For many school systems, The House on Mango Street is incorporated into the 10th grade English curriculum. Written by Sandra Cisneros, this book is set up in vignettes and draws to picture of life for a teenage latino girl living in urban Chicago. As a future teacher trying to build a library for myself (and future students), I am definitely putting this book on the center shelf. One of the over-arching themes in 10th grade curriculum is teaching coming-of-age literature to students, and this novel succeeds just that and as a bonus tells it from a minorities perspective. The vignettes Cisneros sets up are in no particular order and she uses different literary devices with almost every sentence. Only 110 pages, this would be a great read aloud book for the classroom. I really think this novel will register with students who feel like a minority, and I am not just talking about Latino or African American students but any student who feels left out. When I read this book in high school, my teacher focused only on the literary devices and less on the lesson Cisneros is trying to teach the reader. When I teach my students this book (which I will), I want to focus on reader's reactions. I want to give student's a chance to express how this book makes them think about themselves. If there is one thing I have taken from my English education classes so far is that although we are supposed to be teaching students how to understand terms and write papers, our main goal is to teach intangible ideas that the studentscan't get in a science or math class. The House on Mango Street is a great book for this: teaching students to strive to be more than they are now. Take the time to read it, it will make anyone want to be better than their surroundings.
Both photos were taken by myself :)
