Background Information
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Virginia Hamilton was born into a big family on a small farm near Yellow Springs, Ohio in the 1940's. She had two older brothers and two older sisters and a variety of relatives who lived in the surrounding area. Her father worked both as a farmer and a dining hall service manager at nearby Antioch College, the school she attended on a full scholarship for three years before transferring to Ohio State University. She also attended the New School for Social Research in New York where she continued to study writing.
She claims that she always knew she was going to be a writer. Her parents were both storytellers and came from a line of storytellers themselves. From them, she learned a sense of her history and culture, something she attempts to pass on in her works. The fact that her grandfather, Levi Perry, had escaped slavery in Virginia (the source of Virginia's name) by crossing the Ohio River into the area where Virginia lived as a child, added to the tales her parents told her and ultimately is reflected in The House of Dies Drear.
Appropriate Texts and Related Activities
Hamilton's first book, Zeely, was published in 1967. I have used this book with fifth graders and will try it with third. The narrator's often antagonistic relationship with her younger brother should be easy for them to understand. Zeely, the object of our narrator's attention, will be used to motivate discussion and research into the history of African kings and queens.
I will use the retold folktales from The People Could Fly both for pure enjoyment and to emphasize the existence and importance of the family in oral tradition. Some will be read independently and some I will read to the class. Appropriate discussion will be involved with each. Discussion questions might include: "Is there a moral in the story?" "What is it?" "Do any of the animal characters represent humans?" "Do you know people who are like the characters?" "Why do you think Virginia Hamilton bothered to collect and write these tales?"
I will then assign students the task of asking parents and relatives, the older the better, to tell them stories, fictitious or based upon fact. They will either tape-record these stories or write enough so that they can retell them to the class. If a story can be remembered without writing or recording, they will truly be carrying on the oral tradition. Eventually, all stories will be in written form and will become part of a class book of retold tales. As part of my involvement in a school "team", these stories will be read to other participating classrooms.
Relationships, negative and positive, will be explored in Cousins and Second Cousins. When the main character, Cammy Coleman, has mixed feelings about her cousins, the class will be engaged in a discussion on whether people always like their relatives. The books also focuses on other family members, an ailing grandmother and a variety of relatives at a family reunion. Making a list of whom to invite to a family reunion will include a discussion about whether it is acceptable to ask non-family members to attend. Questions might include: "What activities would you plan for the reunion?" "What could be done to help people remember the reunion and each other?" The issue of older, sometimes ailing, relatives will also be discussed when we read The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis. (See "Other Selections.")
Plain City, a book in which a young girl, Buhlaire Sims, searches for her missing father, whom she finds among the homeless living under a bridge, will be used to address the issue of absent fathers. This book will be used toward the end of the year, since it is geared toward young teenagers. Despite its older target, it contains a number of relevant issues which are beginning to become meaningful to slightly younger children.
The book Drylongso, and the title character, get their name from an African word meaning "drought." In this story, we encounter a family: father, mother (Mamalou), and young daughter, Lindy. They are trying to survive on their farm during the 1975 drought. Drylongso is blown into their lives in the midst of a dust storm. Using a dowser to find water, a pocket full of seeds, and some farming advice learned from his father, he works with them to restore their land. There are issues of environment, family unity, and survival to be discussed. Some children will research drought in the United States and the related methods of farming which help and hinder soil conservation: overuse of the land, crop rotation, plants which help prevent erosion, irrigation, and appropriate water control and use.