Monday, September 14, 2009

childrens literature, lesson


One of my favorite books that I have read is The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. The first time I read this book I was a junior in high school. Someone had recommended this book to me, so I went out and bought it. I was shocked at first to notice that it wasn’t very long. I thought I would be working on reading this book for weeks. I soon realized that I loved how short it was. It was a simple read which didn’t interfere with my class studies. So often I choose not to read a good book because I have so much reading to do for school.
This book was about an elder man who worked at an amusement park as the “fix it up guy”. He had been walking through the park one day and a ride started to fall apart. Pieces started to crash down. Underneath the ride there was a little girl who was scared because her parents were up on the broken ride. Eddie, the old man, saw that this girl was in danger. Onlookers were yelling at her to move, but she was so distracted by fear. Eddie saw this and ran to push her out of the way of the tumbling ride. All of the sudden you read that Eddie has awoke in a different place. You do not know if the little girl was saved or not. The ongoing chapters follow Eddie through this place he calls Heaven and meet the five people who have made his life fulfilled. These people Eddie may have never met, but they had a large part in how his life was lived out.
I can see myself using this book in my classroom if I were to teach older students. It is a chapter book and could be somewhat confusing to younger children. A reason I wouldn’t want to use this book is because it could become very controversial when involving life after death. Parents and the school corporation would have to approve of the book before I taught it. Different people have different views on death, and I wouldn’t want to persuade anyone to change their beliefs. Overall though, it is a good, short read and could spark up very interesting conversations in the classroom. Another benefit to this book is that it has a movie to go along with it. After I finished the book I wanted to buy the movie and compare the two.

2 comments:

  1. I really liked your review of this book, it seems really interesting and since you added that it was a quick read I am thinking about reading it.

    ReplyDelete