Holiday Book a Day: Book Two

As I've shared, this holiday break I've challenged myself to read a book each day as part of a Twitter movement amongst teachers and readers.  This movement can be found under the #bookaday hashtag.  As such, I'll be posting out daily reflections, both to share some info about the book I'm reading and to model how to respond deeply about the novels we are reading.


I've seen many of you pick up various Sharon Draper books throughout the year, so I thought I'd given them a try.  Over the years I've read hundreds of responses about Tears of a Tiger but never got around to reading it.  As it was short (163 pages), I figured now was the time to give it a chance.  Here is my response (and at 361 words it clocks in a little bit above what I'm looking for):


Tears of a Tiger, Sharon Draper
Pages 1-163

Truthfully, I spent 3/5's of this book disliking it.  I liked the the idea of watching a character grieve after a tragedy that he directly caused.  I liked the idea of watching a community grieve the loss of a young life.  But I could not get past the fact that this book was written entirely of dialogue, letters, homework assignments and journals.  Every little bit of this novel is the direct thoughts of the various characters.  This was cool in a sense because I was able to experience the story from multiple perspectives.  For instance, I got to hear Andy, the protagonist's, views on things, as well as his girlfriend Keisha, his friends BJ, Gerald, and Tyrone, and even the thoughts of his grief counselor and six year old brother.  I think that in presenting the thoughts of all these characters directly the author is able to present a fuller story.  Because really, when tragedy strikes, the ripple affects everyone, as do the behavior of those caught up in the ripples.


But I didn't like the lack of description.  The lack of setting.  The lack of a narrator's voice.  It was disconcerting.  Then, near the end of the novel, I started to put together a hypothesis about why Sharon Draper wrote this book as she did.  I think that this novel almost resembles a play.  You get characters exchanging dialogue.  In doing so Draper strips all that extra stuff that would help situate the events in any geographical location or type of high school and, as a result, universalizes her story.  Andy's story can happen at any high school in any part of the country at any time period because Sharon Draper does not include that information.  I think this helps the reader get into the story a little bit better and apply the course of events to his/her own school.


So, all in all, it was a quick read and after some consideration I came to enjoy the book.  Will I go on and read the next two books in the Hazelwood Trilogy (Forged by Fire and Darkness Before Dawn)?  Maybe someday.  But it was definitely worth the read.