Reading Highlights

The following may not cover all of the assigned readings for the lesson. Always be sure to check your syllabus schedule for reading specifics.

Jack Gantos

Dead End in Norvel is part memoir, part fiction, part manic, and part introspective.  Like most of Gantos' work it's fast paced, heavy on dialogue, told in first person, and filled with the bizarre.  You might be tempted to see the book as light reading, full of humor and one strange event after another.  But with Gantos there is usually something lurking beneath the surface.  Have some fun with this book.  It's a good one for playful reading.  If you can, read it twice.  When we read a text the first time, we read for plot.  We want to find out what is going to happen next.  The technology of the book combined with the skills of the author is set up to encourage us to read this way - to turn the page.  If read something a second time, we already know what is going to happen, so we can attend to other things - details we might have missed the first time, clues as to what may happen, symbolism, metaphor.  We characterize this as "first we read for sequence, then we read for secrets."  Hold onto that idea throughout the course.  When we come to the lesson on the Common Core, we'll make much of the idea that the Common Core seems to value reading for sequence, but not so much reading for secrets.  But for now, enjoy Dead End in Norvelt.