed our childish dreams…[our parents] gave us a place to be children and kept the adult world in its place—as best as they could.”

--excerpt from Rita Williams-Garcia’s Acceptance Speech for the Coretta Scott King Author Award for One Crazy Summer

Activity and Websites:

Make a playlist including songs from 1968

Pretend you are eating Mean Lady Ming Takeout by trying this recipe for fortune cookies: kidspot fortune cookies

Find out more about the Civil Rights Movement:

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement

Created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21