each kindness baby literary essay

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Book Review

Each kindness.

Title : Each Kindness Author: Jacqueline Woodson Illustrator : E.B. Lewis Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books; First Edition (October 2, 2012) ISBN: : 978-0399246524 Audience: 5 – 8 years, Kindergarten – 3

Summary : Maya is the new girl in Chloe’s class and she wants to make friends.  But Chloe isn’t interested in new friends, especially ones who look ragged and dress in second-hand clothes.  So Maya winds up playing alone, sitting by herself in the lunchroom, and keeping her head down.  Then one day she is gone and no one knows why.  When Chloe’s teacher gives a lesson about how even small acts of kindness can change the world, Chloe is stung by the opportunity that’s been lost.

Literary elements at work in the story : Using a story-within-a-story is a wonderful way to make a truth come to life and that is exactly what Woodson has done in this book.  Rather than call out the children’s behavior, the teacher uses a small stone and a bowl of water to show the ripple effect that our actions have on the greater community.  Another strong element of this book is that it is written in first person which draws in the reader to the range of emotions going on in Chloe’s mind as she shuns the new girl for no good reason and then realizes how her actions could have been different.

How does the perspective on gender/race/culture/economics make a difference to the story: The story is told from the perspective of a young girl which carries particular weight in a society where “mean girls” has unfortunately become something of a social status. While the specific age of the girls in the story isn’t given in words, the artwork shows girls that are in the middle years (grades 4-6) which is an exceptionally rough time in adolescent behavior.  Another interesting dynamic of this book is the artwork which is quite diverse in ethnicity yet reverses the historical roles.  Chloe is an African American girl and Maya is a Caucasian girl pointing out that bias and prejudice lives on both sides of the street.   Stereotypes play a large role in the formation of this story as Chloe and her friends notice Maya’s torn, ill-fitting clothing and broken shoe buckle and nickname her “Never New.”

Theological Conversation Partners: As the teacher drops a stone into the bowl of water, she says, “This is what kindness does; each little thing we do goes out, like a ripple, into the world” and I can just hear the Apostle Paul saying, “amen teacher!”  Paul was constantly encouraging the new Christians to “be kind to one another…live in love, as Christ loved…” (Ephesians 4:32-5:2) and even named kindness as one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and part of our “holy clothing” (Colossians 3:12-14).  Children need to hear these words and be encouraged to practice acts of kindness on a daily basis.  The lesson Chloe learned was an opportunity lost – a chance for kindness with Maya that was forever gone.  But perhaps the lesson for us with this book is to help children see and seize each opportunity to follow Christ’s new commandment to “love one another just as I have loved you.” (John 13:34)

Faith Talk Questions: 1.  Why do you think Chloe and her friends didn’t want to include Maya in their circle? 2.  How would you have been a friend to Maya?  How would you have been a friend to Chloe? 3.  Gather your family or a circle of friends around a bowl of water and practice the teacher’s lesson.  Drop a stone into the water and watch the ripples.  Let each person drop a stone into the water and tell one thing he/she has done to show kindness.  As each person tells something, affirm their actions by saying “we love, because God first loved us.” (I John 4:19) 4.  How will you avoid the hard lesson that Chloe learned?  How can you see opportunities for kindness and practice showing kindness to others? (I John 3:18)

This review was written by regular contributor Krista Lovell.

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By Emily Bazelon

• Oct. 12, 2012

Can a picture book actually teach children about kindness? Sure, the goal is worthy. Yet pushing a moral too hard takes the life out of a story and the energy out of an audience. In time for National Anti-Bullying Awareness Month, three new books nonetheless venture onto this tricky terrain.

“Each Kindness,” by the Newbery Honor-winning author Jacqueline Woodson (“After Tupac and D Foster,” “Feathers,” “Show Way”), has beautiful watercolors and prose, strong characters and a plot that pricks the conscience. Maya, the new girl in Chloe’s class, wants to be friends but she wears old dresses and eats odd food. “On that first day, Maya turned to me and smiled,” Chloe tells us. “But I didn’t smile back.” Chloe’s coldness persists as Maya tries to woo her over the weeks that follow, with offerings like jacks, a deck of cards, pick-up sticks and a tattered doll. Each time, Chloe and her friends refuse to play, giving Maya the nickname Never New for her secondhand clothes, and laughing while she jumps rope alone.

As I read this description to my ­7-year-old niece, my mind flashed to the hurt face of a sixth grader I interviewed for a book I’m writing on bullying. She looked down at her stained shirt as she related the embarrassing question an affluent, fashion-forward girl had asked her: “Where do you buy your clothes?” Woodson gets it right in conveying this small but corrosive cruelty.

I expected Woodson to show Chloe getting her act together. Instead, the day after she and her friends start calling Maya Never New, she sees their victim’s seat in class is empty. The teacher, meanwhile, asks each student to drop a stone into a bowl of water, think of a kind act they’ve done and watch the ripples fan out, as if into the world. Chloe can think of no act of kindness to contribute. She keeps trying in the pages that follow, but she doesn’t come up with one, and Maya doesn’t come back. And so the book ends on a note of missed opportunity and wistful regret.

This is pretty tough-minded for a children’s story. In “Yoko,” the beloved picture book by Rosemary Wells, a Japanese cat whose classmates mock her lunch (“Yuckorama!”) gets help when her teacher invites the class to International Food Day. Everyone brings a homey specialty, a raccoon named Timothy tries Yoko’s sushi and the next day they push their desks together to open a ­sushi-and-­sandwich restaurant. My sons asked to read “Yoko” over and over again when they were of picture-book age. By contrast, my young niece had to be coaxed into giving “Each Kindness” a second try. Still, precisely because the book is unflinching, I can imagine it doing good in the hands of a wise parent or teacher. It’s a junior companion to “The Hundred Dresses,” Eleanor Estes’s unforgettable 1944 classic about the closet full of clothes a poor girl imagines for herself, to her classmates’ consternation. By telling Maya’s story from Chloe’s vantage point, Woodson makes kids think about how failing to show empathy boomerangs.

I was less drawn to “Because Amelia Smiled.” David Ezra Stein’s crayon art is playful and vivid. But his story amounts to a takeoff on “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” without the mouse and his spirit of sly fun. Amelia is a little girl who smiles on her street in New York. A neighbor sees her and bakes a batch of cookies for her grandson in Mexico — and we are off around the globe, propelled from one happy act of good will to the next.

Stein (“Interrupting Chicken”) covers lots of diversity bases, with characters that include an African-American teacher, a Mexican kickboxer, a rumba queen in Israel, an ex-clown in Paris and a pizza maker back in New York. The book is an ode to the spread of good karma. The problem is that the traveling acts of kindness don’t add up to more than a loosely connected set of pleasant images. There’s nothing the least bit objectionable, but there’s also little that’s memorable. My audience of 3- to 7-year-olds followed along for the most part, but they weren’t sure who was who or why they should care, even when the journey circled back to Amelia. To succeed, a picture book has to offer something or someone to laugh at, or root for or struggle alongside.

“The Forgiveness Garden,” the made-up origin story for a real garden planted in Beirut after the Lebanese civil war, goes for struggle. The author, Lauren Thompson (“One Starry Night,” “Polar Bear Night”), imagines a long-simmering conflict between two villages, Vayam and Gamte, the kind in which no one remembers the cause. When a Gamte boy, Karune, throws a stone that hits a Vayam girl, Sama, his act of violence stirs calls for vengeance. The book’s biblical tone does not shy away from words like revenge and hatred. When Sama is handed a stone to throw at Karune, she looks at the villagers around her and sees “their faces were like hers had been, hardened with anger and fear and hate.”

Sama takes the turn toward compassion that Chloe did not. She throws her stone to the ground and proposes the construction of a forgiveness garden. Villagers from both sides slowly join her, piling up stones to build a garden wall. They ask Sama questions familiar to any truth and reconciliation committee: “Must we forget all that has happened?” “Must we apologize?” Sama says the garden will help them find the answers, a response that’s a little gauzy, but age-appropriate for the book’s intended audience. When it comes time to step into the garden, it is Karune who joins Sama. “They began to talk,” Thompson writes. “What do you think they said?”

That feels like the right open-ended conclusion. I can see “The Forgiveness Garden” resonating especially with children in war-torn or conflict-ridden communities. It opens a door to peacemaking and invites children to imagine for themselves what’s on the other side. And isn’t that often the first step toward kindness?

EACH KINDNESS

By Jacqueline Woodson

Illustrated by E. B. Lewis

32 pp. Nancy Paulsen Books. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 9)

BECAUSE AMELIA SMILED

Written and illustrated by David Ezra Stein

40 pp. Candlewick Press. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 6)

THE FORGIVENESS GARDEN

By Lauren Thompson

Illustrated by Christy Hale

32 pp. Feiwel & Friends. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 9)

Emily Bazelon is a senior editor at Slate and author of “Sticks and Stones,” a book about bullying coming out in February.

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Each Kindness

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Each Kindness:  Chloe and her friends won't play with the new girl, Maya. Every time Maya tries to join Chloe and her friends, they reject her.

Each kindness makes the world a little better.

This unforgettable book is written and illustrated by the award-winning team that created  The Other Side  and the Caldecott Honor winner  Coming On Home Soon . With its powerful anti-bullying message and striking art, it will resonate with readers long after they’ve put it down.

Chloe and her friends won’t play with the new girl, Maya. Every time Maya tries to join Chloe and her friends, they reject her. Eventually Maya stops coming to school. When Chloe’s teacher gives a lesson about how even small acts of kindness can change the world, Chloe is stung by the lost opportunity for friendship, and thinks about how much better it could have been if she’d shown a little kindness toward Maya.

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12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays

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• Page ID 40514

• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.

While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
• What is the main idea or topic sentence of each body paragraph, and how does it relate back to the thesis statement?
• Where and how does each essay use evidence (quotes or paraphrase from the literature)?
• What are some of the literary devices or structures the essays analyze or discuss?
• How does each author structure their conclusion, and how does their conclusion differ from their introduction?

Example 1: Poetry

Victoria Morillo

Instructor Heather Ringo

3 August 2022

How Nguyen’s Structure Solidifies the Impact of Sexual Violence in “The Study”

Stripped of innocence, your body taken from you. No matter how much you try to block out the instance in which these two things occurred, memories surface and come back to haunt you. How does a person, a young boy , cope with an event that forever changes his life? Hieu Minh Nguyen deconstructs this very way in which an act of sexual violence affects a survivor. In his poem, “The Study,” the poem's speaker recounts the year in which his molestation took place, describing how his memory filters in and out. Throughout the poem, Nguyen writes in free verse, permitting a structural liberation to become the foundation for his message to shine through. While he moves the readers with this poignant narrative, Nguyen effectively conveys the resulting internal struggles of feeling alone and unseen.

The speaker recalls his experience with such painful memory through the use of specific punctuation choices. Just by looking at the poem, we see that the first period doesn’t appear until line 14. It finally comes after the speaker reveals to his readers the possible, central purpose for writing this poem: the speaker's molestation. In the first half, the poem makes use of commas, em dashes, and colons, which lends itself to the idea of the speaker stringing along all of these details to make sense of this time in his life. If reading the poem following the conventions of punctuation, a sense of urgency is present here, as well. This is exemplified by the lack of periods to finalize a thought; and instead, Nguyen uses other punctuation marks to connect them. Serving as another connector of thoughts, the two em dashes give emphasis to the role memory plays when the speaker discusses how “no one [had] a face” during that time (Nguyen 9-11). He speaks in this urgent manner until the 14th line, and when he finally gets it off his chest, the pace of the poem changes, as does the more frequent use of the period. This stream-of-consciousness-like section when juxtaposed with the latter half of the poem, causes readers to slow down and pay attention to the details. It also splits the poem in two: a section that talks of the fogginess of memory then transitions into one that remembers it all.

In tandem with the fluctuating nature of memory, the utilization of line breaks and word choice help reflect the damage the molestation has had. Within the first couple of lines of the poem, the poem demands the readers’ attention when the line breaks from “floating” to “dead” as the speaker describes his memory of Little Billy (Nguyen 1-4). This line break averts the readers’ expectation of the direction of the narrative and immediately shifts the tone of the poem. The break also speaks to the effect his trauma has ingrained in him and how “[f]or the longest time,” his only memory of that year revolves around an image of a boy’s death. In a way, the speaker sees himself in Little Billy; or perhaps, he’s representative of the tragic death of his boyhood, how the speaker felt so “dead” after enduring such a traumatic experience, even referring to himself as a “ghost” that he tries to evict from his conscience (Nguyen 24). The feeling that a part of him has died is solidified at the very end of the poem when the speaker describes himself as a nine-year-old boy who’s been “fossilized,” forever changed by this act (Nguyen 29). By choosing words associated with permanence and death, the speaker tries to recreate the atmosphere (for which he felt trapped in) in order for readers to understand the loneliness that came as a result of his trauma. With the assistance of line breaks, more attention is drawn to the speaker's words, intensifying their importance, and demanding to be felt by the readers.

Most importantly, the speaker expresses eloquently, and so heartbreakingly, about the effect sexual violence has on a person. Perhaps what seems to be the most frustrating are the people who fail to believe survivors of these types of crimes. This is evident when he describes “how angry” the tenants were when they filled the pool with cement (Nguyen 4). They seem to represent how people in the speaker's life were dismissive of his assault and who viewed his tragedy as a nuisance of some sorts. This sentiment is bookended when he says, “They say, give us details , so I give them my body. / They say, give us proof , so I give them my body,” (Nguyen 25-26). The repetition of these two lines reinforces the feeling many feel in these scenarios, as they’re often left to deal with trying to make people believe them, or to even see them.

It’s important to recognize how the structure of this poem gives the speaker space to express the pain he’s had to carry for so long. As a characteristic of free verse, the poem doesn’t follow any structured rhyme scheme or meter; which in turn, allows him to not have any constraints in telling his story the way he wants to. The speaker has the freedom to display his experience in a way that evades predictability and engenders authenticity of a story very personal to him. As readers, we abandon anticipating the next rhyme, and instead focus our attention to the other ways, like his punctuation or word choice, in which he effectively tells his story. The speaker recognizes that some part of him no longer belongs to himself, but by writing “The Study,” he shows other survivors that they’re not alone and encourages hope that eventually, they will be freed from the shackles of sexual violence.

Works Cited

Nguyen, Hieu Minh. “The Study” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets, Coffee House Press, 2018, https://poets.org/poem/study-0 .

Example 2: Fiction

Todd Goodwin

Professor Stan Matyshak

Advanced Expository Writing

Sept. 17, 20—

Poe’s “Usher”: A Mirror of the Fall of the House of Humanity

Right from the outset of the grim story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe enmeshes us in a dark, gloomy, hopeless world, alienating his characters and the reader from any sort of physical or psychological norm where such values as hope and happiness could possibly exist. He fatalistically tells the story of how a man (the narrator) comes from the outside world of hope, religion, and everyday society and tries to bring some kind of redeeming happiness to his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, who not only has physically and psychologically wasted away but is entrapped in a dilapidated house of ever-looming terror with an emaciated and deranged twin sister. Roderick Usher embodies the wasting away of what once was vibrant and alive, and his house of “insufferable gloom” (273), which contains his morbid sister, seems to mirror or reflect this fear of death and annihilation that he most horribly endures. A close reading of the story reveals that Poe uses mirror images, or reflections, to contribute to the fatalistic theme of “Usher”: each reflection serves to intensify an already prevalent tone of hopelessness, darkness, and fatalism.

It could be argued that the house of Roderick Usher is a “house of mirrors,” whose unpleasant and grim reflections create a dark and hopeless setting. For example, the narrator first approaches “the melancholy house of Usher on a dark and soundless day,” and finds a building which causes him a “sense of insufferable gloom,” which “pervades his spirit and causes an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an undiscerned dreariness of thought” (273). The narrator then optimistically states: “I reflected that a mere different arrangement of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression” (274). But the narrator then sees the reflection of the house in the tarn and experiences a “shudder even more thrilling than before” (274). Thus the reader begins to realize that the narrator cannot change or stop the impending doom that will befall the house of Usher, and maybe humanity. The story cleverly plays with the word reflection : the narrator sees a physical reflection that leads him to a mental reflection about Usher’s surroundings.

The narrator’s disillusionment by such grim reflection continues in the story. For example, he describes Roderick Usher’s face as distinct with signs of old strength but lost vigor: the remains of what used to be. He describes the house as a once happy and vibrant place, which, like Roderick, lost its vitality. Also, the narrator describes Usher’s hair as growing wild on his rather obtrusive head, which directly mirrors the eerie moss and straw covering the outside of the house. The narrator continually longs to see these bleak reflections as a dream, for he states: “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building” (276). He does not want to face the reality that Usher and his home are doomed to fall, regardless of what he does.

Although there are almost countless examples of these mirror images, two others stand out as important. First, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, are twins. The narrator aptly states just as he and Roderick are entombing Madeline that there is “a striking similitude between brother and sister” (288). Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. Madeline is fading away psychologically and physically, and Roderick is not too far behind! The reflection of “doom” that these two share helps intensify and symbolize the hopelessness of the entire situation; thus, they further develop the fatalistic theme. Second, in the climactic scene where Madeline has been mistakenly entombed alive, there is a pairing of images and sounds as the narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading him a romance story. Events in the story simultaneously unfold with events of the sister escaping her tomb. In the story, the hero breaks out of the coffin. Then, in the story, the dragon’s shriek as he is slain parallels Madeline’s shriek. Finally, the story tells of the clangor of a shield, matched by the sister’s clanging along a metal passageway. As the suspense reaches its climax, Roderick shrieks his last words to his “friend,” the narrator: “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door” (296).

Roderick, who slowly falls into insanity, ironically calls the narrator the “Madman.” We are left to reflect on what Poe means by this ironic twist. Poe’s bleak and dark imagery, and his use of mirror reflections, seem only to intensify the hopelessness of “Usher.” We can plausibly conclude that, indeed, the narrator is the “Madman,” for he comes from everyday society, which is a place where hope and faith exist. Poe would probably argue that such a place is opposite to the world of Usher because a world where death is inevitable could not possibly hold such positive values. Therefore, just as Roderick mirrors his sister, the reflection in the tarn mirrors the dilapidation of the house, and the story mirrors the final actions before the death of Usher. “The Fall of the House of Usher” reflects Poe’s view that humanity is hopelessly doomed.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library . 1995. Web. 1 July 2012. < http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PoeFall.html >.

Example 3: Poetry

Amy Chisnell

Professor Laura Neary

Writing and Literature

April 17, 20—

Don’t Listen to the Egg!: A Close Reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” (Carroll 164)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass , Humpty Dumpty confidently translates (to a not so confident Alice) the complicated language of the poem “Jabberwocky.” The words of the poem, though nonsense, aptly tell the story of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Upon finding “Jabberwocky” on a table in the looking-glass room, Alice is confused by the strange words. She is quite certain that “ somebody killed something ,” but she does not understand much more than that. When later she encounters Humpty Dumpty, she seizes the opportunity at having the knowledgeable egg interpret—or translate—the poem. Since Humpty Dumpty professes to be able to “make a word work” for him, he is quick to agree. Thus he acts like a New Critic who interprets the poem by performing a close reading of it. Through Humpty’s interpretation of the first stanza, however, we see the poem’s deeper comment concerning the practice of interpreting poetry and literature in general—that strict analytical translation destroys the beauty of a poem. In fact, Humpty Dumpty commits the “heresy of paraphrase,” for he fails to understand that meaning cannot be separated from the form or structure of the literary work.

Of the 71 words found in “Jabberwocky,” 43 have no known meaning. They are simply nonsense. Yet through this nonsensical language, the poem manages not only to tell a story but also gives the reader a sense of setting and characterization. One feels, rather than concretely knows, that the setting is dark, wooded, and frightening. The characters, such as the Jubjub bird, the Bandersnatch, and the doomed Jabberwock, also appear in the reader’s head, even though they will not be found in the local zoo. Even though most of the words are not real, the reader is able to understand what goes on because he or she is given free license to imagine what the words denote and connote. Simply, the poem’s nonsense words are the meaning.

Therefore, when Humpty interprets “Jabberwocky” for Alice, he is not doing her any favors, for he actually misreads the poem. Although the poem in its original is constructed from nonsense words, by the time Humpty is done interpreting it, it truly does not make any sense. The first stanza of the original poem is as follows:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

An the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 164)

If we replace, however, the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky” with Humpty’s translated words, the effect would be something like this:

’Twas four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe and slimy badger-lizard-corkscrew creatures

Did go round and round and make holes in the grass-plot round the sun-dial:

All flimsy and miserable were the shabby-looking birds

with mop feathers,

And the lost green pigs bellowed-sneezed-whistled.

By translating the poem in such a way, Humpty removes the charm or essence—and the beauty, grace, and rhythm—from the poem. The poetry is sacrificed for meaning. Humpty Dumpty commits the heresy of paraphrase. As Cleanth Brooks argues, “The structure of a poem resembles that of a ballet or musical composition. It is a pattern of resolutions and balances and harmonizations” (203). When the poem is left as nonsense, the reader can easily imagine what a “slithy tove” might be, but when Humpty tells us what it is, he takes that imaginative license away from the reader. The beauty (if that is the proper word) of “Jabberwocky” is in not knowing what the words mean, and yet understanding. By translating the poem, Humpty takes that privilege from the reader. In addition, Humpty fails to recognize that meaning cannot be separated from the structure itself: the nonsense poem reflects this literally—it means “nothing” and achieves this meaning by using “nonsense” words.

Furthermore, the nonsense words Carroll chooses to use in “Jabberwocky” have a magical effect upon the reader; the shadowy sound of the words create the atmosphere, which may be described as a trance-like mood. When Alice first reads the poem, she says it seems to fill her head “with ideas.” The strange-sounding words in the original poem do give one ideas. Why is this? Even though the reader has never heard these words before, he or she is instantly aware of the murky, mysterious mood they set. In other words, diction operates not on the denotative level (the dictionary meaning) but on the connotative level (the emotion(s) they evoke). Thus “Jabberwocky” creates a shadowy mood, and the nonsense words are instrumental in creating this mood. Carroll could not have simply used any nonsense words.

For example, let us change the “dark,” “ominous” words of the first stanza to “lighter,” more “comic” words:

’Twas mearly, and the churly pells

Did bimble and ringle in the tink;

All timpy were the brimbledimps,

And the bip plips outlink.

Shifting the sounds of the words from dark to light merely takes a shift in thought. To create a specific mood using nonsense words, one must create new words from old words that convey the desired mood. In “Jabberwocky,” Carroll mixes “slimy,” a grim idea, “lithe,” a pliable image, to get a new adjective: “slithy” (a portmanteau word). In this translation, brighter words were used to get a lighter effect. “Mearly” is a combination of “morning” and “early,” and “ringle” is a blend of “ring” and "dingle.” The point is that “Jabberwocky’s” nonsense words are created specifically to convey this shadowy or mysterious mood and are integral to the “meaning.”

Consequently, Humpty’s rendering of the poem leaves the reader with a completely different feeling than does the original poem, which provided us with a sense of ethereal mystery, of a dark and foreign land with exotic creatures and fantastic settings. The mysteriousness is destroyed by Humpty’s literal paraphrase of the creatures and the setting; by doing so, he has taken the beauty away from the poem in his attempt to understand it. He has committed the heresy of paraphrase: “If we allow ourselves to be misled by it [this heresy], we distort the relation of the poem to its ‘truth’… we split the poem between its ‘form’ and its ‘content’” (Brooks 201). Humpty Dumpty’s ultimate demise might be seen to symbolize the heretical split between form and content: as a literary creation, Humpty Dumpty is an egg, a well-wrought urn of nonsense. His fall from the wall cracks him and separates the contents from the container, and not even all the King’s men can put the scrambled egg back together again!

Through the odd characters of a little girl and a foolish egg, “Jabberwocky” suggests a bit of sage advice about reading poetry, advice that the New Critics built their theories on. The importance lies not solely within strict analytical translation or interpretation, but in the overall effect of the imagery and word choice that evokes a meaning inseparable from those literary devices. As Archibald MacLeish so aptly writes: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Sometimes it takes a little nonsense to show us the sense in something.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . 1942. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in Wonderland . 2nd ed. Ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry . Ed. David Lehman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 385–86. Print.

Attribution

• Sample Essay 1 received permission from Victoria Morillo to publish, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 )
• Sample Essays 2 and 3 adapted from Cordell, Ryan and John Pennington. "2.5: Student Sample Papers" from Creating Literary Analysis. 2012. Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 )

Picture Books

Each Kindness

Illustrated by eb lewis.

A new girl comes to school and tries to make friends. When Chloe, the narrator, is unkind, the girl keeps trying. And then the girl is gone and Chloe is left only with the memory of her unkindness.

Where it takes place:

This story could take place anywhere.

Where I wrote it:

In Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Why I wrote it:

At some point in our lives, we are all unkind. At some point, we are all treated unkindly. I wanted to understand this more. I think too often we believe we’ll have a second chance at kindness – and sometimes we don’t. I do believe, as Chloe’s teacher, Ms. Albert, says, that everything we do goes out, like a ripple into the world. I wrote this because I believe in kindness.

• Bank Street Best Book
• Best Book of 2012 – School Library Journal
• Charlotte Zolotow Award
• Coretta Scott King Honor Book
• 2013 Jane Addams Peace Award
• 2013 Charlotte Zolotow Award
• Jane Addams Children’s Book Award (from the Jane Addams Peace Association)
• Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2013

State Lists

• The Magnolia Book Awards Master List 2015 (Mississippi)
• Illinois Monarch Award Master List 2015
• Grand Canyon Reader Award nominee list (AZ)
• Kansas (nominee)
• 2014 Kentucky Bluegrass Award nominee
• Maryland (nominee)
• Show Me Readers Award nominee (Missouri Association of School Librarians Awards)
• Nebraska Golden Sower Awards (nominee)
• North Carolina (nominee)
• Flicker Tail (ND) Children’s Book Award (nominee)
• Keystone (PA) to Reading Book Award (nominee)
• Buckaroo Book Award nominee (Wyoming Library Association Book Awards)
• The World Belonged to Us The World Belonged to Us
• The Year We Learned to Fly The Year We Learned to Fly
• The Day You Begin The Day You Begin
• This Is the Rope This Is the Rope
• Each Kindness Each Kindness
• Pecan Pie Baby Pecan Pie Baby
• Coming On Home Soon Coming On Home Soon
• Show Way Show Way
• The Other Side The Other Side
• Sweet, Sweet Memory Sweet, Sweet Memory
• Our Gracie Aunt Our Gracie Aunt
• Visiting Day Visiting Day

Middle Grade/Young Adult

Adult books, educational guide, social links:.

Jacqueline Woodson

I Will Always Write Back

Caitlin alifirenka, martin ganda, and liz welch, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

I Will Always Write Back is a story about how acts of kindness and generosity can change a life—in particular the lives of the authors, long-distance pen pals Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda . The kind deeds that Caitlin and Martin do for each other start small but escalate over the course of the book. Caitlin (who is American) begins their correspondence by doing research about Zimbabwe (where Martin is from), going above and beyond what her teacher requires her to do. For instance, as the two begin writing to each other more regularly, Martin makes sacrifices to please Caitlin, working to pay for stamps and getting an expensive photo taken of himself that he can send to her. These are both difficult tasks due to Martin’s family’s poverty and the unstable political situation in Zimbabwe, but exchanging letters and photos brings them closer together and serves as the foundation for what becomes a lifelong friendship.

As their friendship deepens, Caitlin realizes how difficult life is for Martin and his family. She feels guilty that her parents can afford to buy her a car and that she eats chicken on weeknights, whereas Martin’s family can barely afford to pay for a small shack to live in, and they only eat chicken on Christmas, if then. Caitlin decides to start sending over money that she’s earned through babysitting. This money, which is a relatively small sacrifice for Caitlin, changes Martin’s whole world, at one point even helping Martin’s mother survive malaria. By the end of the memoir, Caitlin has convinced others to extend kindness and generosity to Martin too—not just her whole family, but even people outside her family (like the staff at the U.S. embassy in Zimbabwe and the president of Villanova University), who all help fulfill Martin’s dream of studying at an American university. Martin repays this kindness by always writing back to Caitlin, no matter how difficult it is, and by doing his best in school so that he’ll one day get to meet her and thank her in person. Caitlin, Martin, and their co-author Liz Welch depict how small acts of kindness can have a big impact, laying the groundwork for larger acts of kindness later and even forming a basis for lifelong relationships. They show that while it may not be possible for individuals to solve large-scale problems like poverty and political instability, it is still possible for individuals to effect real change through kindness, and this kindness may end up being “contagious.”

Kindness and Generosity ThemeTracker

Kindness and Generosity Quotes in I Will Always Write Back

I’d never heard of Zimbabwe. But something about the way the name looked on the blackboard intrigued me. It was exotic, and difficult to pronounce.

When I unfolded the letter, a small snapshot fell onto my desk.

I could not believe my pen pal would send me something so precious. Photos are very rare and quite expensive in Zimbabwe.

The next evening, with a full belly, I wrote Caitlin a letter. I thanked her for the very generous dollar bill and told her I would send her something in return soon. I considered sending her a Zimbabwean dollar but knew that was one day’s worth of sadza. So instead, I made the only promise that I knew I could keep: that I would always write back, no matter what.

It was strange, because even though we had never met, Martin was the only person I felt I could be totally honest with. I never worried that he would judge or tease. On the contrary, I could tell Martin whatever was happening in my life, knowing he’d always take my side, no matter what.

A lesser man may have been threatened by Caitlin’s generosity. Here was a fourteen-year-old girl sending us more money than my father made in several months. My father only had love and respect for Caitlin. Her letters had always been precious to me. Now they were also crucial to my whole family. We were on a ship that was sinking, huddled at the tip before it went under. Caitlin’s gift was a lifeboat.

My mother was afraid to keep this much money in our house. It made us a target in these difficult times.

Reading that letter brought tears to my eyes. He was so proud. He had never asked me for help. Asking my parents for help was probably one of the hardest things for him to have to do. He did not want to burden me. He knew that I would get sick worrying about him in such need. But there it was, written on paper, a huge SOS. My parents knew I had a pen pal in Zimbabwe, but they did not know how close we had become. That evening, I decided to tell them everything. It was the only way I could truly help Martin.

And then, like magic, a letter arrived.

This one, however, had been ripped and taped back up in a crude way. Someone had written in capital letters INSPECTED FOR CONTRABAND across Caitlin’s beautiful penmanship. It felt like a violation.

Thanks to Caitlin, we ate chicken for Christmas that year, a miracle considering what our friends and neighbors were experiencing. In Zimbabwe, if you have food, you share it, so our neighbors ate chicken with us.

Thank you for your effort, love, and time. Thank you for the shoes you gave us. My mom, I repeat, is now counted as a human in society.

Hours later, a nurse confirmed it was malaria—thankfully not cerebral. She needed IV fluids immediately. She was so dehydrated that she was at risk of dying without them. But the hospital couldn’t afford to supply any medicine. Instead, the nurse told us what we needed, and then we had to secure it.

“There is a man outside wearing a blue shirt,” she said. “He sells IVs.”

I was surprised to receive a letter from Caitlin’s mom. In it she offered to help me navigate the complicated American college admission process. I was so happy to hear this. It was further proof that Caitlin was not the only angel in this family.

Anne asked me if I had ever heard of the SATs. I had, in fact, because my good friend Wallace had taken them earlier that year. He, too, was planning to go to school in the States that September.

The first line of the email was like rocket fuel:

We are pleased to offer you a full scholarship beginning with the 2003-2004 academic year.

It propelled me from my seat. The breath I’d been holding for the past few months came barreling out of my mouth as I shouted, “Yesssssss!”

I felt Caitlin squeeze my hand, and I squeezed back. After six years of imagining what it would be like to see her, to hug her, to hear her laugh, to hold her hand, here she was, my best friend from afar, now standing right next to me.

Watching him exchange vows with Caitlin earlier that day, I got a bit choked up. Caitlin and I had already shared so many milestones—and still have many ahead. I did not know then that I would go on to do my MBA at Duke, or that Caitlin would finish her nursing degree, as she had planned since she was sixteen or give birth to a beautiful baby girl. All I knew was that we both had witnessed so many of each other’s dreams come true.

I have no idea what any of these young people will do with the emotions our story stirred in each of them—but I am excited by the possibilities. It’s why I wanted to write this book.

Kindness is contagious. It changes lives. It changed mine. What will it do for you?

Each Kindness Comprehension Test

Description

Correlates to the picture book Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson.

3rd grade Lucy Calkins Baby Literary Essay Unit.

8 higher-level thinking questions.

Questions & Answers

Jenne brauchle.

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