Social Class Book Club

• House on Dirty-Third Street
  • Predictable
  • Unrealistic – stock ending
  • Relationship & reaction to house felt realistic
  • Giving children false hope
  • Inspiring – Good Samaritan
  • Illustrations- gradually colorized
    • Realistic people
    • Looks like sketched photo
    • Like effect of light
• Power
  • Doesn’t really examine power
  • Suspicious neighbor?
• Ending
  • Avoids a lot of stickier issues
  • Closed ending
• Happy ending of how we wish humanity was – not every book needs to have a gritty, realistic outlook
• Challenges poverty – mom is friendly, trying to make a dump her castle, living within their means, challenged stereotype of being suspicious, challenging perception of lower income  neighborhoods
  • Sunday school everyone welcomes her – is that realistic?
  • Focus is more on humanity and having faith
• Issue of owning house – is it a poverty situation? Change in socioeconomic status?
  • Challenge notion of poor people living in apartments
  • Applies to recent economic times – foreclosures, etc.
• Addresses girl’s attitude – it’s about the way she sees things
• Do kids notice the things the girl noticed?

• Happy Like Soccer
  • Deals with issues without drawing attention to it
    • Lives with aunt
    • Her aunt works
  • Shiny girls – doesn’t know their secrets
  • Feeling like the outsider: doesn’t have two super-involved parents
    • Sense of community is easier to get when you come from a nuclear family
  • Poetic, realistic writing style
• Power
  • Sierra is able to get the game moved – realistic? Coach has the power, she has the power to influence the coach
  • Aunt can’t take off work
• SES of audience would inform what they understand and assume about the story

• Tia Isa Wants a Car
  • Focus on individual allows us to empathize, but doesn’t help greater situation
  • Doesn’t talk about institutional reasons for poverty
• Does lifting up one family help, or do we need to talk about greater issues?
• In the end, they haven’t improved themselves at all – without assets, really hard to rise up
• What about all the other people who can’t get better jobs?
• View of car as investment that can help you?
• Too focused on the individual
• Harvesting Hope talks about institutional view of poverty
  • Leaves you with feeling that more work is to be done
  • Historical – more distance

• Esperanza Rising
  • Representation of immigrant/migrant worker families: seeing one large group instead of individuals with education and talents
  • Shows why so many immigrants push English onto kids – needing them to assimilate and excel in this culture
• Isolated moments of beauty
• Esperanza’s realistic terrible attitude – putting herself in role of victim (authentic)
  • Didn’t accept situation for a long time
  • Works well as a book about social class as well
• Social capital disrupts poverty – their support for each other crosses over their material wealth
• E finding out that there are all kinds of poverty – economic, social, educational
• Great introduction to topics of how migrant workers are treated
• Importance of MCL being high quality – this book is a great example
• Could tie in with unionization issues to contemporize

• Voices in the Park
  • Could read it a million times and see something different
  • Author treats readers very seriously, children are intelligent
• Kids come back to these books
• Race was not an issue because all characters are gorillas – able to address the problem on its own without race adding a layer of complication
• Great for teaching children how to write voice and perspective; one story can happen four ways
• Unexpected – keeps attention
• Perspectives are vastly different
• Complete view of characters – font, illustrations, voice
• Innocence of children – they are honest, not worried about things
• Compare to mother who wanted to be so detached
• Mother saying dirty dog was chasing her dog, but illustrations counter that – we can lie to ourselves to see a different reality
• British society – a lot is about social class. Can Americans relate?
  • Father looking at job section even though he knows there isn’t going to be anything, but he does it anyway – good representation of socioeconomic status
  • Names as markers of social class – so upper-class British
    • Kids might not get that
    • So many other layers to impact, so it’s okay they don’t pick it up
    • Adults get it
• Inter-textual references across Anthony Browne’s books – keeps kids coming back to them

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