Supplemental Reading Book

pcollinsgu08 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:15:57 +0000

So for this assignment I chose a book that I read recently, as in a few months ago before I started classes and when I still had time to read for pleasure. The title of the book is City of Thieves by David Benioff. The book is a historical fiction based largely on the true story of the author’s grandparents’ experience during one week in 1942 (the middle of World War II) in the city of Leningrad, Russia. While the majority of the details of the book are made up, the general events and happenings are based on the conversations that the author had with his grandfather and the stories that the author’s grandfather related to him about his collective war time experience. However, in the introduction to the book the author mentions that it was the particular story or re-telling of a specific week in the middle of the war in 1942 that he decided to write about, mainly because of the significant impact that this one week had on his grandfather’s life.

The book focuses on a specific week in the life of the author’s grandfather during the winter of 1942. Leningrad is under seige by the German army and the city and it’s people have been wrecked by the bombing and are suffering from the cold and starvation and overall lack of everything. The main character, Lev (the grandfather), gets arrested for looting the body of a dead German pilot that seemingly “dropped out of the sky.” The seriousness of getting arrested by the Red Army is made apparent to Lev by his cellmate and eventual friend / comrade, Kolya, a former soldier who has been arrested for deserting his regiment. Kolya relates to Lev that there must be some important reason why, only a day later, they are still alive because normally they both would have been killed already.

As it turns out the Russian colonel, and later head of secret police, that is holding them prisoner offers the two prisoners a deal; they have one week to find one dozen eggs for the colonel’s daughter’s wedding cake and if they succeed he will make them free men, if they fail or do not return, they will be killed on sight. Seemingly faced with no other option, Lev and Kolya head out into the city of Leningrad on their mission to find these eggs. The rest of the book focuses on the specific events and goings on that the two experience during that week in 1942. Such events and happenings include falling in with a band of underground, Russian militia / guerrilla fighters, Lev meeting his future wife (the author’s grandmother), the two getting arrested by and narrowly escaping from German soldiers and their infamous Nazi SS leader, and their never-ending quest, complete with numerous setbacks, to find one dozen eggs before time runs out.

This was a really well written, and entertaining book. The author also wrote the book 25th Hour, which was the basis for the Spike Lee movie by the same name, starring Edward Norton. I really like the author’s style and the book is a relative easy read, not too long or anything. I really am partial to this type of literature (historical fiction) and the author does a great job of weaving a really intricate, entertaining story out of the generic facts and storytelling of his grandfather. I think it would be a great book to use as a source of supplemental reading for when I’m actually teaching. This is book is especially relevant to a World History course and more specifically to a unit covering WWII. I think it would be great to get high school level students to read this book, especially because the Russian experience and front in WWII are ones that most people aren’t too familiar with nor ones that you really hear a lot about when you study WWII. Bottom line, I would definitely recommend reading this book.

Inquiry project ideas

pcollinsgu08 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:55:57 +0000

I was thinking about taking a general question(s) regarding a person’s perceptions of education, a person’s perceptions of teachers and their relationship with their teachers, and the importance of education or of going to college. The focus would be on addressing these questions to various demographics of people, backgrounds, and educational experience/levels. I think the best way to gather peoples’ responses to these questions would be in the form of a survey and that it would be important to keep the questions and the survey pretty short and general.

The main point would be to see how different people from different backgrounds and educational experiences view education and whether or not they feel college is an important part of education and whether or not they feel it is attainable, etc.

I would plan on handing this survey out to college students, high school students, students at the Non Public School where I work, my former students at a local elementary school that is primarily Latino in terms of demographics, etc.

This is just sort of skimming the surface and throwing out a general idea for now. I would most definitely take the time to develop the questions for the survey so that they would be short and to the point but also would allow for a clear representation of people’s perceptions and ideas with regard to education in general.

pete collins' Blog

Supplemental Reading Book

Inquiry project ideas