Joey Pigza Loses Control

Gantos, Jack. Joey Pigza Loses Control. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

Joey Pigza Loses Control is a fictional story about a boy, Joey, who decides to spend the summer with his hyperactive father, just like Joey. As the summer progresses, so do the problems that Joey must face, including being off his ADHD medicine and missing his mother.

Throughout the book Joey struggles in finding a balance between respecting his father and wanting to get to know him better, and respecting himself and the choices he wants to make. Joey’s father is an alcoholic and often acts irrationally against Joey. At one point in the story, he flushes Joey’s ADHD medication patch down the toilet trying to make him more of a man. At the end of the book, Joey realizes how important it is to take his medication and how much he loves his mother, and how much he values respecting himself and his family.

Overall, I think that Gantos did a wonderful job intertwining ADHD and a young boy’s daily struggles. It was a very easy read and once I picked up the book, I did not want to put it down. I feel that this book addressed many important issues than just dealing with ADHD. It covered family issues and dealing with an alcoholic and troublesome father. It also introduced the importance of support from family and friends. I really liked how the book had so many different dynamics, yet still managed to show the importance of taking control of your own life and doing what is right and in Jack’s case that was taking his medication everyday in order to remain in control. The book allows for many different readers to relate to it because there were so many different dynamics: ADHD, separated parents, alcoholism, sports, and more. According to the article, “Teaching Students About Learning Disabilities Through Children’s Literature” by Prater, Dyches, and Johnstun, this book was a high quality piece of literature because it was well written as well as had a positive portrayal of a learning disability and was not a very difficult read for students with learning disabilities who chose to read the book.

Thank You, Mr. Falker

Polacco, Patricia. Thank You, Mr. Falker. Philomel Books: New York, 1998.

Patricia Polacco writes a picture book about real struggles that occurred during her childhood. In Thank you, Mr. Falker, a young girl, Trisha, feels like she is “dumb” because she cannot read like the other students. However with the help of a devoted teacher, Trisha finally has success in the classroom and learns to read.

In the beginning of the book Trisha receives a special gift from her grandfather, the knowledge to know the reading is sweet. After learning this, Trisha is very excited that she is going to learn to read. However, she quickly discovers that she cannot learn to read and recognize the letters like the other students in her class. Trisha moves from Michigan to California and hopes that at her new school she will not be teased for not knowing how to read. However, the teasing only gets worse. It is not until a caring, and affectionate teacher helps Trisha learn to recognize the letters and eventually read successfully.

After reading Thank You, Mr. Falker, I think it has became one of my favorite pieces of children’s literature. In such a short encouraging story there are many real life aspects for students to relate to as well as offering the notion that success can be reached. The real problems that are addressed in this book are issues that many students may face. Such as losing family members, trouble reading, bullying, moving, resource room help, achieving success. However, for me one of the most surprising and wonderful aspects of this book is the final page of the story when Polacco admits that Trisha is actually her and that great teachers like Mr. Falker really do exist. This piece of the text offers hopes to struggling students. Also, for students who do not have trouble reading or who bully, it teaches them a lesson about acceptance and struggles that other students must have the strength to overcome. I believe that awareness, understanding, and acceptance are promoted in this book for people with learning disabilities. According to the article, “Teaching Students About Learning Disabilities Through Children’s Literature” by Prater, Dyches, and Johnstun, Polacco’s book is a high quality piece of literature acceptance of learning disabilities is accepted. It is also a high quality piece of literature because it has strong literary features (characterization, setting, plot, point of view, etc) as well as learning disabilities or portrayed very positively.

I learned quite a bit about Polacco on her website (http://www.patriciapolacco.com/author/bio/bio.html). Besides the fact that she is from Michigan and grew up on a farm (just like Trisha), she did not read until the age of 14 and was diagnosed with dyslexia. Since Polacco has a learning disability herself, this piece of literature can be called an “insider” point of view.

Annie's Plan

Written by Kraus, Jeanne & Illustrated by Beyl, Charles. Annie’s Plan: Taking Charge of Schoolwork and Homework. Washington, D.C.: Magination Press, 2007.

Written to help struggling students can control in their academic careers, Annie’s Plan is a picture book that helps a young girl create plans to help her get organized in school and at home.

The first half of the book revolves around showing the frustration and struggle Annie has in school. Her parents and teacher also take note of her troubles. They decide to intervene and create a plan to help Annie gain better control in school and at home. There is a 10-step plan for Annie to do at school and a 10-step plan set in place for at home.

At first glance, this book seems like a great idea to help a struggling student (it is not written in the text, but one could guess Annie has ADHD) gain control. However, once you take a closer look at this text, I believe it has a few issues. First off, it offers a quick fix solution to help Annie get back on track. In the ‘real world’ this is not reality and creating a plan is not an overnight fix. Also, this plan will not work for every student, it is not ideal for every student who is struggling in school and is very generalized. I think that Jeanne Kraus had good intentions in writing this book and offered some good suggestions for students to get organized. The article, “Teaching Students About Learning Disabilities Through Children’s Literature” by Prater, Dyches, and Johnstun, gave quite a few suggestions on how to determine if the piece of literature is quality. One aspect it talked about was the portrayal of the character with the Learning Disability. In this book, at first Annie is portrayed in a negative light, she is constantly reminded by her teacher to do better. However, in the second half of the book, once Annie begins using her plans, she becomes a positive portrayal of someone with a learning disability who can be successful in school.

I found a lot of information about Jeanne Kraus on her personal website (http://www.jeannekraus.com/index.htm). I learned that she is a teacher and has a son who has ADHD.

Lambda Literary Foundation Award - Group Post

The purpose of the Lambda Literary Foundation Award (LLFA) is to "celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians - the whole literary community." From www.lambdaliterary.org/index.html

The selection criteria is as follows:
~Books are about LGBT categories
~Author does not have to be LGBT themselves, as long as their piece of literature includes something about LGBT. Perhaps even one character.
~There are 21 different categories that book nominations fall under
~Only the author or a publisher can nominate a book.

The selection committee includes the writers themselves, booksellers, librarians, teachers, book reviewers, journalists, and/or members of the literary community. It is also stated that editors and publishers or members of the Board of Trustees may serve as a judge.

The LLFA relies on support from the literary community to connect LGBT writers and readers. Personal donations and organizations also help to fund the award.

Our group could only find 4 young adult books that had won the award. However, not all of the books' main themes were LGBT. In "Eight Seconds" by Jean Ferris, the story is not at all about LGBT, it is about bull riders and the rodeo. However, it won the award because one of the characters is gay. The other young adult books we found were "Between Mom and Jo" by Julie Anne Peters, "Express of the World" by Sara Ryan, and "The Full Spectrum" edited by David Levithan and Billy Merrell. "The Full Spectrum" is a compilation of short stories that are about LGBT.

Finally, the book "Boy Meets Boy" by David Levithan is also a winner of the LLFA!

Lambda Literary Foundation Award

Our group split up duties for preparing for class today. Stephanie J. sent me a list of the titles and author's she found who had won the award. With that list I then went to the Capitol Area District Library website (http://www.cadl.org/) and ran a search in the catalog for each book. CADL had many of the books, but not at the library I go to (Okemos). I placed many of the books on hold to be delivered to the Okemos library, but I knew it would take a few days for the books to arrive. I received emails on Tuesday and Wednesday morning that some of the books arrived, but before that I was concerned if the books would arrive on time. Here is the list of books that Stephanie sent me to search for:
*1001 Beds by Tim Miller
*My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan
*Izzy and Eve by Neal Drinnan
*The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
*Fresh Tracks by Georgia Beers
*When the Stars Come Out by Rob Byrnes
*Blind Eye by John Morgan Wilson
*So Hard to Say by Alex Sanchez
*Letters in the Attic by Bonnie Shimko
*Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai
*Full Spectrum by David Levithan and Billy Merrell
*Between Mom and Jo by Julie Anne Peters

Insider vs. Outsider

I think that the insider/outsider debate is very fascinating. Who has the right to decide who is an insider or outsider? Is insider literature better than outsider? What constitutes literature as multicultural? Is there one correct answer? These are some of the questions I thought of as reading the articles.


I think that you cannot give someone one single label as either insider or outsider. To a certain extent someone may be an insider for growing up and living that aspect of their culture, but by no means does that make them the only insider. Is it wrong to consider someone an insider if they are not "from" that culture, but have immersed themselves in it and study it? I think that it is unfair to say that insider is better than outsider, or vice versa. Both have their own positive and negative aspects to them.

As a teacher, it is important to fill your classroom with multicultural literature. But, if you only use insider or outsider literature I think that cannot be considered multicultural. Different points of view from both aspects can spread greater understanding than only one view. I agree with Shannon when he says that "...multiculturalism is about changing the definition and reality of America until they stand for equality, freedom, and justice" (71). I think the "they" he refers to are all the readers of books and without the experience of multiculturalism, we will not be able to live like Americans.

It is not fair to label someone as strictly an insider or an outsider. As Harris suggested, we can all be part of multiple cultures that sometimes collide with each other (78). I think that if we are all part of multiple cultures, than no one is single handedly an insider. They may have extra experience in a certain culture of theirs, but they do not know every aspect of their culture. An outsider may not be an outsider if they are experts in that culture, or have even had some time of limited experience in that culture. The point of multicultural education is to dive into a world different from your own, and that can be achieved by both insiders and outsiders sharing their stories.

Blog one!

My name is Renee Liberman and I am a senior in the College of Education. My major is special education - learning disabilities, and my teaching major is language arts.

I am very interested in diverse literature. I enjoy reading about people who are different than me and their experiences and cultures. I am from West Bloomfield, MI. West Bloomfield is known as a fairly diverse community, but there seem to be lines drawn between the different ethnicities, races, religions, cultures, and disabilities. This is not apparent all the time, but it is quite obvious in the school system. I enjoy being from a diverse community and tried to put myself "out there" more than the average person.

I think that this class will be very beneficial for me and others in many ways. I am looking forward to the fact that my diverse library will grow greatly and that as a teacher I will be able to share it with others. I hope that the diverse literature we read (and share with others) will inform us in ways that could not be done without literature.