Tangerine
By: Edward Bloor
Detailed description of book:
The Fisher’s
move from Houston, Texas to Lake Windsor Downs in rural Tangerine,
Florida. Erik, who is our main character Paul’s older brother, looks forward to
a football scholarship at the University of his choice. Paul, the
younger of the two, is visually impaired and considered blind. However, he
plays soccer. His family credits his visual injury to an incident from when he
was little where he continued to stare at a solar eclipse despite his
parents' warnings not to. Paul has no recollection of this. One day at Erik’s football
practice, Mike Costello, who has become a family friend is killed by lightning;
whereupon Erik and his friend Arthur Bauer tell jokes after hearing the news,
even though Mike was one of their teammates. On his first day of school, Paul
meets Coach Walski, the coach of the soccer team, and tries out for the team,
but is later told that his visual impairment prevents his eligibility, and
blames this on his mother who filled out an IEP during the first week of school,
alerting the school of Paul’s handicap.
While Paul
is at school, a field of portable classrooms collapses into a sinkhole.
The emergency relocation plan gives the students the choice to stay at Lake
Windsor, their present school, with a different schedule and more crowded
classes, or to transfer to Tangerine Middle School, on the other, poorer side
of the county; and Paul chooses Tangerine Middle, in hopes to play soccer again.
Paul then persuades Joey Costello, Mike’s younger brother, to join the school.
After a quarrel with Paul, Joey returns to Lake Windsor. Throughout the story,
houses in Paul's neighborhood are fumigated for termites many of the houses are
robbed by Erik and his friend Arthur. A man named Luis is introduced as the
older brother of Theresa and Tino, who Paul plays soccer with. Luis works at
his parents' citrus farm and is developing a new kind of tangerine called
the Golden Dawn. While at Paul's house for a school project, Tino makes a
comment about how Erik fell down while attempting to a kick an extra point
during an earlier football game; and Erik beats Tino up. Luis goes to Erik's
football practice to confront him with this; but Erik distracts him while
signaling his friend Arthur to strike Luis from behind using a club, which is
referred to as a "Blackjack" for the rest of the story. This is
witnessed by Paul, and Luis is found dead six days later from an aneurysm.
Arthur had hit Luis hard enough to cause the aneurysm to weaken, and eventually
burst 6 days later.
Eventually Paul finds out that his brother
Erik is the cause of his blindness. Paul confronts his parents about their
concealment of the event. His mother cries and they admit to lying about the
eclipse, stating that they were only trying to ensure that Paul never hated
Erik for spraying spray paint in his eyes. Later, Paul's mother discovers a gym
bag in the Fishers' garage full of items that had gone missing from the tented
houses in the neighborhood, and holds a meeting to reveal that Erik and Arthur
are the cause of the missing items. As they leave, they find the police, led to
the house by Joey, waiting outside to arrest Erik and Arthur for the murder of
Luis. Paul agrees to give the police a full statement, finally feeling good
about himself for standing up to his brother.
Rationale for choosing this book:
This book
is something that I am currently reading with 7th grade students at
Oakesdale MS/HS. Until my mentor teacher handed me a copy to read, I had never
heard of this book before, but when talking about it at work with a bunch of my
coworkers, I found out that many of them had read this book back when they were
in school and it was one of their favorite books still to this day. I decided
to do my book talk on this book for a few reasons. The first reason is that the
main character is of the middle school age, so my students who are reading it
are able to relate to him. Also, the main character has a physical handicap,
which isn’t something that you find in a lot of books that are read in schools,
so this is a way to reach out to students who can relate to having a physical handicap
as well as to educate those who do not have a handicap on the topic. Next,
there are many catastrophic turn of events in the novel, which helps to hold
the attention of middle school age students throughout the whole novel.
Who is it appropriate for?
This book is
appropriate for middle school age students. I am coordinating the unit with my
mentor teacher, and so we are teaching it to the 6th and 7th
graders at the same time, each teaching a section of it. The vocabulary is
appropriate for middle school age students. The story is written in diary
format and so it is a fairly quick read even though it is about 300 pages long.
There are multiple themes and ideas that can be found in the novel and interpreted
on multiple levels so no matter the ability level of the students, the same
lesson plans can be tailored to fit the needs and abilities of all your
students.
Some teaching ideas:
1)
Character development worksheet. I created a chart that was handed
out on the first day we began reading the novel that had a list of all the
characters that were of some importance in the novel. The students were
instructed to use this worksheet throughout the course of the book to track the
development of the character. They were told they could record things such as physical
descriptions, connections to other characters, and details from the story when
important things happen to those characters. This isn’t so much a homework task,
but something that I give the students to use as a resource and a reference as
they read the story and complete other assignments.
2)
Point of view articles. After we read the section of the
novel about the sinkhole, I decided to put together a point of view writing
task for the students to complete. We started by getting into groups and
brainstorming sensory words that they could use to enhance their writing. Then
they were tasked with writing a news article in 3rd person POV
reporting on what happened in the novel when the sinkhole occurred, using as
many sensory words as they could. The second day, they were tasked with writing
a 1st person journal article recalling what happened to our main
character Paul that day using sensory words to describe how he was feeling and
giving us his account of what happened.
3)
Identity Collage. When we got to the halfway point
in the book, we began to see that a few of our characters were starting to
develop. It was then that I decided to put together a lesson on identity.
Identity is an important topic to cover in middle school because so many
students are struggling with their own identity and place in the world, so it
helps to give them something they can relate to in their life. For this lesson,
following an introductory whole group discussion, they will be placed into
groups of 2 or 3 and complete a worksheet that discusses identity in the novel
of a chosen character of their choice, and gives them an opportunity to work on
finding textual evidence to support their claims. After this, they will begin
working individually on a magazine collage that will show the identity of their
chosen character, as well as comparing the identity of themselves. They will be
required to write up a rationale for all 4 squares including their textual
evidence.
4)
Persuasive Letter. The main character in the story
has a physical handicap of being legally blind, however, he can see well enough
to be a goalie on the soccer team. When the coach at his first middle school
says he cannot play on his team because he is a liability to the insurance, he
is devastated. We have not made it to this point, but when we do, I plan to
create a lesson asking students to write a persuasive letter to the coach
explaining with multiple details why Paul should be allowed to play on the
soccer team.
Obstacles for the text:
1)
On
page 12, there is a phrase that says “a pissed-off zombie”. This isn’t the
worst language that could potentially be in the book, however it does have the
potential to be an issue if the students are not mature enough to handle it or
if parents get upset about their kid reading a book with a bad word in it. We avoided
this conflict by taking a sharpie to the book before we handed them out to the
kids and blacked out the word and replaced it with a more user-friendly word in
pen.
2)
This
book deals with death of a brother of one of the characters, as well as a few family
conflicts. Odds are it will not be a problem, but some of the topics could be a
trigger for students who have dealt with similar issues so it is something to
be aware of.
Prediction for responses:
1)
Of
administrators and parents…We have a strong rationale for why we are teaching
this book and what standards we are addressing. We took care of the one problem
(pissed-off zombie) and so I think that administrators and parents will be in
full support of this novel being used as a teaching tool in middle school ELA classrooms.
2)
Of
students…The kids are loving it. Many of our activities are hands on and they
get to do a wide range of activities with the novel. Plus the novel has all
kinds of insane scenes in the plot, so they are always entertained!
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