Excerpts from Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer

 

Background: This book is about a girl named Hope who, once again, must leave a place she’s called home to move. We pick up in the novel as she and her aunt are getting in their car to begin their latest move.

 

                We walked across the street to the old Buick that was packed to the hilt with everything we owned and had a U-Haul trailer chained to the back.

                It was May 26. We were heading to Mulhoney, Wisconsin, to start work in a diner there that needed a professional manager and cook (Addie), was short on waitresses (me), and was giving us an apartment. The man we were going to work for had been diagnosed with leukemia and needed help fast. I don’t mean to sound ungenerous, but working for a close-to-dying man didn’t sounds like a great career move to me. I had to leave school right before the end of my undistinguished sophomore year, too.

                I hate leaving places I love.

                We were about to get into the car just as Morty the cabdriver double-parked his Yellow taxi.

                Good old Morty. The first time I waited on him, he unloosened his belt a notch before he even looked at the menu. I knew I had a true believer.

                I raised my hand to a great tipper.

                “You always took care of me, kid!” He shouted this from across the street as a UPS truck started honking at him to move his cab.

                “I tried, Morty!”

                “Wherever you go, you’ll do okay. You got heart!”

                The UPS driver screamed something heartless at Morty, who screamed back, “Watch your mouth, big man in a brown truck!”

                I didn’t know what kind of customers I’d get in Wisconsin.

 

Background: This is about the same point in the book. Hope has gotten in the car with her aunt, Addie, about to set out on the trip to a new life in Wisconsin. Addie is trying to reassure her.

 

                She grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze.

                Addie never promised that life would be easy, but she did promise that if I hung with her the food would be good.

                Believe me when I tell you, I know about survival.

                I was born too early and much too small (two pounds and five ounces). For the first month of my life I kept grasping for air, like I couldn’t get the hang of breathing. I couldn’t eat either, couldn’t suck a bottle. The doctors didn’t think I would make it. Shows what they know. my mother didn’t want the responsibility of a baby so she left me with Addie, her older sister, and went off to live her own life. I’ve seen her exactly three times since I was born—when she visited on my fifth, eighth, and thirteenth birthdays.

                Each time she talked about being a waitress. What made a good one (“great hands and personality”). What were the pitfalls (“crazed cooks and being on your feet all day”). What was the biggest tip she ever got ($300 from a plumber who had just won the instant lottery).

                Each time she told me, “Hon, leaving you with Addie was the best thing I could have done for you. You need constants in your life.” She had a different hair color each time she said it.

                Addie’s been my number-one constant….

                Because of this, I don’t buy into traditional roles. My favorite book when I was little had pictures of baby animals, like foxes and lambs and ducklings, who were being raised by other animals, like dogs, geese, and wolves.

                Addie said it was our story.

 

I stared out the window as the Buick roared west to whatever.

                Harrison Beckworth-McCoy, my best male friend at school,… had given me a goodbye present, and I was opening it now as Addie pushed the Buick through Ohio. Inside the box was a small glass prism that caught the sun.  A hand-painted note from Harrison read, “New places always help us look at life differently. I will miss you, but won’t lose you.”

                Harrison was always saying sensitive things like that, which put him instantly on Jocelyn Lindstrom’s male sensitivity chart. He was the only male either of us knew who had made the chart consistently over twelve months. Donald Raspigi, who occasionally said sensitive things like “Nice sweater,” had been on twice.

                Enter memories, sweet and sour.

                Harrison and me baking enormous mocha chip cookies for the high school bake sale and having them stolen on the Lexington Avenue subway.

                Harrison’s African fighting fish, Luther, who ate Chef Boyardee ravioli without chewing.

                Harrison reading my mother’s photocopied annual Christmas letter that she sent to family and friends—“Dear Friends….” (She’d cross out “Friends” and write in “Addie and my little Tulip.”) Harrison commenting that motherhood should be like driving a car—you should have to pass a test before you get to do it legally.

                I held the prism up to the light. The sun hit it and showered colors through the windshield. “Now isn’t that something?” Addie said, smiling at the sight. “Yeah.” I looked out the window, trying not to cry.

Excerpts from Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

 

Background: Brian, the main character, is seated next to the pilot in a small plane flying over the forests in the far north.

 

                Brian Robeson stared out the window of the small plane at the endless green northern wilderness below. It was a small plane, a Cessna 406—a bush plane—and the engine was so loud, so roaring and consuming and loud, that it ruined any chance for conversation.

                Not that he had much to say. He was thirteen and the only passenger on the plane with a pilot named—what was it? Jim or Jake or something—who was in his mid-forties and who had been silent as he worked to prepare for take-off. In fact since Brian had come to the small airport in Hampton, New York to meet the plane—driven by his mother—the pilot had spoken only five words to him.

                “Get in the copilot’s seat.”

                Which Brian had done. They had taken off and that was the last of the conversation. There had been the initial excitement, of course. He had never flown in a single-engine plane before and to be sitting in the copilot’s seat with all the controls right there in front of him, all the instruments in his face as the plane clawed for altitude, jerking and sliding on the wind currents as the pilot took off, had been interesting and exciting….

                Now Brian sat, looking out the window with the roar thundering through his ears, and tried to catalog what had led up to his taking this flight.

                The thinking started.

                Always it started with a single word.

                Divorce.

                It was an ugly word, he thought. A tearing, ugly word that meant fights and yelling, lawyers—God, he thought, how he hated lawyers who sat with their comfortable smiles and tried to explain to him in legal terms how all that he lived in was coming apart—and the breaking and shattering of all the solid things. His home, his life—all the solid things. Divorce. A breaking word, an ugly breaking word.

 

                Divorce.

                Secrets.

                No, not secrets so much as just the Secret. What he knew and had not told anybody, what he knew about his mother that had caused the divorce, what he knew, what he knew—the Secret.

                Divorce.

                The Secret.

 

                Brian felt his eyes beginning to burn and knew there would be tears. He had cried for a time, but that was gone now. He didn’t cry now….

                The pilot sat large, his hands lightly on the wheel, feet on the rudder pedals. He seemed more a machine than a man, an extension of the plane….

                When he saw Brian look at him, the pilot seemed to open up a bit and he smiled. “Ever fly in the copilot’s seat before?” He leaned over and lifted the headset off his right ear and put it on his temple, yelling to overcome the sound of the engine.

                Brian shook his head….

                “It’s not as complicated as it looks. Good plane like this almost flies itself.” The pilot shrugged. “Makes my job easy.” He took Brian’s left arm. “Here, put your hands on the controls, your feet on the rudder pedals, and I’ll show you what I mean.”

                Brian shook his head. “I’d better not.”

                “Sure. Try it….”

                Brian reached out and took the wheel in a grip so tight his knuckles were white. He pushed his feet down on the pedals. The plane slewed suddenly to the right.

                “Not so hard. Take her light, take her light.”

                Brian eased off, relaxed his grip. The burning in his eyes was forgotten momentarily as the vibration of the plane came through the wheel and the pedals. It seemed almost alive.

                “See?” The pilot let go of his wheel, raised his hands in the air and took his feet off the pedals to show Brian he was actually flying the plane alone. “Simple. Now turn the wheel a little to the right and push on the right rudder pedal a small amount.”

                Brian turned the wheel slightly and the plane immediately banked to the right, and when he pressed on the right rudder pedal the nose slid across the horizon to the right. He left off on the pressure and straightened the wheel and the plane righted itself.

                “Now you can turn. Bring her back to the left a little.”

                Brian turned the wheel left, pushed on the left pedal, and the plane came back around. “It’s easy.” He smiled. “At least this part.”

                The pilot nodded. “All of flying is easy. Just takes learning. Like everything else.” He took the controls back, then reached up and rubbed his left shoulder. “Aches and pains—must be getting old.”

                Brian let go of the controls and moved his feet away from the pedals as the pilot put his hands on the wheel. “Thank you….”

                But the pilot had put his headset back on and the gratitude was lost in the engine noise and things went back to Brian looking out the window at the ocean of trees and lakes. The burning eyes did not come back, but memories did, came flooding in. The words. Always the words.

                Divorce.

                The Secret.

                Fights.

                Split.

                The big split. Brian’s father did not understand as Brian did, knew only that Brian’s mother wanted to break the marriage apart. The split had come and then the divorce, all so fast, and the court had left him with his mother except for the summers and what the judge called “visitation rights.” So formal.

Excerpts from Crash by Jerry Spinelli

BACKGROUND: Crash is about a middle-school kid named Crash who bullies another kid. The kid he bullies is named Penn Webb, and Crash often calls him by his last name. this first scene is from the beginning of the story, page 2 in fact, when the main character, Crash, is outside and sees Penn walking down the sidewalk.

 

It was a sunny summer day. I was in the front yard digging a hole with my little red shovel. I heard something like whistling. It was coming from a funny-looking dorky little runt walking up the sidewalk. Only he wasn’t just walking regular. He was walking like he owned the place, both hands in his pockets, sort of swaying lah-dee-dah with each step. Strollll-ing. Strolling and gawking at the houses and whistling a happy little dorky tune like some Sneezy or Snoozy or whatever their names are.

                And he wore a button, a big one. It covered about half his chest. Which wasn’t that hard since his chest was so scrawny.

                So here he comes strolling, whistling, gawking, buttoning, dorking up the sidewalk, onto my sidewalk, my property, and all of a sudden I knew what I had to do, like there was a big announcement coming down from the sky: Don’t let him pass.

               

Background: In the next section we find that Crash and Penn are about to compete against each other in a school race. Webb’s parents and his great-grandfather, Henry Wilhide Webb III, have come to watch Penn run. Crash is looking at the three of them in the stands, thinking of his own grandfather, Scooter. Until now, Crash has continued to bully Penn.

 

The stands were empty. A school bus moved in the distance beyond the football goalpost. Under the crossbar and between the uprights, like in a framed picture, stood three people.

                For once, Webb’s parents didn’t look so old, not compared to the man standing between them. He was shorter than them, and real skinny, like the prairie winds were eroding him away. But he was standing straight and by himself—no cane, no walker, just two legs. Nine-three years old. Maybe it was the Missouri River mud.

                The thought came to me: they would have liked each other, Scooter and Henry Wilhide Webb III. Two storytellers. Both from the great flat open spaces, one a prairie of grass, one of water. Both came to watch when no one else was there.

 

Background: We are still before the race, and Crash is thinking about Penn’s great-grandfather.

 

Why exactly was he here? Did he know about me? Did he know his great grandson could not win the race-off, and so would not run in the Penn Relays?

                I wondered if Webb felt safe in his great grandfather’s bed.

                The cinder track crunched under my feet. There were five of us in the race: me, Webb, two other seventh graders, and a sixth grader. The coach put us in lanes. Me and Webb were side by side.

                Again, he hadn’t said a word to me all day. We milled around behind the starting blocks, nervous, shaking out our arms and legs, everything as quiet as if the coach had already said, “Ready.”

                The other team members—jumpers, throwers, distance runners—had all stopped their practicing to watch. A single hawk, its wingtips spread like black fingers, kited over the school, and suddenly I saw something: a gift. A gift for a great grandfather from North Dakota, maybe for all great grandfathers. But the thing was, only one person could give the gift, and it wasn’t the great grandson, not on his fastest day alive. It was me.

                I hated it being me. I tried not to see, but everywhere I looked, there it was.

                The gift.

Background: The race is about to begin. Let’s see what Crash decides to do.

 

“Let’s go, boys,” said the coach.

                A voice closer to me said, “Good luck.”

                It was Webb, sticking out his dorky hand, smiling that old dorky smile of his. No button. I shook his hand, and it occurred to me that because he was always eating my dust, the dumb fishcake had never won a real race and probably didn’t know how. And now there wasn’t time.

                “Don’t forget to lean,” I told him. His face went blank. The coach called, “Ready.”

                I got down, feet in the blocks, right knee on the track, thumbs and forefingers on the chalk, eyes straight down—and right then, for the first time in my life, I didn’t know if I wanted to win.

                “Set.”

                Knee up, rear up, eyes up.

                The coach says the most important thing here is to focus your mind. You are a coiled steel spring, ready to dart out at the sound of the gun. So what comes into my head? Ollie the one-armed octopus. He didn’t disappear till the gun went off.

                I was behind—not only Webb, but everybody. No problem. Within ten strides I picked up three of them. That left Webb. He was farther ahead of me than usual, but that was because of my rotten start.

                At the halfway mark, where I usually passed him, he was still ahead, and I still didn’t know if I wanted to win. I gassed it. The gap closed. I could hear him puffing, like a second set of footsteps. Cinder flecks from his feet pecked at my shins. I was still behind. The finish line was closing. I kicked in the afterburners. Ten meters from the white string we were shoulder to shoulder, breath to breath, grandson to great grandson, and it felt new, it felt good, not being behind, not being ahead, but being even, and just like that, a half breath from the white string, I knew. There was no time to turn to him. I just barked it out: “Lean!” He leaned, he threw his chest out, he broke the string. He won.

Excerpts from A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

 

Background: This book is about what happens to an eleven-year-old who lives in Sudan during a time in which rebels are raiding villages. In a scene early in the novel, eleven-year-old Salva has become separated from the rest of his family after rebels have attacked his small Sudanese village, and he’s now alone and scared and running.

 

                Salva lowered his head and ran.

                He ran until he could not run anymore. Then he walked. For hours, until the sun was nearly gone from the sky.

                Other people were walking, too. There were so many of them that they couldn’t all be from the school village; they must have come from the whole area.

                As Salva walked, the same thoughts kept going through his head in rhythm with his steps. Where are we going? Where is my family? When will I see them again?

 

Background: At this point, Salva has been on his own for a while, but has now found a small group of people who are trying to survive.

 

There were now three women giving water to the men on the ground.

                Like a miracle, the small amounts of water revived them. They were able to stagger to their feet and join the group as the walking continued.

                But their five dead companions were left behind. There were no tools with which to dig, and besides, burying the dead men would have taken too much time.

                Salva tried not to look as he walked past the bodies, but his eyes were drawn in their direction. He knew what would happen. Vultures would find the bodies and strip them of their rotting flesh until only the bones remained. He felt sick at the thought of those men—first dying in such a horrible way, and then having even their corpses ravaged.

                If he were older and stronger, would he have given water to those men? Or would he, like most of the group, have kept his water for himself?

                It was the group’s third day in the desert. By sunset, they would be out of the desert, and after that, it would not be far to the Itang refugee camp in Ethiopia.

 

Background: In this scene, Salva is alone.

 

                I am alone now.

                I am all that is left of my family.

                His father, who had sent Salva to school…brought him treats, like mangoes…trusted him to take care of the herd…. His mother, always ready with food and milk and a soft hand to stroke Salva’s head. His brothers and sisters, whom he had laughed with and played with and looked after…. He would never see them again.

                How can I go on without them?

                But how can I not go on? They would want me to survive…to grow up and make something of my life…to honor their memories.

INFERENCING IN ADS

What is the ad advertising?

 

POETRY OUT LOUD PROJECT

POETRY OUT LOUD: Feb 13th

Poetry Out Loud is a National Recitation Competition for Students; however, it will also be a requirement for this 9-weeks in 6th grade English. This is a 100 point grade and poems should be memorized and recited on Feb 13th. Start MEMORIZING and working on PRESENTATION skills!

Students will be assessed using the following Rubric:

1= very weak 6=Outstanding
Each category (with the exception of the last) is worth 6 points.

Physical Presence (1-6)
Voice and Articulation (1-6)
Appropriateness of Dramatization (1-6)
Level of Difficulty (1-6)
Evidence of Understanding (1-6)
Overall Performance (2-12)

Total Number of Points Earned:_____________


Students may recite any poem of their choice with the exception of song lyrics. The poem must be at least seven lines in length.

Go to http://poetryoutloud.org/poems-and-performance/video-recitation-series for more information and examples of excellent poetry presentation skills.


For the printable contest evaluation sheet: click the following:  http://drgilchristsclassblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/poetry-out-loud-evaluation-sheet.html

Look for Poems at www.poetryfoundation.org