Module 14: Witness

Book cover image:

 

Taken from Goodreads.com (Goodreads, Inc., n.d.)   

Genre:

This book is from the poetry module but can also be classified a couple of other ways.  First, this novel is written in free verse which is quickly becoming its own genre/ format that could create an entirely new collection in libraries. Second, this book is a work of realistic historical fiction as it takes place in 1920s Vermont during a time when the Ku Klux Klan was infiltrating communities across the country.

Book Summary:

Witness by Newbery Award winning author Karen Hesse tells the story of a cast of characters from a small town in Vermont who are impacted by the influx of the Ku Klux Klan.  As the story unfolds in verse the reader finds out who the heroes are and who the evil ones are.  Everyone in the town is impacted by the KKK in some way. 

APA Reference of Book: 

Hesse, K. (2001). Witness. New York: Scholastic Press.

Impressions:

I really wanted to love Witness as much as I did Out of the dust but the story never gripped me in the same way and I finished the book feeling a little cheated.  There was so much potential in this book and so much of the story that still needed to be told and wasn’t.  There was an amazing and diverse cast of characters and the author included pictures and short bios at the beginning, but even as an adult I kept having to flip back to see who was talking and what their position was in the town. As much as I have developed a new-found love of novels in verse, I feel like this one deserved more character development and background story in the form of a novel.  One thing that I did like about this story was that the author takes a different look at the KKK than we are used to reading and that is that the KKK did not just discriminate and attack blacks; they also targeted Jews, Catholics, and any person who did not agree with them or helped those who they felt were immoral.  It was a part of history that our young people need to learn about and she did present that well. 

Professional Review:

Reviewed on November 1, 2001 in The Horn Book and published online on Book Verdict

Karen Hesse's latest free-verse novel employs eleven different voices to record the Ku Klux Klan's effects on a Vermont town in 1924, with dubious success. The fictional cast, comprising two children and nine adults, is introduced with sepia-toned photographs to boost their verisimilitude and help sort out who's who. Yet many still feel more like types than complex individuals. There is the hypocritical preacher, who calls Harlem the "den of the devil" while failing to see anything wrong in his own racist and lecherous behavior. There is the eighteen-year-old Klansman-in-the-making, who ultimately reforms after witnessing a courageous act by a black girl. The girl, Leanora, in turn, learns that not all whites are alike from a wise old Civil War veteran, who performs the unbelievable and leadenly symbolic feat of chasing demonstrating Klan members away from the courthouse with his cane. At times, the text offers fresh and resonant images, such as when Leanora's father calls her "a wild brown island" after she wonders aloud "why can't folks just leave [her] alone." Eschewing capital letters (why?), the free-verse format works fairly well for the preacher and the town newspaper editor's sections, since it accentuates their professional rhetoric. But with other characters, the entries sound heavy and too obviously staged: "damn klan. / to think of what they could drive from my life / with their filthy / little / minds." Curiously, the uniquely affected speech patterns of one narrator, a little Jewish girl, resemble that of another reportedly precocious six-year-old—Opal Whiteley (The Story of Opal). Young Esther's cumbersome speech grows tedious to read, making one wish Hesse had found another way to convey her innocence in the face of insidious evil. Overall, Witness has a compelling story to tell, but one that is too complex to work effectively in this format.

APA Reference of Professional Review:

Media Source Book Verdict. (2001, November 1). Witness. Retrieved April 28, 2018, from Book Verdict: http://bookverdict.com/details.xqy?uri=Product-69409633.xml

Library Uses:

For this type of story, I feel the best way to use this book in a library or classroom would be a book club style discussion.  The discussion could easily focus on different aspects of the story from the writing style, the history, and the individual aspect of each character’s life. 

Sample questions:

1. Why do you think the author choose to tell the story through the voices of so many different characters?
2.  How would the story have been different if it had only been told from the point of view of one of the characters?
3. Do you think it was effective to tell the story in free verse form instead of in standard novel format? 
4. How is this story similar or different from other stories you have read about the Ku Klux Klan? 
5. Discuss the different characters and the way they reacted to the increase of Klan activity in their community. 

Readalikes:

There are a couple of different ways to approach readalikes and that is to look at other books that discuss the Ku Klux Klan and prejudice or to look at other novels written as free verse.  Additionally, there are readalikes written as free verse that are historical fiction, similar to this title.  I will take a varied approach at this and present a little of each to give readers the opportunity to explore some different material.

The first readalike is a novel in verse that has won a Newbery Honor Medal, National Book Award, New York Times Bestseller and numerous other state awards. Inside out & back again by Thanhha Lai is a historical fiction that is set during the Vietnam War and tells the story of 10-year-old Ha who is forced to flee the only home she has ever know when Saigon falls.  She finds her self in Alabama, a foreign land to her, where she must make this new land her home.

Roll of thunder hear me cry by Mildred D Taylor won the 1977 Newbery Award Medal along with dozens of other awards and is a classic well-loved children’s book.  Land has a special meaning to the Logan family especially during the Jim Crow era when blacks still didn’t have the freedom the laws has promised them.  The Logan family is strong and full of pride and love and endure horrible acts of discrimination because of the color of their skin.  The story is told from young Cassie Logan’s point of view and goes through an entire year of her life

The last readalike for this module is also a novel in verse that is also historical fiction that explores racism and prejudice. Unbound by Ann E. Burg tells the story of young Grace who is called up to the big house from her home in the slave cabins.  Despite warnings from all her family to keep her thoughts to herself, she finally voices her opinions about the injustice around her and her and her family escape.  In their quest for freedom they encounter many dangers that leave them wondering if they will ever find true freedom.

Checkout my Goodreads list of children and youth literature I read during the Spring 2018 Semester at UNT.