Some input on American Lit to go with

[Halftime Hope]

American history.

 

We are just finishing Year 4 of a history rotation, so we've finished up Modern World History. I've gone lightly on the last 30 years of American History, expecting to hit it hard next year.

 

I'm looking at Notgrass American History. I can think of two things that I might do for the lit component, since many folks seems to think the lit component is pretty light and/or poorly representative.

 

This is for an 11th grade guy who is dyslexic, and reads decently, but with a lot of effort.

 

Option 1) We haven't had any literary analysis, so I'm thinking of doing Windows on the World first semester, and *just* reading or listening to the lit selections in Notgrass, ie., not planning on doing much in depth with them, just reading. Second semester doing the one semester BJU American Lit with videos. I'm happy with their textbook and the teacher--it is not inspiring, but is more than adequate in covering the body of lit.

 

Option 2) We could do Lit on our own, and cover poetry in more depth (remember ds had asked about studying poetry?), cover WOW in the first semester, then beef up the lit. by changing the selections to books that were better representative of American authors, rather than choosing books that primarily illustrated life during the times being studied. this would be a departure from our "unit study" approach to history all along.

 

Here are the items I'm having difficulty with from the Notgrass selections: 1) I think of Little Women and Christy as pretty long for him, and not necessarily representative of the important "movements" of American Lit. 2) Notgrass scheduled Uncle Tom's Cabin, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington. The bios seem somewhat repetitive, although I haven't read them in years, so perhaps I'm off base. 3) Other selections seem fun, but hardly representative of great American Lit. Sigh...and I'm pretty much a lit illiterate.

 

So, here's where I could use input.

 

If you were to go with Option 2, above, what literature would you schedule as "must not be missed" lit selections? Please keep in mind, that while my guy has a willing heart, books that simply plod or are heavily introspective will probably not be a good fit. He's just not there yet. I'm going to go reread Walden later this summer with N. in mind, but I suspect that we will be reading excerpts from Thoreau. :)

 

Thanks for your input!

 

valerie

Edited May 31, 2011 by Valerie(TX)

[Lori D.]

Well, since you asked for opinions and input... ;)

 

Windows to the World would be a great choice to do for your literature. And two of the short stories (Gift of the Magi; The Most Dangerous Game) are by American authors. WttW will definitely give you more instruction in annotation, literary analysis, and specifics in writing a literary analysis than Notgrass (which has none). Feel free to take longer than 1 semester to complete it, or intersperse it with longer works -- WttW is a very flexible program.

 

 

I agree with you re: Notgrass Literature, which is why we ended up making our own American Lit. If you wanted to do some of the Notgrass literature along with WttW, here's JMO:

 

1. substitute a short story for Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

(perhaps The Minister's Black Veil = http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/146/ or Young Goodman Brown = http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/nh/ygb.html which each have (different) related themes to those in The Scarlet Letter)

 

2. skip all the biographies, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Co. Aytch

(you'll be getting a lot of primary source documents in the "American Voices" volume of the Notgrass history, and doing THAT many biographies on top of it is way overkill, IMO)

(or just read a few brief excerpts of one or several of the biographies and UTC)

(or substitute the much shorter and easier to read "To Be a Slave" (former slave memories) edited by Julius Lester)

(or substitute Stephen Crane's longer novella "Red Badge of Courage" for "Co. Aytch")

 

3. must read author: Mark Twain -- Humorous Stories and Sketches would be ~okay~, but since Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are both such classics, if you can all manage it, I would substitute one of them for HS&S

 

4. skip both: In His Steps; Christy

 

5. your choice: if you'd like a short, lite, humorous work, read Mama's Bank Account; otherwise, can skip

 

6. must read: To Kill a Mockingbird -- probably the #1 American high school classic -- and it's such an enjoyable work! :)

 

7. your choice: The Giver is a fascinating short, easy to read utopia/dystopia work and sparks a lot of good discussion (check out the Garlic Press Publishers' Discovering Literature guide for this work); otherwise can skip

 

 

And since you asked ;), in case it helps, this would be my list for "don't miss" classic American Lit for a student dealing with dyslexia:

 

novels/novellas:

1. Adventures of Tom Sawyer -- OR -- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) -- longer novel

2. To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee) -- novel

3. Farenheit 451 (Bradbury) -- longer novella/short novel

4. Call of the Wild (London) -- novella

5. The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) -- short novella

 

short stories:

1. a short story by Hawthorne

2. a short story by Poe

3. "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (Bierce) -- OR -- "Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" (Crane)

4. a short story by O. Henry

5. "The Lottery" by Jackson

 

poetry (several poems each):

1. Emily Dickinson

2. Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

4. Walt Whitman

5. Robert Frost

 

plays (watch, NOT read):

1. Our Town

2. Death of a Salesman

3. Raisin in the Sun

4. Twelve Angry Men

5. Into the Woods -- OR -- Sunday in the Park with George (or other Sondheim musical)

Edited May 31, 2011 by Lori D.
added info

[Farmgirl70]

Do you ever listen to books on CD or MP3? That might be another route to go if there is a lit selection that you want to cover that seems too much for him. I have a couple of auditory learners who can read just fine, but prefer audiobooks. They read maybe 1/3 of their books that way. Just a thought....

 

You can get free audio of many classics on the librivox website.

[Halftime Hope]

Do you ever listen to books on CD or MP3? That might be another route to go if there is a lit selection that you want to cover that seems too much for him. I have a couple of auditory learners who can read just fine, but prefer audiobooks. They read maybe 1/3 of their books that way. Just a thought....

 

You can get free audio of many classics on the librivox website.

 

...but in this case, my objection is primarily about the lit choices. Thanks for the suggestion, though; it is a valuable one if we choose to opt for particularly strenuous selections such as when we did Les Miserables and Dickens, several years ago. We listen to many things and have access to the Texas State Library audio resources as well. Even dd, who is not dyslexic, had me order her some of the books for her Foundations of American Thought class, as the rhythm of some of those writers is vastly different from current language.

[Halftime Hope]

Shanks berry much! I appreciate the tailored rxmds., as well as the reminder about the first person sources in American Voices...I wasn't even thinking about those.

 

Earlier this year, I read what was, essentially, a fascinating double bio, Unshakable faith: Booker T. Washington & George Washington Carver.

 

It was a bit much for a highschooler in a survey class, but it was personally fascinating, in that I learned a lot about how life changed--for better and for worse--for black americans over the 100 years between reconstruction and the civil rights movement.

 

 

 

Well, since you asked for opinions and input... ;)

 

Windows to the World would be a great choice to do for your literature. And two of the short stories (Gift of the Magi; The Most Dangerous Game) are by American authors. WttW will definitely give you more instruction in annotation, literary analysis, and specifics in writing a literary analysis than Notgrass (which has none). Feel free to take longer than 1 semester to complete it, or intersperse it with longer works -- WttW is a very flexible program.

 

 

I agree with you re: Notgrass Literature, which is why we ended up making our own American Lit. If you wanted to do some of the Notgrass literature along with WttW, here's JMO:

 

1. substitute a short story for Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

(perhaps The Minister's Black Veil = http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/146/ or Young Goodman Brown = http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/nh/ygb.html which each have (different) related themes to those in The Scarlet Letter)

 

2. skip all the biographies, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Co. Aytch

(you'll be getting a lot of primary source documents in the "American Voices" volume of the Notgrass history, and doing THAT many biographies on top of it is way overkill, IMO)

(or just read a few brief excerpts of one or several of the biographies and UTC)

(or substitute the much shorter and easier to read "To Be a Slave" (former slave memories) edited by Julius Lester)

(or substitute Stephen Crane's longer novella "Red Badge of Courage" for "Co. Aytch")

 

3. must read author: Mark Twain -- Humorous Stories and Sketches would be ~okay~, but since Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are both such classics, if you can all manage it, I would substitute one of them for HS&S

 

4. skip both: In His Steps; Christy

 

5. your choice: if you'd like a short, lite, humorous work, read Mama's Bank Account; otherwise, can skip

 

6. must read: To Kill a Mockingbird -- probably the #1 American high school classic -- and it's such an enjoyable work! :)

 

7. your choice: The Giver is a fascinating short, easy to read utopia/dystopia work and sparks a lot of good discussion (check out the Garlic Press Publishers' Discovering Literature guide for this work); otherwise can skip

 

 

And since you asked ;), in case it helps, this would be my list for "don't miss" classic American Lit for a student dealing with dyslexia:

 

novels/novellas:

1. Adventures of Tom Sawyer -- OR -- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) -- longer novel

2. To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee) -- novel

3. Farenheit 451 (Bradbury) -- longer novella/short novel

4. Call of the Wild (London) -- novella

5. The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) -- short novella

 

short stories:

1. a short story by Hawthorne

2. a short story by Poe

3. "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (Bierce) -- OR -- "Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" (Crane)

4. a short story by O. Henry

5. "The Lottery" by Jackson

 

poetry (several poems each):

1. Emily Dickinson

2. Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

4. Walt Whitman

5. Robert Frost

 

plays (watch, NOT read):

1. Our Town

2. Death of a Salesman

3. Raisin in the Sun

4. Twelve Angry Men

5. Into the Woods -- OR -- Sunday in the Park with George (or other Sondheim musical)

[Lori D.]

Shanks berry much! I appreciate the tailored rxmds., as well as the reminder about the first person sources in American Voices...I wasn't even thinking about those.

 

Earlier this year, I read what was, essentially, a fascinating double bio, Unshakable faith: Booker T. Washington & George Washington Carver.

 

It was a bit much for a highschooler in a survey class, but it was personally fascinating, in that I learned a lot about how life changed--for better and for worse--for black americans over the 100 years between reconstruction and the civil rights movement.

 

You're welcome. Our younger DS struggles with mild dyslexia and writing issues, so we tend to do a lot of our literature aloud together ("you read a page, I read a page") which eases the dyslexia and helps him hold the story in his mind instead of having to spend all his brain power on focusing in reading.

 

Both of our DSs said the themes in Scarlet Letter were interesting, but the VERY long "Custom House" intro into it almost killed any interest in the story before we even got to it, so that's why I'm suggesting a short story. Both DSs enjoyed Old Man and The Sea and Call of the Wild (adventure stories, but also simple language which mirrored the characters well). And we all were VERY surprised at how much we enjoyed The Great Gatsby (tragic, but beautifully written), but I didn't put it on the list because it may not be your family's cup of tea.

 

Both DSs *despised* Melville's Billy Budd. Now coming back to him 20 years after college, I could really appreciate what he was doing, but DSs felt he just rambled and constantly strayed from the point, so if you were to do any Melville, I'd suggest his almost "pre-nihilistic" short story "Bartleby the Scrivener". They had no patience for the mushy worldview of Emerson in the excerpts from his essays that we read; they disagreed with Thoreau's worldview, too, but at least felt he had the honesty to try and live his worldview, compared to Emerson who lived off his wife's inheritance... But I digress...

 

We read excerpts from Douglass' autobiography from my college Norton Anthology of American Lit., and while it was interesting, the 1-2 chapters was plenty. I had them read "To Be a Slave" on their own -- much quicker and more immediate; the focus was on memories of what it was like to be a slave. Nothing like first-person accounts to be riveting! The language was simplier, too. There is a Booker T. Washington speech in the Notgrass "American Voices" volume, so we only did that as our exposure to him. That biography you mentioned sounds fascinating -- I'll have to look for it at the library this summer. Thanks! :)

 

BEST of luck in narrowing down your American Lit. -- I started with a list of almost 200 works (novels, short stories, poets, essays, etc.) and had a horrible time spending all summer narrowing it down. We ended up doing a lot of short stories, which was fun as it gave us a chance to also discuss the literature form of the short story, and allowed us to enjoy a lot more authors that way. Some of the stories our DSs particularly enjoyed either reading or discussing:

 

- Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Bierce)

- Luck of Roaring Camp (Harte)

- Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (Crane)

- Gift of the Magi; Ransom of Red Chief (O. Henry)

- Thank You Ma'am (Hughes)

- The Catbird Seat (Thurber)

- The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas (LeGuin)

- The Lottery (Jackson)

- There Will Come Soft Rains (Bradbury)

- A Good Man is Hard to Find; Revelation; Everything That Rises Must Converge (O'Conner)

 

Most can be found online. Enjoy! Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited May 31, 2011 by Lori D.

[redmondclan]

Thanks for these suggestions! I had not heard of WttW either. Now I have a plan also. :) I think the Notgrass with some literature modifications and Windows to The World will be a good fit for my daughter!