Book Review: The Eagle of the Ninth & Notebook Connections
The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff
With the imminent release of the cinematic adaptation of Sutcliff’s ALA Notable Book - written way back in 1954 - I recently borrowed a copy from my neighborhood library so that I could be familiar with the original story first; knowing full well that a 21st century movie version would be more of an action film - or at least from the looks of the trailer with Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, as they cross swords with blue-body painted Picts in Roman-era Britain.
Unlike the hyperkinetic trailer, Sutcliff’s YA novel moves much more slowly, if not more gracefully. It relies less on fancy sword-play and more on character development and relationships. Although the Roman Empire was clearly stratified - with slaves, servants, freedmen, and oligarchs/aristocrats - Sutcliff manages to create very believable characters who are just as much victims of their circumstances as they are questioning of Roman assumptions. (Or at least on the part of her protagonist, Marcus Flavius Aquila, whom the reader is led to identify with.)
The plot here is basic enough: The eagle standard of the lost/disbanded Ninth Legion is rumored to still survive in the Scottish lowlands, and Marcus - the son of the Ninth’s late commander - sets out to retrieve it. (Viewers of the recent outstanding UK film Centurion will think that The Eagle is a rip-off, when in actuality the reverse is arguably the more correct assumption.) What ensues is just as much a physical journey into the hinterlands of Roman rule, but also a personal journey on Marcus’ part - as well as his slave-turned-freedman Esca.
How true the soon-to-be-released movie adaptation is to Sutcliff’s novel remains to be seen - and which from the looks of it appears to be partial. But this much is true: Sutcliff wrote two more books that follow this one. And from the strength of her writing as she captures a world long since passed, I can only imagine how good the other two will be.
Notebook Connections: Strategies for the Reader’s Notebook, by Aimee Buckner
Where her first book Notebook Know-How centered on the writer’s notebook, Buckner shifts her attention to the reader’s notebook, and how reading like a writer, and writing about that heightens both student interest and learning. In essence, all the mini-lessons and strategies she outlines reinforce the old adage of reading like a writer, and even its inverse, writing like a reader.
Although I’m personally a huge fan of her philosophy and pedagogy - in an ideal classroom, that is - I am wary of the overambitious and all-too-broad mini-lessons. Some may call it a whole language approach, which I believe does not adequately serve lower socio-economic and English language learners as effectively as intended and implemented per se. That is, the students she works with here are predominantly middle-class white kids in suburban Georgia. Not only is this a little acknowledged bias on her part, but also on the part of the publisher and the districts who buy this kind of book to give schools like mine, who serves lower-income Hispanic, black, white, and Asian Americans. As much as I love the kind of thinking that she details in this remarkable concise professional development tool, I have serious reservations. Do these exact strategies, as delivered as open-ended as she writes them, serve my students best? Case in point: The dearth of explicit vocabulary and grammar instruction does not address or lessen the vocabulary gap between my students and hers; which I would argue is necessary in order to help my students be on par with hers. That is, the best well-crafted strategy lessens can fall on deaf ears if they don’t have the academic vocabulary in the first place to understand what you’re talking about. In short, I would argue that my time and efforts are better spent reading tried-and-true pedagogy that addressees the very different needs to English language learners and those entering in our public school system whose vocabularies are significantly truncated the moment the walk in the Kindergarten door on day one of their K-12 education.
However, there are some gems that are useful here in these pages which transcend the socio-economic backgrounds of our nation’s students. One such is her Fab Five Summaries, which is singularly the best of its kind I’ve every come across. (And most teachers would readily admit that summaries are often the most monstrous of beasts that can turn kids into regurgitation machine with ten too many superfluous details, and which often don’t make much sense.)
And then there is her reprinting of Brian Cambourne’s Conditions of Learning - a theoretical model that combines many truisms that any teacher would agree with. However, I do have reservations in regards to how his conditions - all of which I agree with in theory - are limited by students’ socio-economic background. That is, the notions of expectations, responsibility, employment, and approximation can and are used in schools, but can be absent in their lives outside school; which in turn thwarts the best and well-intentioned efforts of teachers who serve lower socio-economic students, particularly if the latter come from generational (versus situational) poverty. What works in a school setting can looks completely useless for life at large for our hardest to reach kids, as their world does not operate by the same rules, assumptions, means, and ends.
Fortunately, Buckner’s book is an easy and enjoyable read, and its limitations do not detract from the genuinely high-quality and higher-thinking strategies that she effectively details with examples from real students and their work. Skip that enormous Fountas & Pinnell tome, Guiding Readers and Writers, and spend an afternoon (as opposed to many months) reading this. Trust me: You will get more bang for your buck -- and time.
With the imminent release of the cinematic adaptation of Sutcliff’s ALA Notable Book - written way back in 1954 - I recently borrowed a copy from my neighborhood library so that I could be familiar with the original story first; knowing full well that a 21st century movie version would be more of an action film - or at least from the looks of the trailer with Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, as they cross swords with blue-body painted Picts in Roman-era Britain.
Unlike the hyperkinetic trailer, Sutcliff’s YA novel moves much more slowly, if not more gracefully. It relies less on fancy sword-play and more on character development and relationships. Although the Roman Empire was clearly stratified - with slaves, servants, freedmen, and oligarchs/aristocrats - Sutcliff manages to create very believable characters who are just as much victims of their circumstances as they are questioning of Roman assumptions. (Or at least on the part of her protagonist, Marcus Flavius Aquila, whom the reader is led to identify with.)
The plot here is basic enough: The eagle standard of the lost/disbanded Ninth Legion is rumored to still survive in the Scottish lowlands, and Marcus - the son of the Ninth’s late commander - sets out to retrieve it. (Viewers of the recent outstanding UK film Centurion will think that The Eagle is a rip-off, when in actuality the reverse is arguably the more correct assumption.) What ensues is just as much a physical journey into the hinterlands of Roman rule, but also a personal journey on Marcus’ part - as well as his slave-turned-freedman Esca.
How true the soon-to-be-released movie adaptation is to Sutcliff’s novel remains to be seen - and which from the looks of it appears to be partial. But this much is true: Sutcliff wrote two more books that follow this one. And from the strength of her writing as she captures a world long since passed, I can only imagine how good the other two will be.
Notebook Connections: Strategies for the Reader’s Notebook, by Aimee Buckner
Where her first book Notebook Know-How centered on the writer’s notebook, Buckner shifts her attention to the reader’s notebook, and how reading like a writer, and writing about that heightens both student interest and learning. In essence, all the mini-lessons and strategies she outlines reinforce the old adage of reading like a writer, and even its inverse, writing like a reader.
Although I’m personally a huge fan of her philosophy and pedagogy - in an ideal classroom, that is - I am wary of the overambitious and all-too-broad mini-lessons. Some may call it a whole language approach, which I believe does not adequately serve lower socio-economic and English language learners as effectively as intended and implemented per se. That is, the students she works with here are predominantly middle-class white kids in suburban Georgia. Not only is this a little acknowledged bias on her part, but also on the part of the publisher and the districts who buy this kind of book to give schools like mine, who serves lower-income Hispanic, black, white, and Asian Americans. As much as I love the kind of thinking that she details in this remarkable concise professional development tool, I have serious reservations. Do these exact strategies, as delivered as open-ended as she writes them, serve my students best? Case in point: The dearth of explicit vocabulary and grammar instruction does not address or lessen the vocabulary gap between my students and hers; which I would argue is necessary in order to help my students be on par with hers. That is, the best well-crafted strategy lessens can fall on deaf ears if they don’t have the academic vocabulary in the first place to understand what you’re talking about. In short, I would argue that my time and efforts are better spent reading tried-and-true pedagogy that addressees the very different needs to English language learners and those entering in our public school system whose vocabularies are significantly truncated the moment the walk in the Kindergarten door on day one of their K-12 education.
However, there are some gems that are useful here in these pages which transcend the socio-economic backgrounds of our nation’s students. One such is her Fab Five Summaries, which is singularly the best of its kind I’ve every come across. (And most teachers would readily admit that summaries are often the most monstrous of beasts that can turn kids into regurgitation machine with ten too many superfluous details, and which often don’t make much sense.)
And then there is her reprinting of Brian Cambourne’s Conditions of Learning - a theoretical model that combines many truisms that any teacher would agree with. However, I do have reservations in regards to how his conditions - all of which I agree with in theory - are limited by students’ socio-economic background. That is, the notions of expectations, responsibility, employment, and approximation can and are used in schools, but can be absent in their lives outside school; which in turn thwarts the best and well-intentioned efforts of teachers who serve lower socio-economic students, particularly if the latter come from generational (versus situational) poverty. What works in a school setting can looks completely useless for life at large for our hardest to reach kids, as their world does not operate by the same rules, assumptions, means, and ends.
Fortunately, Buckner’s book is an easy and enjoyable read, and its limitations do not detract from the genuinely high-quality and higher-thinking strategies that she effectively details with examples from real students and their work. Skip that enormous Fountas & Pinnell tome, Guiding Readers and Writers, and spend an afternoon (as opposed to many months) reading this. Trust me: You will get more bang for your buck -- and time.