One boy. Another boy. And yet another boy.

1. A Boy of Heart Mountain by Barbara Bazaldua

(I love narratives about war, especially when they portray a perspective of a conflict that is often left out of grand historical narratives.)

Shigeru is a Japanese American boy. Like many other Japanese Americans, his family is forced out of their home, and herded into a concentration camp following the attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese.

What is interesting about this narrative is that it portrays a perspective of the war that is not often depicted. It challenges the oversimplified dichotomy that regards the Japanese as perpetrators, and Americans as victims. It foregrounds the grey area that complicates such a simplistic understanding of history by narrating the experience of war from the perspective of a Japanese American.Thus, the text can help students understand that there are multiple perspectives to everything and that it is important to consider the implications of issues, like war, from perspectives that are all too often overlooked.

Because the narrative is told from the perspective of a 10-year-old boy, the language is simple enough for most students to understand. There should not be any language barrier in terms of difficult vocabulary or complex sentence structures. And so, Shigeru's experiences would be easy to comprehend, and students can focus on trying to analyse the implications of his experiences (moving along Bloom's taxonomy- yay!). As the narrative invites readers to accompany Shigeru through his process of maturation, students can relate his journey to their own journeys of self-discovery.

Moreover, Shigeru's dual identity as a Japanese American is not unlike the dual identities of Singaporeans which is the result of our constant negotiation between the ethnic identity that we inherit from our ancestors (CMIO) and the cultural identity that identifies us as Singaporeans. Thus, parallels can be drawn with local texts regarding an individual's struggle to articulate their identity.

2. After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross
(I don't particularly enjoy reading dystopic fiction because it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable.)

Matt and his family live in an England that is chaotic and unsafe. The money that they have has lost its value, forcing them to find other means of surviving. When their family gets attacked by an armed gang and gets marked as 'scadgers'- people who hoard excessive food supplies and deny others of food- they are forced to flee to France. But France does not have sufficient resources to support the influx of British refugees, and Matt, his stepfather and younger brother find themselves stuck at a refugee camp.

Like A Boy of Heart Mountain, After Tomorrow is told from the perspective of a young boy who is forced to mature beyond his age because of the unique circumstances that he finds himself in. However, while Shigeru is an only child, Matt is the eldest in his family, and is forced to take on full responsibility of his brother. Cross portrayal of the relationship between the two brothers is especially heartwarming, as it reveals that beyond the bickering and the disagreements that siblings often have with each other, there lies a fierce loyalty to one another. I think that there is a lot more that students can extrapolate from an analysis of the relationships between Matt and his younger brother, especially in contrast with the boys relationship with their stepfather, where they seem to be a little more distanced from their stepfather. 

I think the book contains many themes that deserve to be unpacked, and would be interesting to unpack, especially for Lower Secondary students. Part of the reason I chose this book is that I could not get a hold of the more popular YA fiction like The Hunger Games, or Divergent. But upon reflection, I think that part of the appeal of this novel is the very fact that students' would probably not know of it, or encountered its plot. Yet, their familiarity with dystopian worlds through the film adaptations of The Hunger Games and Divergent, facilitates the introduction of texts like After Tomorrow. Not only would students be more comfortable with encountering narratives set in world's that are daunting and frighteningly different from their reality, student's might actually have acquired a taste for unpacking dystopian worlds, influenced by the 'cool graphics' and the 'thrilling speed chases' that seem to be fundamental ingredients of the dystopian worlds envisioned by Hollywood. 

3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
[[[ I've only read it till Chapter 11, so bear with me. ]]] 

Okonkwo strives to achieve the success in life that his father never managed to achieve. The values and strengths that he attributes to masculinity, his father never possessed. And so, through his actions, and those of his sons, he struggles to embody his idealistic vision of how a father should be like.

In the first half of the book, the narrative already presents numerous issues that students can engage with and unpack. The patriarchal society that is depicted in Things Fall Apart is something that can be contrasted, or compared, with the local societies, or the societies that are popularly portrayed  or represented in the media. And while the students unpack the hierarchical structure of different societies, they would inevitably have to tackle issues pertaining to gender such as gender stereotypes, and the multiple perspectives of femininity and masculinity. I think Achebe's text would be exciting to teach in an E.Lit classroom precisely because it challenges students to think about issues in a completely different light. The African society is a society that seems to foreign to Singaporeans, and yet, there would definitely be similarities between the two societies that would be interesting for students to discover.