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The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963
Hey class! Wednesday is my teaching demonstration and I'll be covering the last two chapters of Christopher Paul Curtis' The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963. This is an excellent book for middle school or ninth grade and tackles issues of race in the early 1960s from an African-American perspective. It's excellent for working with character development because it's a coming of age novel and deals with several difficult choices made by the narrator and his family. Students will probably relate to at least one character in the novel, each of whom represent different ages and levels of maturity. This book would be well-paired with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, which was taught in my ninth grade class. It addresses family relationships and would be excellent for teaching historical fiction as the event around which the climax of the novel is centered is a true one. It fosters discussion about race, tolerance, and segregation, as well as the mindset of white Southerners at the time.
The first part of the book deals with the Watson family's life in Flint, Michigan. They are an African-American family and the father works in an auto plant. There are three children: Byron, 13, is a sixth-grade juvenile delinquent whose bullying earns him great respect in the school; Kenny, the narrator, who is often picked on but gets some reprieve because of his brother's status; and Joetta, the little sister, who adores Byron and tends to snitch when her brothers misbehave. Byron gets into a series of misadventures--playing with matches, getting food from the market and putting it on his parents' tab without asking, beating up a fourth-grade bully who steals Kenny's gloves--and his behavior convinces his parents to send him to Birmingham, AL, for the summer to live with his maternal grandmother.
The family makes the trip to Birmingham, where Byron immediately shapes up for his grandmother. Alabama proves to be a good influence on him, and it is Kenny who gets into trouble when he decides to go swimming in an area known for whirlpools. He nearly drowns, but Byron finds him and saves his life. In the last two chapters, Joetta goes to Sunday school at a church in Birmingham. On this day, someone sets off a bomb at the church that kills four girls and injures several more. Kenny runs to the church and witnesses the carnage, believing his sister to have been taken by the "wool Pooh," a mispronunciation of whirlpool that becomes his interpretation of death after his near-drowning. He goes home to find that Joetta had seen a vision of Kenny across the street and left the church before the bomb went off.
Back in Flint, Kenny spends several days hiding behind the couch, trying to cope with what he saw at the church and his scare with his sister. Byron convinces him to stop hiding behind the couch because he has nothing to be ashamed or scared of, and Kenny accepts that everything will be okay.
Kind of a long summary, I know, but the last two paragraphs are the chapters that you've "read" for today, and the lesson goes into some of the details, so I want you to have the chance to prepare.
The first part of the book deals with the Watson family's life in Flint, Michigan. They are an African-American family and the father works in an auto plant. There are three children: Byron, 13, is a sixth-grade juvenile delinquent whose bullying earns him great respect in the school; Kenny, the narrator, who is often picked on but gets some reprieve because of his brother's status; and Joetta, the little sister, who adores Byron and tends to snitch when her brothers misbehave. Byron gets into a series of misadventures--playing with matches, getting food from the market and putting it on his parents' tab without asking, beating up a fourth-grade bully who steals Kenny's gloves--and his behavior convinces his parents to send him to Birmingham, AL, for the summer to live with his maternal grandmother.
The family makes the trip to Birmingham, where Byron immediately shapes up for his grandmother. Alabama proves to be a good influence on him, and it is Kenny who gets into trouble when he decides to go swimming in an area known for whirlpools. He nearly drowns, but Byron finds him and saves his life. In the last two chapters, Joetta goes to Sunday school at a church in Birmingham. On this day, someone sets off a bomb at the church that kills four girls and injures several more. Kenny runs to the church and witnesses the carnage, believing his sister to have been taken by the "wool Pooh," a mispronunciation of whirlpool that becomes his interpretation of death after his near-drowning. He goes home to find that Joetta had seen a vision of Kenny across the street and left the church before the bomb went off.
Back in Flint, Kenny spends several days hiding behind the couch, trying to cope with what he saw at the church and his scare with his sister. Byron convinces him to stop hiding behind the couch because he has nothing to be ashamed or scared of, and Kenny accepts that everything will be okay.
Kind of a long summary, I know, but the last two paragraphs are the chapters that you've "read" for today, and the lesson goes into some of the details, so I want you to have the chance to prepare.