Beth Puma
  • Home
  • About Me
    • Professional Experience
  • Learning Design
  • Consulting Services
    • Professional Learning Workshops
    • Personalized Coaching
    • Testimonials
  • Contact

​transforming our hearts, transforming our classrooms, transforming our world

Inside Out and Back Again:  A Book Review

4/7/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Do you remember the last time you stayed up late into the night because you couldn't put a book down? Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai was a book  a colleague had put  into my hands saying "I think you will like this", which is always an interesting challenge.  It sat in a pile of books to be read  near my night table for a few weeks.   I picked up right before bed and ended up reading in one sitting into the late hours of the night. Late hours for a teacher, anyway.

Inside Out and Back Again is a book inspired by the author's experience of fleeing Vietnam after the war and resettling in Alabama. It is written in verse that is delicate and bold at the same time.  
      Hà is a young girl who loves Vietnam and is reluctant to leave.  She is confused and angered by her new life and America. Young Hà describes her process of learning English with such disdain!  When describing the rules of plurals and adding "s" to the end of a noun, Hà states "Whoever invented English must have loved snakes," (118).  There are several poems that document Hà's linguistic and cultural transitions that may illuminate what some of our own students are wrestling with, particularly while they are experiencing their "silent period".
       Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai is a needed text for your culturally responsive library.  Students needs to see themselves in the texts they read.  Identity texts that reflect the diversity of our students' experiences, help facilitate a multilingual identity that is additive rather than subtractive.
        Finally, Harper Collins offers a discussion guide on their website. 

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Beth Puma

    I am an MLL specialist, coach, and educational consultant that is  dedicated to building a more transformative educational landscape that honors linguistic diversity and challenges societal paradigms.  

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    September 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    October 2019
    June 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017

    Categories

    All
    Assessment
    Book Reviews
    CLIL
    Coaching
    Co Teaching
    Data
    Differentiation
    Discourse
    ELL Strategies
    Events And Engagements
    Immersion
    Inquiry
    Translanguaging
    Upcoming Events

    Tweets by beth_puma
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About Me
    • Professional Experience
  • Learning Design
  • Consulting Services
    • Professional Learning Workshops
    • Personalized Coaching
    • Testimonials
  • Contact