Freedom For The Future (Understanding Difficulties and Rights)

I used to have a stuffed dog toy named Doozer, so that's my fun entry into this story.  It has nothing to do with the story at all.  Now to the book! The Legend of the Doozer Who Didn't is a children's book about a Doozer, which is a species of some sort, that began to stand out and do his own thing.  I would have preferred if the book stayed on that path and allowed the Doozer Who Didn't to be a free-thinking individual who found a different path than the rest of his people.  But it didn't go that way.  The book explained that if you weren't a hard working drone, then you would become a gruesome beast called a Fraggle.  This book is an attempt to scare children (in a fun way) to stay in school and work hard so they wouldn't become an outcast.  As harmless as this book looks, it's actually quite damaging.  There are other things that can be done besides labor and school.  So many opportunities for children to choose from, and this book m...

Friends really are from anywhere and they can be anyone.  They can have interests in things you're scared of or not be interested in what you like.  They can look like anything; big, tall, small, colored, female, male.  Don't be afraid to meet new people, because no matter what they look like or where they're from, people are people and they can end up being your friend.  Keep those eyes and hearts open.

Probably one of the biggest struggles we future teachers will face will be teaching ESL students.  Any time someone is approached with language barriers, they shut down and get flustered.  I've seen it everywhere.  And it is easiest to just stay frustrated and let the person with that barrier to fluster.  That's what most people do and that is what Francisco's (protagonist of the book) teacher did. The whole story Francisco was written off by his teacher and classmates because he didn't understand them and they didn't understand him.  He was treated poorly by a particular student who got mad at him for borrowing his lost jacket and then left on the sideline by his teacher because he didn't capture the lessons.  At the end of the book, it was Francisco's illustration of a butterfly that brought people closer to him.  He finally received recognition from the teacher and the same boy that gave him a hard time earlier.  The point of the book was tha...

This book was chose simply because it was one of my favorites as a kid.  The colors and the illustrations drew me in as a child.  It holds importance to me and this blog now because its an adapted Pueblo Indian tale.  It brings forth legends from nearly forgotten cultures and shares a tale of a boy looking for his father who happens to be a deity.  It's a beautiful story and one I hope to be shared around.

My girlfriend's son had to read this for school the other day, and this fit right in to our discussion about folklore being rewritten to Americanized standards.  With this Native American legend, there is no whitewashing done by Richard Vaughan.  There is no different ending to entice the readers.  There is no different structure because he felt the Native Americans didn't tell it well enough.  All he did was retell this legend and added illustrations so that children could visualize the legend themselves.  I believe it is very important to keep folklore from other cultures protected; in that it isn't restructured or rewritten.  These stories helped build cultures that still exist today and that should be discoverable by any child or human.

In this children's book, the protagonist, Sylvia, tries to get into a better school than the one she's in now.  The time period is set during the early Civil Rights Movement before Brown v Board of Education happened.  In the West Coast there was segregation of schools as well, but not just for Black students, but Mexican students and other children of color too. Sylvia's family lived close to a white school, but the children couldn't go there because they were not white.  They received worse education and worse treatment just because of their skin color.  Their cousins, who were Mexican but happened to look white, were able to go to the white school.  So obviously there was something wrong here.  With the help of lawyers, other people of color and time, Sylvia's family was finally able to de-segregate some schools in California.  This was a huge win, but it proved the toughness it takes to actually get the basic necessities that every citizen deserv...