Booktalk: The Well by Mildred D. Taylor [Generosity; 3]

For the sake of this story, I want you to pretend that you live on a farm in the American South. Imagine that your family gets all your water from a well on your land, but the other families around you have wells that are now running dry. You’d share your water, right? Well, of course you would. In this story, The Well, David is a young African American boy who lives in Mississippi in the early 1900s. He and his family own their own land, but because they are black, there are still segregation laws in effect which hurt them, and there’s a lot of racism and discrimination towards African Americans. There’s one family who really hates David and his family: The Simms. Papa has warned David and his brothers to stay out of the way of the Simms, who are really mean and very racist. David’s family has been generously sharing their well water with everyone, but the Simms want to bring them down anyways. At one point, Hammer, David’s brother, hits one of the Simms boys and knocks him out cold. Mr. Simms wants revenge. In spite of their generosity, David’s family is now very vulnerable. Will they lose their hard-won land? The Well by Mildred D. Taylor.

The Well by Mildred D. Taylor. New York: Dial, 1995. 92 p. Booktalk to intermediate grades [3^rd-6^th], middle school.

Fight Back: H.S. Booktalk 2

Marena is a teenager in a country, probably our own, ruled by the Zero Tolerance Party, which is the only political party, under which it is perfectly legal to arrest anyone at any time for anything. It is a country now ruled by fear, oppression, and ruthless indoctrination. At Marena’s school, which is actually run much like a prison, Marena and her classmates are forced to read [almost religiously] from a huge red tome called the Commemorator. But Marena is having a hard time being a true believer. Her mother, whose memory she clings to even as it fades, was captured and probably killed by the state for protesting their lack of rights. Marena’s a lot like her mom, and so are her two close friends - Eric and Dex. The three of them have been sneaking off their fenced-in compound to a secret, abandoned, empty old building they found - a place where they can be themselves and dream of resistance. However, there are signs that there is another group of resisters trying to make inroads at their school. Unfortunately, one must be extremely careful in this police state to make zero mistakes: punishment entails [among other things] a brain operation which causes you to lose the ability to read, write, or speak. And Marena, Eric, and Dex have been sloppy. Marena may have trusted someone she thought would never betray her, especially to the authorities. She now runs the risk of becoming just like her mother: one of the “disappeared.” The Silenced by James DeVita is about fighting back against a government which has zero tolerance for basic human rights.

The Silenced by James DeVita. Grades 7 up. 512 p. HarperTeen, 2007.