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Resources: Books that Teach Service-Learning Values. By Wayne Bock Service-Learning Coordinator Southeast Region. ISSUE: Child Soldiers. Children Soldiers.
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Resources: Books that Teach Service-Learning Values By Wayne Bock Service-Learning Coordinator Southeast Region
Ishmael Beah has written a memoir about his years as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Orphaned by the civil war there, he was carrying an AK-47 by the age of 12. Pumped up by drugs, he was forced to kill or be killed. When he was 15, UNICEF took Beah to a rehabilitation center. He was eventually adopted by an American woman and brought to the United States, where he attended high school and graduated from Oberlin College. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Other Resources • Child Soldiers by Leora Kahn • Soldier's Heart : Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers by Gary Paulsen • Child Soldiers in Africa by Alcinda Honwana • Children at War by P. W. Singer • http://www.amnesty.org/en/children • http://www.child-soldiers.org/home
Brothers in Hope: The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan Brothers in Hope is the true story of young Garang , who was about eight years old when his Sudanese village was brutally attacked and his family torn apart. Out in the fields tending livestock when the attack occurred, he escaped the initial assault. Soon he discovered that many other boys were in the same situation. The boys banded together and began walking. Garang and about 30,000 other boys walked from Sudan to Ethiopia, then on to Kenya, a trip of almost 1,000 miles. In his own words, he describes his journey and how he and the other Lost Boys became a family to each other, taking care of one another and supporting one another through unbelievable circumstances. Told in a simple and straightforward manner, and accompanied by illustrations that are at once unpretentious and sympathetic, Brothers in Hope is a stirring journey of faith, perseverance, and hope.
They Poured Fire On Us From the Sky Raised by Sudan's Dinka tribe, the Deng brothers and their cousin Benjamin were all under the age of seven when they left their homes after terrifying attacks on their villages during the Sudanese civil war. In 2001, the three were relocated to the U.S. from Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp as part of an international refugee relief program. Arriving in this country, they immediately began to fill composition books with the memoirs of chaos and culture shock collected here. Well written, often poetic essays by Benson, Alepho and Benjamin, who are now San Diego residents in their mid-20s, are arranged in alternating chapters and recall their childhood experiences, their treacherous trek and their education in the camp ("People were learning under trees"). Other pieces remember the rampant disease and famine among refugees, and the tremendous hardship of day-to-day living ("Refugee life was like being devoured by wild animals").
Other Resources Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur by Brian Steidle, Gretchen Steidle Wallace, http://www.refugeesinternational.org/
Through My Eyes How would you have felt if you had been the first black child to ever set foot in an all white school? In this poignant story, we are allowed to see through the eyes of six-year-old Ruby Bridges who, escorted by federal marshals through mobs of screaming segregationists, became the first black child to enter a white school.
Other Resources • Kaffir Boy : The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa by Mark Mathabane • http://www.understandingprejudice.org/ • http://remember.org/guide/History.root.stereotypes.html
The Yellow Star FOR CENTURIES, the Star of David was a symbol of Jewish pride. But during World War II, Nazis used the star to segregate and terrorize the Jewish people. Except in Denmark. When Nazi soldiers occupied his country, King Christian X of Denmark committed himself to keeping all Danes safe from harm.The bravery of the Danes and their king during that dangerous time has inspired many legends. The most enduring is the legend of the yellow star, which symbolizes the loyalty and fearless spirit of the king and his people.
Milkweed Milkweed opens in 1939 and tells the story of a homeless, nameless boy—a “nobody” until he takes up with other street kids and embraces the identity of a gypsy—Misha Pilsudski. Misha is fascinated by the Jackboots, and spends his days stealing food for himself and the orphans. When he meets Janina Milgrom, a Jewish girl, and follows her family to the Jewish ghetto, he loses his fascination with the Nazi soldiers. He slips in and out of the cracks of the walled ghetto, getting food for the Milgroms. For the first time in his life he has a family until resettlement and deportation snatch them away. This good-hearted boy is once again a “nobody” and eventually makes his way to America, carrying only the memories of his adopted family with him.
Other Resources • Stalin • The Forsaken : The American Emigration to Soviet Russia by Timotheos Tzouliadis, • Pol Pot • Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields : Memoirs by Survivors by Dith Pran • North Korea This is Paradise! by Hyok Kang • Not on Our Watch : A Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by Don Cheadle, John Prendergast
Harvest George Ancona Grades 4-6--This photo-documentary focuses on the lives and work of Mexican migrant workers as they pick various crops on the West coast. The narrative switches back and forth from the personal stories of the campesinos to information on the actual harvesting, at times abruptly. Readers learn of the workers' difficult lives and how, despite backbreaking labor and poor conditions, they take pride in what they do and struggle to help their families get ahead. Interspersed are first-person accounts by the workers. The volume concludes with two pages on the life and work of Ceasar Chevez. The full-color photographs are generally of high quality; some will make a lasting impression on readers.
Other Resources • Ashes of Roses Mary Jane Auch • Keeping Quilt byPatricia Polacco, • Red Midnight Ben Mikaelsen
Dream Freedom Sonia Levitin DREAM FREEDOM is a story inspired by actual events. It focuses on the very serious issue of human slavery as it exists in modern-day Africa. The book offers viewpoints from both sides, weaving back and forth between stories of enslaved Dinkas in the Sudan and the reactions of American children who learn of the Africans' plight and are determined to help them.
Enslaved: True Stories of Modern Day Slavery Today, millions of people are being held in slavery around the world. From poverty-stricken countries to affluent American suburbs, slaves toil as sweatshop workers, sex slaves, migrant workers, and domestic servants. With exposes by seven former slaves--as well as one slaveholder--from Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, this groundbreaking collection of harrowing first-hand accounts reveals how slavery continues to thrive in the twenty-first century. From the memoirs of Micheline, a Haitian girl coerced into domestic work in Connecticut, to the confessions of Abdel Nasser, a Mauritanian master turned abolitionist, these stories heighten awareness of a global human rights crisis that can no longer be ignored.
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of contemporary slavery reaches from Pakistan's brick kilns and Thailand's brothels to various multinational corporations. His investigations reveal how the tragic emergence of a "new slavery" is inextricably linked to the global economy.
Other Resources • Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis • Henry's Freedom Box by Levine, • A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery by E. Benjamin Skinner
Wringer Palmer LaRue is not looking forward to the day he turns 10. His town has an annual Pigeon Day. When a boy turns 10 in this town, they become "wringers" and strangle the pigeons wounded during the annual pigeon shoot. He must either accept this task or find the courage to say no. His buddies soon discover Palmer is hiding a pet pigeon in his room. He finds friendship with Dorothy, the girl across the street. Palmer finds it is hard not to go along with the crowd.
Give a Boy a Gun Todd Strasser Bang!Gunshots echo through the gym. Two heavily armed students hold their classmates hostage at a high school dance. Their motive: revenge for the bullying and taunting they’ve been forced to endure in school for years. A stunning work of fiction taken straight from today’s headlines, GIVE A BOY A GUN, is a stirring wake-up call to stop violence and teasing, and to explore the role of guns in the lives of teenagers.
Mr. Lincoln’s Way "Mean Gene" is the bully of the school, the one who has been taught to hate anyone different from himself. But Gene has also been taught, by his grandfather, to identify and love birds. He knows everything about birds, from the types of trees they like to nest in to the kind of food they need to eat. Mr. Lincoln latches onto this talent and nurtures it, asking Gene to be in charge of figuring out what should go into the school's atrium. As Gene eventually blossoms, so do the ducks who live in the atrium--and as he helps herd the ducklings towards the pond, so is he led by Mr. Lincoln towards greater understanding and tolerance.
Other Resources • http://www.redcross.org/ • http://www.dhs.gov (Homeland Security) • http://www.ready.gov/america/index.html (Emergency Supply kit information)
Counting on Grace Inspired by a Lewis Hine photo of a child at work in a Vermont cotton mill in the early twentieth century, Winthrop imagines the story of Grace, 12, torn from her one-room schoolhouse and forced to work long hours in the textile mill as a "doffer," turning cotton into thread, alongside her mother, in the spinning room. The child-labor story is gripping--the dangerous working conditions, the work of activists who sought to publicize the abuse--and although sometimes the research overwhelms the story, Grace's present-tense narrative makes the history heartbreaking. Grace is no sweet victim. Furious at having to leave school and distressed by her failure to satisfy her French Canadian immigrant family, she quarrels with her best friend and smart ex-classmate, who deliberately injures himself on the machines to get back in school. The fiction is framed by notes about Hine and a bibliography that will lead readers to such books as Russell Freedman's Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade against Child Labor (1994) as well as to accounts of abuse today.
Child Labor • A girl working in the reconstruction effort carries a tile on her head in the city of Choluteca, Honduras. • An estimated 158 million children aged 5-14 are engaged in child labor - one in six children in the world. Millions of children are engaged in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, laboring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations. • In Sub-Saharan Africa around one in three children are engaged in child labor, representing 69 million children. • In South Asia, another 44 million are engaged in child labor. • Children living in the poorest households and in rural areas are most likely to be engaged in child labor. Those burdened with household chores are overwhelmingly girls. Millions of girls who work as domestic servants are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. • Labor often interferes with children’s education. Ensuring that all children go to school and that their education is of good quality are keys topreventing child labor.
Kids at Work/ Growing Up in Coal Country This is a fascinating history of the anthracite coal industry in Pennsylvania from the point of view of child laborers. How boys grew from "breakers" (who sorted the coal), to "nippers" (keepers of the underground gates), to "spraggers" (human brakes for careening coal cars), to mule drivers, and finally to full-fledged miners is worth the price of admission in itself. But Bartoletti's book goes way beyond this to describe the company towns, the labor disputes, and the ethnic animosity. She recreates a way of life. Wonderfully evocative black and white photos and selected excerpts from oral histories of survivors complete the picture. Photobiography of early twentieth-century photographer and schoolteacher Lewis Hine, using his own work as illustrations. Hines's photographs of children at work were so devastating that they convinced the American people that Congress must pass child labor laws.
Online lessons on child labor at http://www.childlabor.org Child Labor in America Joyce Kasman Valenza and Carl Atkinson Children have always worked, often exploited and under less than healthy conditions. Industrialization, the Great Depression and the vast influx of poor immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries, made it easy to justify the work of young children. To gain a true understanding of child labor, both as an historical and social issue, students should examine the worlds of real working children. This unit asks students to critically examine, respond to and report on photographs as historical evidence. Students will discover the work of reformer/photographer Lewis Hine, whose photographs give the issue of child labor a dramatic personal relevance and illustrate the impact of photojournalism in the course of American history. Overview | Procedure | Evaluation and Extension Objectives Students will: develop an understanding of the importance of historical inquiry; recognize the factors which contributed to the Industrial Revolution in the United States; evaluate primary source materials as artifacts for greater understanding of the past; function as historians by formulating their own questions from encounters with primary source documents and images; identify the problems confronted by people in the past, analyze how decisions for action were made and propose alternative solutions; understand that political, economic, and social history are connected; and recognize the impact of citizen action on public policy. Time Required 2 - 3 weeks, in 45 - 60 minute class periods, depending on activities selected. Recommended Grade Level Middle and high school Curriculum Fit U.S. history, industrial development, social issues, economics, literature, art
Other Resources • http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_childlabour.html • http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/youthlabor/ • http://www.childlaborphotoproject.org/childlabor.html#us • http://www.childlabor.org
The Wartville Wizard This story takes place in the town of Wartville. Wartville citizens are illegally dumping their trash and litter: soda bottles under flowers, juice cans by mailboxes, and candy wrappers and papers on the road side. Every day the trash pile continues to grow. One man continues to clean the town litter, and one day, he realizes he has the power to get rid of all the litter forever. He magically sends each piece of litter back to the person who dropped it. The town has a meeting to decide how to handle the problem.
Hoot Carl Hiaasen plunges readers right into the middle of an ecological mystery, made up of endangered miniature owls, the Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House scheduled to be built over their burrows, and the owls' unlikely allies--three middle school kids determined to beat the screwed-up adult system.
The Great Kapok Tree This book is a plea for the rainforests of the earth. The green foliage of the equatorial jungle covers the pages and hides some of the creatures who become spokesmen for the forest. Two men approach a huge kapok tree and the larger man commands the smaller one to cut it down and then departs. Cutting a kapok tree of that size is no easy task and the man soon tires and falls asleep at the base of the tree. One by one the animals approach him and whisper reasons for letting the tree live into his ear as he sleeps. Wakening he sees the creatures, including a human child, clustered around him. They fall silent, letting his own senses do the communicating now, and he drops his ax and walks away.
Owl Moon A girl and her father go owling on a moonlit winter night near the farm where they live. Bundled tight in wool clothes, they trudge through snow "whiter than the milk in a cereal bowl"; here and there, hidden in ink-blue shadows, a fox, raccoon, field mouse and deer watch them pass. An air of expectancy builds as Pa imitates the Great Horned Owl's call once without answer, then again. From out of the darkness "an echo/ came threading its way/ through the trees." Schoenherr's watercolor washes depict a New England few readers see: the bold stare of a nocturnal owl, a bird's-eye view of a farmhouse.
Other Resources • The Lorax by Dr. Seuss • Missing 'Gator of Gumbo Limbo : An Ecological Mystery by Jean Craighead George, • http://mdc.mo.gov/ • http://www.epa.gov/
Darfur Stove Project • what is a darfur stove? • Imagine having to knowingly put yourself at grave risk just to feed your family. Imagine the fear of being hours from safety with no hope of protection. Imagine having to rely on food rations to live — and being forced to sell some of them to buy wood just to avoid the risk of rape. No one should have to image this yet it is reality for thousands of women every day in Darfur. • Now imagine there is a solution. And imagine you can be part of it. • the solution: the berkeley-darfur stove® • The Berkeley Darfur Stove® is four time more efficient than traditional 3-stones fires and two times more efficient than clay stoves. The efficiency and design of the stove has many benefits including: • less time outside of the camps collecting fuel wood, reducing the risk of exposure to rape. • fully enclosed flames reducing the danger of the dense straw and stick shelters from burning down. • reduction of smoke production compared to other stoves, reducing smoke inhalation and lung disease. • saving time by cutting down fuel wood treks, allowing women to pursue income generating opportunities.
