Dead End in Norvelt Dunbar, Robert
School librarian,
10/2012, Letnik:
60, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Described on its back cover as a 'hilarious blend of the entirely true and the wildly fictional', it has as central character a 12-year-old boy (also called Jack Gantos), faced with the prospect of ...finding something to do during a summer when, for a misdemeanour involving a World War Two Japanese rifle, he has been 'grounded' by his mother.
On the verge of maturity--where parents are distant or absent, friendships are often more accidental than deliberate, and restless angst is common--Anthony Varallo's adolescent protagonists dissect ...the world, and their place in it, with keen perception. This Day in History deftly collects their moments of discovery. "There's a feeling I get whenever I enter an unfamiliar house, as if a secret inventory has been handed to me, and I am made to understand that the sofa cushions are stained underneath, the coffee table nursing one gimp leg, the books along the bookcase stolen from summer rental, and the dining room table used only for Christmas and taxes," the narrator confesses in the first of Varallo's twelve stories. Here, a birthday party for an unpopular classmate reveals an adult world both familiar and utterly strange. In subsequent stories a young girl longs to be a part of her best friend's family, only to discover the family is less than ideal; two sisters recall the childhood houses they grew up--and apart--in, places inseparable from each woman's notion of the other; and a mother and son set off on a bold and hopeless errand, their suburban neighborhood momentarily transformed into a stage.As these children stand on the brink of adulthood, unsure how to move forward, striving to make sense of the world around them, they often discover that the distance between themselves and others is no nearly so great as first imagined. Funny, sad, and hopeful, Varallo's stories make a gentle argument for connection and community and, in doing so, seek to extend our sympathy toward the world.
African American Males in PreK-12 Schools: Informing Research, Practice, and Policy presents a comprehensive viewpoint on preK-12 schooling for African American males. Including theoretical, ...conceptual, and research based chapters, this edited volume offers readers compelling evidence of the education challenges and successes for this student population. Each chapter provides a richer perspective of the experiences of African American males throughout their elementary and secondary education. Additionally, each chapter includes strong implications for education research, practice, and policy, as well as concrete recommendations to important stakeholders, such as educators, school counselors, parents, etc. Collectively, the contributors communicate throughout the edited volume that educational change is needed and that educational success is attainable for African American males. It is intended that the edited volume will help inform education research, practice, and policy as they relate to African American males. Equally important, it is envisioned that the readers will develop a greater interest in the education of African American males.
Darman Moenir’s autobiographical novel, Bako, relates the experience of the protagonist – the ‘I’ of the narrative – residing with his mother in the community of his father’s relatives, the bako of ...the title. According to the principles of Minangkabau matriliny, neither he nor his mother are members of the father’s kin group and there is a tension in the relationship between mother and son on one side and the bako on the other. Through successive chapters, each concerning a significant individual in the protagonist’s boyhood and adolescence, the novel explores this tension and its effects on his mother. A close reading of key passages that employ a narrative device of shifting voices – the boy’s, the narrator’s, the author’s – reveals how the writing works to persuade the reader of the dramatic intensity of the boy’s quest for self-knowledge. A comparison with novels of Minangkabau society of an earlier period shows both continuity and change. The undisguised use of autobiographical experience on which the novel draws is explored through an illuminating comparison with Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s stories and through a glance at the genre of Japanese autobiographical novels and its conventions.
This article reports on research with two Latino male youth workers who express strong criticism of their positioning as “positive” role models for struggling Latino boys in a Latino male mentorship ...program. Drawing from analytic frameworks attune to the intersectional politics of race and neoliberalism, this article centers the voices of these educators to raise important questions about the neoliberal logics commonly undergirding intervention strategies aimed at boys and young men of color. In particular, these youth workers outline the ways neoliberal notions of respectability and heteropatriarchy become the expected performances for Latino men working with Latino boys. They also describe the ways they resist the positive male role model label to challenge neoliberal definitions of Latino manhood.
This study compared the overarm throwing motion of skilled elementary school children with standard motion models in order to obtain suggestions for teaching overarm throwing. The subjects were 93 ...children from the second, fourth, and sixth grades of elementary school who were asked to throw a softball with maximal effort. Their throwing motions were videotaped with three high-speed cameras for 3-D motion analysis. Seven boys and seven girls were selected from each grade as good throwers based on their throwing distance. The standard motion model proposed by Ae et al. (2007) was established from the coordinate data for the good throwers of each grade. The primary variables computed were the release height, velocity, and angle of the ball, the joint angles of the upper and lower limb joints, and the segment angles of the trunk. The findings obtained were as follows. 1) For skilled boys, the throwing distance and ball velocity increased significantly with increasing school grade, and the throwing distance and ball velocity were significantly related in all grades. 2) Skilled fourth and sixth grade boys greatly extended the flexed right knee joint in the striding phase and the right hip joint in the throwing phase. The range of motion of the rotation, forward-backward leaning of the trunk, and extension angle of the right elbow joint at ball release for sixth graders exceeded those of participants of other grades. 3) For skilled girls, the throwing distance and ball velocity increased significantly with increasing school grade, and there were significant relationships between the throwing distance and the ball velocity in fourth and sixth graders, and between the throwing distance and the release angle in fourth graders. 4) Skilled fourth and sixth grade girls significantly abducted the right hip joint and leaned the trunk rightward. The horizontal abduction angle and external-internal rotation angle of the right shoulder of sixth graders in the throwing phase exceeded those of the students in other grades. These results indicate that the range of motion of the legs and trunk increased with increasing school grade and was a dominant factor in skilled boys, and that fast external-internal rotation of the shoulder and large right hip abduction were characteristic of skilled girls.
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