• The link to Mr. Fraher’s Virtual Classroom set up is here.
• The link to Mr. Pendola’s Virtual Classroom set up is here. 

Each student got one of the three lists and a randomly selected pile of colored slips of paper. The object is to get your groceries for the week, with the starred item being crucial to your specific family. The corresponding article delves into the different rationed items.

At the end we debriefed (crucial for learning) and I pointed out each year how there was someone willing to lie and steal just for little scraps of paper, without anyone’s life on the line.

Make do – Wear it out – Do without, my friends!

“The Home Front: 1941-1945″ by Hazel Shelton Abernethy

Rationing Requirements

Your family needs stamps to purchase all of these items for this week. One point for each item acquired. A bonus point if you can purchase the starred item.

Food = 1 pink
* Gasoline = 3 purple
Metal/Electronics = 3 yellow
Hygiene products = 2 green
Sugar = 1 blue

__________________________________________________________________

Rationing Requirements

Your family needs stamps to purchase all of these items for this week. One point for each item acquired. A bonus point if you can purchase the starred item.

Food = 1 pink
Gasoline = 3 purple
* Metal/Electronics = 3 yellow
Hygiene products = 2 green
Sugar = 1 blue

__________________________________________________________________

Rationing Requirements

Your family needs stamps to purchase all of these items for this week. One point for each item acquired. A bonus point if you can purchase the starred item.

Food = 1 pink
Gasoline = 3 purple
Metal/Electronics = 3 yellow
Hygiene products = 2 green
* Sugar = 1 blue

1. Soldier X by Don Wulffson
2. The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
3. Boy at War by Harry Mazer
4. Revolution is not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine – Actually takes place during China’s Cultural Revolution in the 70s, but the secret police, mob rule, and underground resistance are very similar to Nazi rule.
5. Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tsuchiya
6. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
7. Maus by Art Spiegelman
8. War, Women, and the News by Catherine Gourley
9. Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins by Walter Dean Myers
10. Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

Now imagine him putting his face on giant posters everywhere you walk.

Now imagine people being pulled from their daily jobs and schoolwork to instead recite the teachings of George W. He then institutes a youth program that rewards kids for selling out their teachers, friends, and family that don’t quite agree with how life is going (or the spies just don’t like the people).

Thankfully we have a president and not Chairman Mao:

The Revolutionary

1. Revolution is Not a Dinner Party is a stellar debut by this author. Ying Chang Compestine has written cookbooks (and is the spokesperson for Nestle Maggi) and a couple of children’s books, but this is her debut in a novel. She writes most of this novel from her own childhood in China, which is scary once you’ve read the book.
2. This novel fits perfectly in any Anne Frank/WWII unit of study, even though the Cultural Revolution in China happened after World War II. You still have youth squads (the Red Guard and the Young Pioneers) busting up people who stand in their way and disagree with the dictator.
3. Students will relate to her mother-daughter struggle as well as her love for her dad, but the thing that kept me reading was the suspense of who was going to get dragged off next or if the main character’s family would be overheard by their next door neighbor, Comrade Li. Her dad is an awesome character who, when demoted from surgeon to janitor, still operates on his enemy’s (Comrade Li) friends after hours because he is so skilled. What’s really cool is that her dad did that in real life, too.

The Distant

1. She sets up the peaceful life before the giant upheaval for the first 20 pages. If a student were to pick this up on their own, they might not get what life is like because it is not the US. Once the Comrade moves in, though, stuff starts heating up and I finished the book in one and a half days of not-putting-it-down.

This is a very valuable book that may get overlooked because of its cover and, frankly, some prejudices that we still have about China. I am booktalking this on Monday and hopefully it stirs up some circulations because the book, society challenging and historical as it is, is worth the effort.