Wishtree
Author: Katherine Applegate
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Illustrator: Charles Santoso
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Date: 2017
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About the book:
Red, the large oak tree, has seen a lot in his many many years, but he has never seen something quite like this. He has held in his emotions all of his life, but now that a hate crime has taken place, he has to make a change. Wishtree is a book full of happy and sad moments to correlate with our society today. It's a story of newcomers and welcomers working together to eliminate the bad in our world.
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ABOUT THE BOOK:
Wishtree is a book that all kids should have an opportunity to read. In a world where hate is often brought down from past generations, it's time for kids to learn that they can make their own decisions to change the world. Our country is changing and becoming more diverse. Rather than hating on it, we need to appreciate everything that is coming with it.
"Different languages, different food, different customs. That's our neighborhood: wild and tangled and colorful. Like the best kind of garden."
Not only is this a great book to teach a valuable lesson to everyone, it is also a great read with wonderful features throughout. The playful writing in the book based on a tree talking makes it fun for the child to read. The use of authorial intrusion is a great approach for students to learn from the author. The author in multiple cases stops the flow of the reading to teach a new word. For example:
"Corvids don't give a flying tail feature about height," Bongo said. "Smarts. Wiles. Trickery. Cunning. That's what counts in our neck of the woods.
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"Corvids" is a fancy name for birds like crows, ravens, jays, and magpies. Bongo says she's too classy for a label as common as a "crow."
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Wishtree, page 39
"It's the middle of the day. You're supposed to be asleep. You're crepuscular."
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Crepuscular creatures, like fireflies, bats, and deer, are especially active at dusk and dawn.
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Wishtree, page 66
All of these books would make a great text set when discussing the big concept of immigration. Wishtree is about a tree watching a world full of hate overcome their outdated values by showing kindness. In this book a Muslim family moves into a neighborhood and quickly feel unwelcome by an ugly message on the tree outside their house. The story introduces beautiful characters and past stories that allow people to see that kindness is always better than hate. Children can easily see themselves as the tree, or bystander, and see what is going on in our world. One thing that kids don't often think of, is the history of immigration and what it stands for. Her Right Foot is a great addition to this text set because it is the history and the truth of a common landmark in our country. People see the Statue of Liberty and think of freedom, but what is her right foot really showing? It's a different approach to how we should remember where immigration started and how it's still so meaningful today to so many people in our country. Two Blankets still continues to tell the story of how it feels to be different in a new place, a common feeling immigrants have. On the cover page under the title it says, "moving is hard-- friends make it easier." In this part of the text set, we are able to feel the emotions you go through when you are new to everything. We can also see how being the person who helps can make everyone happy. With all of these books combined, we can grow a deeper mindset on how immigration affects our daily lives and how we can be "welcomers" in our community.
Two Lessons Based On This Text Set
12.13 Talk Between and Across (pg. 340)
In this lesson, you need various books with similar themes. We want students to deepen their understanding of a topic, therefore a large text set with help them be able to compare and contract different elements of each book. You can compare by asking the students, "this author thinks _________, but this one thinks __________." Or "this author thinks _________, but I think __________.
7.20 Respond to Issues That Repeat (pg. 213)
To build on inferencing skills, students can determine what a common issue is within a book and what the author's stance is on it. Students can find familiarity in author's stances or they can find differences. From their introduction to multiple stances, they can create their own idea on the issue.
Text Set About Immigration
A Critical View
Katherine Applegate does a great job of seeing the situation in this story as a bystander. Most people in our society today consider themselves bystanders rather than welcomers. They want to be the person to make a difference, but they often wait for someone else to do it. Red in this story was someone who was done waiting for someone else to make a difference and had to break the rule of no talking to humans in order to make change happen. I believe an approach that readers should make to change their viewpoint is to put themselves in Stephen's shoes. Stephen is a white boy who wants to become Samar's friend, but his parent's outdated values tell him otherwise. I believe that this is a situation a lot of people find themselves in and can't find a way out of it. Stephen did. Even though at the end of the book it still gives an accurate representation that his parents would never change their mindsets about befriending a Muslim family, Stephen went past his parent's values and did what he wanted to do. Stephen is a character that the reader should relate to. Applegate didn't introduce this approach in the book because he wasn't the main character, but as a reader or educator, you can make this approach the main idea through themes and lessons. Amy Edwards, a fifth grade teacher, said it best, "the ability to consider multiple perspectives is at the heart of a democratic classroom for students to share their voices and to reflect on ways of thinking about the world beyond their own" (Edwards). People are able to relate to Red, but they should be able to put themselves in the skin of Stephen and Samar. People can share their own experiences to reflect what the characters may have felt within the book. They should see this issue as something different than what they know, find multiple viewpoints from the character's side of the story, focus on the political issues, and then change their mindset by taking action. Edwards believes that this sequence when approaching a book will allow for a student to open up about their values once they can see the various sides of a story.
Click here for a teacher's guide to Wishtree. It includes multiple activities related to the book.
Citations
Edwards, A. (n.d.). WOW Stories: Connections from the Classroom. Retrieved from https://wowlit.org/on-line-publications/stories/storiesi2/15/
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Serravallo, J. (2015). The reading strategies book: your everything guide to developing skilled readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.