Marlene H. Kennedy
Picture books and other historical novels or short stories should be made available to students wishing to expand their knowledge of the Great Depression and
World War II. These books include:
Number the Stars
;
The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank, The Definitive Edition
;
The Devil’s Arithmetic
;
Star of Fear, Star of Hope
;
The Island on Bird Street
;
Hide and Seek
; and
The Upstairs Room
(10).
As companions to the Holocaust and to the Amber Billows story about Pearl Harbor, students can obtain a further glimpse of life as Japanese-American citizens during the internment by reading
Journey to Topaz
,
Journey Home
, and
Under the Blood Red Sun
(11). Students may also read
Lily’s Crossing
and
Once Upon America, Pearl Harbor is Burning! A Story of World War II
.
Non-fiction picture books about World War II, which could be made available to the classroom, include
Our Finest Hour, Voices of the World War II Generation
, and
Pearl Harbor, 50th Anniversary Special Edition
.
Great Depression themes which can be found in children's literature include:
The Bamboo Flute
;
Grandpa Jake and the Grand Christmas
;
Sounder
;
Circle of Fire
, (12); and
Uncle Jed’s Barbershop
. Another historical novel is
Red-Dirt Jessie
.
Picture books made available to students telling stories of the 1930s include:
Duke Ellington
;
The Gardener
;
In Coal Country
;
Lou Gehrig The Luckiest Man
;
Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride
; and
The Piano Man
. Picture books featuring the 1940s and America's struggles during World War II include:
Just Like New
;
The Bat Boy and His Violin
;
A Penny for a Hundred
; and
Dirt on Their Skirts
.
Final Summary
Students who complete this unit successfully will have internalized the factual and fictional information presented through the books so well that their culminating projects of the three-page journal entries will virtually come alive to the reader. In addition, the novels will have made a deep impression on the children, enabling them to compare what they saw in their mind's eye through the written word with what they saw in the two films,
Pearl Harbor
and
It’s a Wonderful Life
. There are opportunities within the unit to tap children's multiple intelligences, including reading, writing, listening, and speaking, among others. Children will use their hands, minds, and eyes, and a variety of artistic media to create works of art, ranging from literature circle illustrations, to covers for the three-page journal entries, to collages of scenes from the Great Depression and World War II. Those who are drawn to drama will delight in making scripts to produce and then perform radio shows, much like those described in the novels.
A response to literature component of the unit, which focuses on literature circles, enables students to work together cooperatively to achieve state and local curriculum goals and objectives focused on the attainment of higher-order thinking skills. In the process in writing component of the unit, students write independently and peer edit the work to successfully grasp the finer skills needed to produce real-world publishable text. Students particularly enjoy the aspects of being able to work together to attain knowledge, to trust one another, and to depend upon each other to achieve common goals of success.
