Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York, 1880-1924

Hopkinson, Deborah. Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York, 1880-1924. Orchard, 2003. 144pp. Lexile 990.

When 16-year-old Marcus Ravage left Romania in 1900 to move alone to the U.S., he couldn’t understand his mother’s despair at his departure.  Later he did understand, as he never saw her again.  Ravage is one of five young people who add a personal voice to this excellent, very readable account of life in Manhattan’s tenements in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Instead of a chronological structure, the chapters look at different aspects of immigrant life, with an emphasis on young people.  It starts with their journeys here and what the newcomers, mostly Jews and Italians, thought of their new homes and overcrowded living quarters.  It goes on to look at work, life in the busy streets, learning English, and education, with effective quotes from the five teenagers, all of whom wrote about their experiences.  Short sections near the end tell about their later lives.  Sepia-tinted period photographs, many by Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis, enrich the text.  Back matter includes a time line, bibliography, notes, and index. 

Reading Std #4: Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including technical, connotative, and figurative meanings; analyze role of specific word choices.  In chapters on work, housing, and education, Hopkinson discusses efforts to improve tenements, reform child labor, and require education.  In doing so she uses terms important to government and trying to change government.  Have students find and analyze terms such as “regulations,” “codes,” “implementation,” and “enforcement.” Have them also consider language about trying to change conditions such as “boycott,” “strike,” “rent strike,” and “work stoppage.” 

Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justice

Hoose, Phillip M. Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justice. Melanie Kroupa Books, 2009. 144pp. Lexile 1000.

This is a great addition to the increasing number of books about teens who made a difference in our history.  Hoose spent years trying to get an interview with Claudette Colvin, who as a fifteen-year-old was arrested for, and convicted of, not giving up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery in 1955.  Colvin was also one of the plaintiffs when civil rights leaders sued in federal court to end segregation on the buses.  Yet before the publication of Hoose’s book, Colvin was minimized in historical texts, sometimes mentioned as an unwed mother (she became pregnant after her conviction when she was isolated and scared).  When Colvin finally agreed to meet, Hoose interviewed her fourteen times.  Her words shine through in the text, providing an extraordinary character study of a brave teen set in the context of the civil rights movement.  Winner of the National Book Award as well as a Newbery Honor and Sibert Honor Award book.  Black-and-white photographs, sidebars, extensive bibliography/webliography, endnotes, and index.

Writing Std #3: Write narratives to develop real experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences.  This book is an excellent model for research and writing.  It would be particularly helpful for students conducting oral interviews.  Hoose addresses the process of getting and conducting his interviews in his Author’s Note and the Notes section.  He also does an exemplary job of weaving the quotes into the text.

Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler's Shadow

Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler's Shadow. Scholastic, 2005. 176pp.  Lexile 1050.

This Sibert Honor Book by one of the best nonfiction writers for young people looks at Nazi Germany through the lens of the Hitler Youth movement, which by 1934 included almost half of Germans ages ten to eighteen. It was later mandated that every healthy adolescent and teen, excluding Jews, become a member, a total of about eight million youth.  As this disturbing, informative book reveals, Hitler used the movement to train loyal citizens and future soldiers. Schools eventually focused on the movement’s goals, with five hours of the school day devoted to physical training; parents who objected risked imprisonment. Bartoletti introduces specific boys and girls from the time, using quotes and photographs to convey their personalities. While most of the young people in this multifaceted book were enthusiastic Hilter Youth, others described in one chapter resisted through illegal publications and other dangerous tactics.  Another chapter looks at teenage boys, some very young, who fought as soldiers near the end of the war.  As she explains in her excellent author’s note, Bartoletti interviewed survivors and did researched using newspapers, magazines, letters, journals, and oral histories.  Back matter includes an appendix on what happened to some of the teens, a chronology, end notes, a bibliography, and an index.  Of the many black-and-white photographs, those of resisters who died and young soldiers are especially moving.

Reading Std #3: Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.  Have students analyze how Bartoletti features certain young people such as Sophie Scholl, Henry Metelmann, Alfons Heck and Helmuth Hubener throughout the text to give different viewpoints and stories.

Fiction tie-in: Bartoletti wrote a fine novel, The Boy Who Dared,  based on Helmuth Hübener, a teenager in Nazi Germany who started an underground newsletter to combat Nazi propaganda but was caught and executed.