I have to admit that this book was sort of a selfish choice. Growing up I always loved Roald Dahl books, from Matilda to The BFG, he still remains today as one of my favorite authors for both adults and for children. I think that Boy serves as an excellent piece of nonfiction that concerns itself with the coming-of-age experience, one that I don't feel can be represented enough in the literature we give to our students. By providing students with accounts of adolescence, we give them the opportunity to find something to relate to and use it to help them however they need help, whether it be understanding their feelings and emotions to helping them understand what's going on around them or just giving them something, in the form of character or experience, that they can relate to and identify with and therefore maybe not feel so alone.
I like the way that Dahl shares his experience in this collection of essays about his adolescent and young adult experiences. Dahl has a unique voice that reflects his humor and is an effective communicator, and so I could easily see this text being used as a tool to discuss narrative structure and sequence and how to develop a “voice” in your writing. I don't know that I would use the whole text as a class novel, but I think that a few of the chapters could be used as examples of how an author's voice comes through in a text and how to do this in their own writing.
1 comment:
I too think this is a GREAT book. I have never taught it, but do think it is absolutely teachable, and I think one of my colleagues did used to teach it. Memoir. Growing up.
So many kids "know" Roald Dahl, so that also makes this an interesting one to use, as it is a different take on what is sort of a "familiar" subject (Roald Dahl, that is) - it introduces them to another side of this world they are already sort of familiar with.
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