World lit for tenth graders?

[Alan Teasley]

Great topic for a group here! In North Carolina, tenth grade English (English II) focuses on "non-American, non-British" world literature in translation. Over the years we've noticed that English majors typically know a bunch about American literature and lots about British literature, but when you get beyond that, they usually have read some of the Big Classics (you know, Ms. Bovary, the K Brothers, Ibsen, Dante's Hell if not his Paradise)--only some of which are accessible to the average 15 year old.

Hence my personal quest: to discover works of literature "teachable" to a wide range of sophomores. To this end, for the past five or so years, I have directed a group "independent study" for my Duke MAT English students. Each student agrees to design two 3-week teaching units for a course in World Lit. We organize each unit around the same major "understandings" (using the Understanding By Design framework). Each student also assigns the rest of us one book-length work (or equivalent shorter works) for a bi-weekly book club.

Last year I designed a unit around fairy tales (Grimm, Andersen, Perrault, and modern revisionist stories), which I have attached. I'll post other titles we've found effective in a future post.

Also, if you are a member of this group, you need to join the "Foreign Film" group as well. After all, films are literature, in my humble opinion!

[Alan Teasley]

I focused on Europe with the Fairy Tale unit because other students in the seminar were designing units on African, Asian, and South American literature. I certainly think the unit could be expanded to other cultures. Also, I think you could explore the differences between folk tales and fairy tales and myths. Many of the "tales of other lands" are referred to as folk tales in anthologies. By the way, one synonym I found for fairy tale was "magical folk tale." Also, some fairy tales are composed (HC Andersen) and some are collected from the "folk" (Grimm Bros, probabaly most of the tales, anyway).

One book I considered was Salmon Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I loved but just couldn't fit in the agreed-upon length of the unit.