Books with Constitutional Issues

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Call Number                 Author              Title

 

 

J Fic                             Blos                 A Gathering of Days

 

J Fic                             Clements          Frindle

When he decides to turn his fifth grade teacher’s love of the dictionary around on her, clever Nick Allen invents a new word and begins a chain of events that quickly moves beyond his control.

 

J Fic                             Spinelli             Maniac Magee

Gr 6-10 – A mythical story about racism. It should not be read as reality. Legend springs up about Jeffrey “Maniac” Magee, a white boy who runs faster and hits balls farther than anyone, who lives on his own with amazing grace, and is innocent as to racial affairs. After running away from a loveless home, he encounters several families, in and around Two Mills, a town sharply divided into the black East End and the white West End. Black, feisty Amanda Beale and her family lovingly open their home to Maniac, and tough, smart-talking “Mars Bar” Thompson and other characters are all, to varying degrees, full of prejudices and unaware of their own racism. Racial epithets are sprinkled throughout the book; Mars Bar calls Maniac “fishbelly,” and blacks are described by a white character as being “today’s Indians.” In the final, disjointed section of the book Maniac confronts the hatred that perpetuates ignorance by bringing Mars Bar to meet the Pickwells—“the best the West End had to offer.” In the feel-good ending, Mars and Maniac resolve their differences; Maniac gets a home and there is hope for at least improved racial relations. Unreal? Yes. It’s a cop-out for Spinelli to have framed this story as a legend – it frees him from having to make it real, or even possible. Nevertheless, the book will stimulate thinking about racism, and it might help educate those readers who, like so many students, have no first-hand knowledge of people of other races. Pathos and compassion inform a short, relatively easy to read story with broad appeal, which suggests that to solve problems of racism, people must first know each other as individuals. – Joel Shoemaker, Tilford Middle School, Vinton IA

 

J 301.452                     Lester               To Be a Slave

A compilation, selected from various sources and arranged chronologically, of the reminiscences of slaves and ex-slaves about their experiences from the leaving of Africa through the Civil War and into the early twentieth century.

 

YA Fic                         Avi                   Nothing but the Truth

Deals with first amendment rights (freedom of speech); a good read. Students, teachers, parents, and the national media become involved when ninth-grader Philip Malloy is suspended from school for singing “The Star Spangled Banner.”  Oklahoma Young Sequoyah Award (a student’s choice award), Horn Book Award Honor Book, ABC Choices.

YA Fic                         Cooney            Burning Up

 

YA Fic                         Danzinger         The Cat Ate My Gymsuit

A middle school teacher gets suspended for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Other issues are the way she dresses and her non-traditional methods of teaching.

 

YA Fic                         Draper             Forged by Fire

 

YA Fic                         Hentoff             The Day They Came to Arrest the Book

Who would have believed that The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn could cause the worst crisis in the history of George Mason High School? Certainly not Barney Roth, editor of the school paper. But when a small but vocal group of students and parents decide that the book is racist, sexist, and immoral – and should be removed from reading lists and the school library – Barney takes matters into his own hands. When the Huck Finn issue comes up for a hearing, Barney decides to print his story about previous censorship efforts at school. He’s sure that investigative reporting and publicity can help the cause. But is he too late to turn the tide of censhoship?

 

YA Fic                         Lee                  To Kill a Mockingbird

 

YA Fic                         Peck                The Last Safe Place on Earth

 

YA Fic                         Rylant               I Had Seen Castles

 

 

A Fic                            Atwood            The Handmaids Tale

 

A 342.73                     Hentoff             Living the Bill of Rights: How to be an Authentic

                                                                 American

 

 

Books by Jean Fritz

 

Patrick McKissack has written a lot of biographies of famous African Americans in history. Many of these deal with discussions of constitutional issues.

 

A Service of the City of Midland

 

ConstitutionalIssues

 

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