Building Character through Literature : A Guide for Middle School Readers

The Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature have so far produced some good things – above all Patrick Jones’s thought‐provoking defence of R.L. Stine (of the Goosebumps series) and Jeanne McGlinn’s excellent study of historian Ann Rinaldi. These were followed by Reed’s look at Norma Fox Mazer and Aronson’s examination of teenage reading. The zany postmodern and satirical world of Daniel Pinkwater is a fixture in US culture, and Hogan’s study of Pinkwater has a title to match. Pinkwater’s work is as if Seuss and Orwell and Blume meet Heller and Terry Gilliam and Juvenal. Very intertextual (in that works consciously refer to other genres), capturing teen perspectives (Salinger meets Mad magazine), covering a range from picture books to young adults, Pinkwater (born 1941 in Memphis, Tennessee) is an ideal candidate for this series, which sets out to re‐evaluate, look hard at the very popular, remind us that we can too easily dismiss children’s lit that doesn’t win awards but sells in millions. Hogan has carried out thorough research, into Pinkwater’s books, the dispersed (and very mixed) reviews (usually in US library journals), e‐mails (with the author) and numerous Web sites (including The Official Pinkwater Page at http://www.pinkwater.com and the unofficial one called The P‐Zone at http://www.pinkwater.com/p‐zone). Hogan is an associate professor and librarian at Eastern Michigan University.

Hogan takes us through Pinkwater’s work, the many picture books (like The Blue Moose series starting in 1975), his many books for middle school and pre‐teens (including fantasy journeys like Lizard Music which won the American Library Association’s Notable Book award for 1976), and distinctive works for young adults (above all The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, 1982, about Walter at Genghis Khan High School, and later Young Adult Novel in 1982, a novel about a novel, and The Education of Robert Nifkin in 1998). Pinkwater’s work is set in the carnival culture of modern USA – food, underdogs, adults who stifle the imagination, the pompous, the surreal, sex and friendship. Hogan picks up on the satire, and, like his subject and many postmodern writers, imitates the tone as well, hence the eccentric title and the mixed critical style veering from the adulatory to the pretentious, but always knowingly. If you like or collect Pinkwater, Hogan’s book is for you. If you do not know Pinkwater’s work, look at it first, then decide.

Building Character through Literature deals with 50 novels for children nine to fourteen (middle graders) that show strength of character and character issues (citizenship, compassion, cooperation, courage, fairness, generosity, helpfulness, integrity, kindness, loyalty, patience, resilience, respect, responsibility, self‐control, tolerance, trustworthiness). It argues that readers identify with such characters and qualities, and discussing them helps build young people into aware and caring adults. The 50 novels run alphabetically by title from After the Rain by Norma Fox Mazer (1987) to A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962). The time spread is from Twain’s Pudd’hhead Wilson (1894) to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (1998). Works include Animal Farm and Bambi, The Indian in the Cupboard and Nightjohn, The Pigman and The Secret Garden, Skellig and Stone Fox, The Trouble with Lemons to Wringer. Mainly US works (bibliographic details are exclusively US editions), the listing is good. Troublesome is linking titles to issues, which can only be done through the list at the back.

For each entry there is mention of awards (many of them have won them), characters, plot (good summaries), questions for discussion, projects, vocabulary, and notes about the author. Typical questions and projects include being alcoholic, mentally ill, a loser, comforted, faced with choices, bullied, rejected (and doing some of these to other people), as well as finding out about identity, slavery, food, abused animals, owls, and Quidditch. Titles are arranged by genre too (like fantasy, discrimination, coming‐of‐age, inter‐generational). Novels are never written primarily to address issues, provide themes, but finding and exploring issues is familiar in teaching and library work, and this work is, of its kind, useful and topical. Jweid and Rizzo have collaborated on The Library‐Classroom Partnership (about teaching library media skills) (Scarecrow Press, 1998). Librarians and teachers short of cost will be able to construct their own version of Building Character, within the cultural and educational context of the school, but it certainly provides a good kick‐start if you are already moving in that direction.