Historical Fiction Book Review, IF I EVER GET OUT OF HERE Written By: Gansworth, Eric.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Gansworth, Eric. 2013. IF I EVER GET OUT OF HERE. New York. Scholastic, Inc. ISBN 978-0-545-41730-3.  

PLOT SUMMARY 

Lewis, a 7th grade Tuscarora boy who excels in school has a chance to graduate and become more than what is expected of him considering the stereotypes of reservation kids. He was used to being invisible and made attempts to look less like his Indian heritage by cutting his long braid or making nicknames to make friends but ends in failed attempts. When George Haddonfield, an air force base kid arrives at his school, they become friends sharing interests in music and eventually confide in one another with deeper topics such as girls. A bully becomes Lewis’ and George’s problem and is overlooked when Lewis speaks out but taken seriously when Geroge’s father gets involved. Their friendship is a special one as Mr. Haddonfield takes interest in supporting their love for music and helping him as he is closer to knowing all the odds against reservation kids run up against. When the inevitable day of George’s relocation comes, the boys who come from different worlds find consolation in the memories they created and shared with one another.   

CRITICAL ANALYSIS 

Lewis tells his story through first person narrative and describes his life as a reservation kid as one of a poor family, abandoned by their father, and faces racial prejudices common of the 1970’s. Although embarrassed by his looks, which he tries to change, he happily attends Indian ceremonies, markets and fire ball games which he introduced to George and his father. Although the boys are friends, Lewis manages to come up with excuses to avoid letting his best friend see the conditions of his old and worn-down house. He limits his interactions where transportation on his behalf must be provided, and he relies on his uncle Albert to be there for him when his mom, who worked a lot, couldn’t be.  

The story takes place between school and their homes. We see contrasting lifestyles from the reservation to the Air Force Base where George’s German mother keeps their home tidy whereas Lewis’ home is patched up, no running water and deteriorating conditions. When the winter storm hits, George and Mr. Haddonfield look to Lewis’ family’s generosity in seeking shelter. We see their friendship grow as George becomes aware of their lifestyle and his dad reveals the truth to his life living on a reservation camp in Minnesota, but as a child of educators which he was not allowed to attend reservation schools and lives separately but within the reservation. George himself did not know this and brought about many secret revelations. Through their love for music, the boys shared a true friendship that opened their eyes to two different worlds.  

REVIEWS /EXCERPT(S) 

American Indian Youth Literature Honor, 2014 

Booklist starred, 09/01/13 

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, 09/01/13 

Horn Book Magazine, 04/01/14

Kirkus Reviews, 06/15/13 

School Library Journal, 09/01/13 

Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA), 10/01/13 

Booklist Starred (September 1, 2013 (Vol. 110, No. 1): “And although Gansworth manages the weighty themes of racism and poverty with nuance and finesse, at its heart, this is a rare and freehearted portrait of true friendship.” 

Horn Book Magazine (March/April 2015): “Gansworth turns on a “reservation accent” when voicing Lewis’s uncle Albert, and he offers variations in tone for other characteristics, including a slight German accent for George’s mother.” 

Kirkus Reviews (June 15, 2013): “Gansworth’s debut for young people is a worthy exploration of identity and friendship between middle school boys who line in different worlds.” 

CONNECTIONS 

This story of true friendship resonates with young middle school audiences. The dialogue makes for an easy read and the happy ending is a heartwarming one. 

Lewis’s willingness to go to great lengths to cover up his life in poverty shows and his lack of success in dealing with bullying are real and do affect kids' self-esteem, but the friendship and kindness of George and his father show how true friendship can help get you difficult times.  

American Indian Month is in November, and it is a great time to showcase this book alongside other Native American authors.  

Nielsen, Jennifer A. ICEBERG. ISBN 978-1-33879-502-8 

Bradley, Kimberly Brubaker. THE NIGHT WAR. ISBN 978-0-7352-2856-6 

Gratz, Alan. REFUGEE. ISBN 978-0-545-88083-1  

Historical Fiction Book Review- THE REVOLUTION OF EVELYN SERRANO written by Manzano, Sonia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Manzano, Sonia. 2012. THE REVOLUTION OF EVELYN SERRANO. New York. Scholastic Press. ISBN 978-0-545-32505-9. 

PLOT SUMMARY 

The 14-year-old girl who decided to be called Evelyn instead of her full Puerto Rican name, lives in Spanish Harlem with her conservative parents who own a bodega. She chooses not to work in the family business; instead, takes a job at the Five and Dime. Her grandmother, who she’s never met, visits and decides to stay a while. During this time, protests in Spanish Harlem begin with the Young Lords trying to help the community with daycare and food programs, her grandmother who is an activist becomes involved and Evelyn follows in her footsteps. Her parents are not pleased with her involvement, but eventually find a way to support her. The protests become dangerous and violent, making Evelyn’s choices of breaking out of her culture more complicated. This political revolution opens her eyes to her own internal struggle and helps ger get back to her Hispanic roots at the same time standing up for Puerto Rican injustices alongside her family.  

 

CRITICAL ANALYSIS 

Evelyn, the teen protagonist, is a very relatable character with the young adult audience. Her tense relationship with her mother and stepfather is a common theme with young adults. She is exposed to activism by her grandmother, which complicates this relationship even more. The Latino culture is evident throughout as the description of their foods, home decor, Spanish words and customs are representative of Puerto Rican customs. The Young Lords, a political activist group, is described as natural and wild and causes Evelyn to appreciate her natural hair, which she once didn’t. She began wearing jeans, which was the attire for the young activists and didn’t sit well with her stepfather. El barrio is represented as a working-class area with immigrants selling cultural foods such as piraguas (frozen ices) and bacalaitos fritos (fried codfish). The smell, as Evelyn described it, was of lack of garbage pickup upkeep.  

The young lords brought attention to El Barrio by sweeping up the sidewalks and eventually gathering it in the middle of the roads and lighting it on fire which was their first significant event and sets the tone for their fight for rights of the community. The young lords come to an agreement after multiple encounters of refusal but come to a violent end as Evelyn witnesses and experiences the violence of the fight for rights with a gash to her eyebrow as she was caught in the cross hairs. Her grandmother, who chose to stay at the rally instead of accompanying Evelyn to the hospital, is a feeling all too familiar to her mother who grew up being put aside so she could live her activist lifestyle. Evelyn’s grandfather, a patrol man in Puerto Rico, followed orders to shoot nationalists who were protesting in the Ponce Massacre of 1937 the attack on the nationalists.  

The history of the Ponce Massacre is told throughout the story through recollections of her grandmother’s memories and photographs. This significant event was mentioned throughout the story as it was the reason for Evelyn’s grandmother to become involved in fighting for innocent people. The photographs in the newspaper articles of this historical event were part of her grandmother’s memories which are taken in secret as her mother wanted to protect her from the family’s history. The style of the story is an easy one to read and the conversations she has with her friends and family are interesting as their culture is present throughout. The story ends in a hopeful ending as Evelyn’s own revolution is more of a personal evolution and learns to love herself (reverting to her natural name), she learns to accept her grandmother's lifestyle, her parents stand by her decisions and are hopeful for the future of El Barrio. The author’s note explains how she found her way to advocate for social change and the creation of this fictional book. She also offers articles listed in the “for further reading” section with links available for free to read.  

 

REVIEWS /EXCERPT(S) 

Booklist starred, 10/15/12 

Horn Book Magazine, 04/01/13 

Kirkus Reviews starred, 10/01/12 

Pura Belpre Author Honor, 2013 

School Library Journal, 11/01/12 

Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA), 10/01/12 

 

Booklist starred (October 15, 2012 (Vol. 109, No. 4): “Starting with the title, this wry, moving debut novel does a great job of blending the personal and the political without denigrating either.” 

 

Horn Book Magazine starred (Spring 2013): “Based on true events, the 1969-set story develops organically through well-realized fictional characters dealing with complex family dynamics.” 

 

Kirkus Reviews starred (October 1, 2012): “The author effectively captures this shifting perception in the dialogue and Evelyn’s first-person narration.” 

 

CONNECTIONS 

This historical fiction book is an easy read and very relatable to the young adult audience as relationship strains with family and oneself are typical at this stage in a young person’s life.  

 

This book offers a great opportunity for conversation in protest movements. Offering students guidance on how to research more on the Ponce Massacre of 1937 would give students a better understanding of this significant historical event from the book.  

Displaying this book during the Hispanic Heritage Month during September and October will be a great way to showcase this Hispanic author. Making the link for her website available can also help readers get to know the author more.  https://soniamanzano.com/ 

Peck, Richard. A LONG WAY FROM CHICAGO: A NOVEL IN STORIES. ISBN 978-1-41552-637-8 

Perkins, Lynne Rae. CRISS CROSS. ISBN 978-0-329-64218-1 

Universal Design for Learning: April Cervantes

   Universal Design for Learning  

April-Renee H. Cervantes     

      Teaching can be overwhelming when trying to meet the needs of the many different learners in your classroom. Universal design for learning, an approach to provide multiple means of engagement, representation and action to help learners succeed in their tasks at hand (The UDL guidelines 2024). Learning to be flexible with the way students learn and removing any barriers to comprehension are pivotal to the UDL framework. Robinson mentioned in his article, “ UDL as a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that: Provides flexibility in the ways information is presented” and “reduces barriers in instruction, provides appropriate accommodations, supports and challenges” (Robinson, Universal design for learning and school libraries 2017). After reading more about UDL, I realized there is a lot of room for growth in the way I present information and how I can give students multiple and varied opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge. 

This year I did a very diligent job of using UDL guideline Checkpoint 1.1- “Offers ways of customizing the display information,” as I have a student who is visually impaired under SPED and so I would sit him in close proximity to the IFP and I increased the font size of his iPad because after discussion with his vision coach we determined he was struggling to accurately tap on his iPad even with glasses.  

I believe what I could add right now to better support my student would be to make a custom overlay for touch screens and keyboards as mentioned in Checkpoint 4.2 “optimize access to tools and assistive technology. I came upon a YouTube video on creating a tactile overlay for iPad and thought it was so interesting, but this is something I would need to work with the visual coach to see if it were something that would help him achieve his goals.  

Checkpoint 2.4- “Promote understanding across languages,” would be something that I would love to implement, however I believe it would be something that I need help with. Being able to embed visual, non-linguistic support for vocabulary clarification sounds very helpful for my ELL’s and although I do have vocabulary cards up on the wall, using embedded vocabulary support seems more complicated than I expect and would need either professional development support myself or I would need to research and investigate more into this.  

Reflecting on my year and learning more about UDL I believe I could have given my students more support in accommodations and support for their learning during center rotation time. I think back to this period of the day when they oversaw their own work and all I remember is the multiple questions on how to decode a word and even with that linguistic support they wouldn’t know the meaning of the word with images provided.  

Upon researching UDL articles I came across the book by Loui Lord Nelson and related very much to this part of the book for removing barriers, “When looking through the UDL lens, you see the hard copy text as a barrier. You realize that you have resources available to you, which means you can make more resources available to them, maybe you use partner readers. Maybe you find a video on YouTube that provides the background information necessary for understanding the experiment.” (Nelson, Design and deliver: Planning and teaching using Universal Design for Learning 2021). This made me realize how I can make it easier for my students to be successful on their own. I realized how my students were either getting the answer from someone else or completely misunderstanding the lesson until I gave corrective feedback. What I would like to do would be to teach students to use the text-to-speech function on their iPad and know how to navigate through a dictionary application. I found a YouTube video on how to turn on the text to speech function which was very helpful and something I’d have to do manually per iPad. After being taught how to use this function students will be able to get immediate help for any text in question when navigating their iPad.  

Teaching students the many ways a dictionary application is helpful will give them the opportunity to type in a word, hear its pronunciation and see images corresponding to the word through related article. This will set them up to become empowered learners. I looked into the Mirriam Webster for Kids webpage and thought this would be a great resource to teach and thumbnail to the iPad dock. The students can also use the text-to-speech function for the definition parts that are not audible. Nelson mentions how, “...expert learners are identified as purposeful, motivated, resourceful, knowledgeable, strategic and goal oriented”(Nelson, Design and deliver: Planning and teaching using Universal Design for Learning 2021). Giving students the opportunity to learn how to be resourceful using these resources will help them inside and outside the classroom and beyond their school years.  

 

Resources: 

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Find definitions written for kids. Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/kids 

Nelson, L. L. (2021). Design and deliver: Planning and teaching using Universal Design for Learning. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. 

Robinson, D. E. (2017). Universal design for learning and school libraries. A Logical Partnership, 46(1), 57–61. 

The UDL guidelines. UDL. (2024, May 14). https://udlguidelines.cast.org/ 

YouTube. (2014, December 10). Creating a tactile overlay for the iPad. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3OOqSAGnvs 

YouTube. (2020, May 11). Using text to speech feature on the iPad. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyIvYxhn0uc 

 

How to Search the Internet: How to prepare for a hurricane

Recently Hurricane Beryl has been affecting many people, the coastal bend of Texas is preparing for it's landfall and so my town, although in the southwest of Texas, was preparing as well. The city of Laredo was giving out bags and sands for all the community. I needed to prepare myself for other things and so once inside Home Depot they had a checklist available for all customers that contained emergency necessities. I looked through it and saw that I was definitely not prepared with essentials such as a generator. This made me think I need to start looking into purchasing more items as such. 

When I did a search on how to prepare for a hurricane a multitude of information was available, but I was selective on looking at certain sites. I hope this tutorial video will help you if you are ever in need or preparing for a hurricane. The internet is filled with a lot of information, you just have to be careful when looking at different sites in order to make sure you are looking at reliable and credible information. 

This video is also available on Screen Pal:

https://go.screenpal.com/watch/cZiiVLV85h3

-April Cervantes