The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton

Wooldridge, Connie Nordhielm. The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton. 2010. 184pp. Lexile 1030.

This elegant biography of author Edith Wharton contends that through her writing she “bravely escaped” her background of wealth, social prestige, and restrictions on females.  Wharton was born into the Jones family that’s the basis of the phrase, “Keeping up with the Joneses.”  Her early life, detailed here, moved among upper class Manhattan, the summer “cottages” of Newport, and years in Europe, some of which provided the settings for her novels.  Despite her mother’s fear that her daughter was too intellectual and strong-willed to get a good husband, Wharton persisted in reading and writing, at first secretly and then publishing her work.  Numerous quotations plus black-and-white photographs convey Wharton’s personality and milieu.  In addition to notes and bibliography, the back matter includes lists of Wharton's works and their film and television adaptations.

Reading Std #1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and implicitly, citing specific textual evidence to support conclusions drawn from it.  Have students locate facts, details, quotations, and incidents in Wharton’s life that supports the central idea conveyed by the book’s title.  They should find explicit as well as implicit evidence.

King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography

Crutcher, Chris. King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography. 2003. 272pp. Lexile 1180.

Like many of his powerful, popular novels, Chris Crutcher’s autobiography is funny and poignant.  He writes in a conversational tone about growing up in a small town in Idaho.   Despite the town’s macho atmosphere, he failed to toughen up or get good at sports.  Without bitterness, Crutcher reveals some of his family’s problems including his mother’s drinking and his father’s demanding nature.  The anecdotes and themes show the roots of some of his novels.  For example, he struggled with a bad temper, a trait that recurs in his fictional protagonists.  Near the end, Crutcher talks about his work as a therapist with abused kids and describes how he became a writer.  He also addresses why he uses expletives in his novels as part of his goal of showing life as he knows it, not an idealized version.  This is a pleasure to read, especially for Crutcher fans.

Reading Std #8: Delineate and evaluate argument and specific claims in a text, assessing reasoning and evidence.  Crutcher’s books are often challenged in schools and sometimes removed from the curriculum or library shelves because of their use of expletives.  Have students consider Crutcher’s argument for including strong language and the broader question of removing books.  A debate format would work well for this topic.

Fiction tie-in:  While any of his novels would pair well with this autobiography, The Sledding Hill especially lends itself to the discussion of banned books.  Crutcher appears in the novel as the author of a book that some want removed from the school library.  The Sledding Hill also ties in to the autobiography's chapter, ""Dead Boy Sledding; or, Why Things Happen," about a friend of Crutcher's who died during his childhood. 

Bad Boy: A Memoir

 Myers, Walter Dean. Bad Boy: A Memoir. 2001. 224 pp. Lexile 970.

Walter Dean Myers is one of the most important, honored, and widely read writers for teens.  Any unit on biography, autobiography or memoir, or units on Myers’ novels would benefit from this inspiring story of his childhood and teen years until he joined the army at age seventeen.  He grew up with adoptive parents in 1940s Harlem, where he had real problems in school.  Constantly teased for a speech defect, he took to fighting, which made the problems worse, but he still gained admission to Stuyvesant, the prestigious Manhattan public high school.  His growing love of books and then of writing redeemed his life but also divided him from his friends and family.  Especially touching is his account of learning to read from his mother’s True Romance novels.  The memoir looks at how how racism affected his life and his view of his future, and concludes with how he made his way back to writing after his military service.  Absorbing and inspiring.

Fiction Tie-in:  Walter Dean Myers won the first Printz Award for literary excellence in young adult literature for his novel, Monster.  In common with his own memoir, Monster is about a teenage boy who gets in trouble and who expresses himself in writing.  As the protagonist, Steve, deals with being in prison and on trial as an accused accomplice to murder, he writes a screenplay of the trial.  The ambiguity, moral issues, and unusual combination of formats make this popular for teaching as well as independent reading.

Rachel Carson: A Twentieth-Century Life

Levine, Ellen. Rachel Carson: A Twentieth-Century Life. 2007. Lexile 1060.

Rachel Carson's ground-breaking book, Silent Spring, was published 50 years ago, in September, 1962.  It had been serialized a few months earlier in The New Yorker and soon became a best-seller.  This biography, an entry in the "Twentieth-Century Life" series, skillfully blends Carson's personal and professional lives, building to Silent Spring and its impact.  Themes about the value of nature and the importance of persistence infuse the book. Carson, who was born in 1907, attended a women's college in Pittsburgh where she was torn between majoring in writing or science.  She chose science but much of her career entailed writing about science at the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and through the books and articles that made her famous.  She was known for combining lyrical writing with meticulous, extensive research.  Many quotes from her voluminous correspondence and her books demonstrate why she gained such a wide audience.  In her personal life, Carson was reserved but had a wide group of close friends and a sense of adventure. Occasional black-and-white photos show her over the years.  Her story remains relevant because she sounded the alarm about pollution and other ecological problems we still face.  End notes, bibliography, websites, index.

Reading Std #2: Determine central ideas or themes and analyze their development; summarize key supporting details and ideas.  One theme to consider is how sexism affected Carson's career and other aspects of her life, which the author touches on repeatedly.   Her doctors knew Carson had breast cancer, which eventually killed her, but delayed telling her. According to the author, it was not uncommon to "protect" women from bad medical news and tell it to their husbands, but since Carson was single, no one was told.

The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West

 
Fleischman, Sid. The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West. 2008. 196pp. Lexile 1050.

Fleischman is best known for his entertaining historical fiction such as Newbery award winner, The Whipping Boy.  In later years, Fleischman applied his high energy style to biographies of his heroes.  His love of language is as evident in this biography as in his fiction, resembling Mark Twain's style.  Even the title of this biography is catchy; it comes from posters for speaking engagements that read, "The trouble to begin at 8 o'clock." The account emphasizes adventures in Twain's life that informed his writing, from his childhood in Missouri to his stint as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi.  It moves to the West with Twain's attempts as a prospector and his work as a journalist.  Well-chosen, often humorous, quotes and colorful anecdotes make for lively reading.  The biography has open design and lots of attractive graphics including cartoons, photographs, posters, and illustrations from Twain's books.  The famous story, "The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County," is reprinted in the back where there's also a timeline, source notes, bibliography, 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. Have students look carefully at Fleischman's colorful word choice.  For example, in mentioning Twain's the date of death, Fleischman describes it as "the day the celebrated author snubbed out his cigar and moved in with the immortals."  If you are studying Twain, have students make comparisons between his use of language and Fleischman's.