About a month ago, my middle school classes finished novel units. Eighth graders read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Not my favorite Holocaust book, but easy to read in class because of short chapters and lots of resources online. We then read a dramatized version of the Diary of Ann Frank, and a speech by Elie Wiesel given at the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I wanted to assign excerpts from Night and Man's Search for Meaning, but ran out of time. I would have liked to do The Book Thief, but they'll read that in high school, and I thought The Hiding Place might be too long.
Meanwhile, the 7th graders read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I thought I might decorate the room with art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but that didn't happen. I have yet to decorate a part of the room with a book's theme. If I stick with this next year, I might get around to that.
Konigsburg's book is another easy read, but Mrs. Frankweiler has some wise things to say. I wanted the students to focus on the theme that worth/value aren't always tied to monetary values, although it's easier for students to identify a theme of "family" (or maybe "family is important") or "secrets" (rather than "having a secret or mystery to solve gives us a sense of purpose") Clearly, we have more work to do to learn how to talk about theme. It's a hard element to teach because it is so difficult to articulate. Here is where my inexperience as a teacher is clear - teaching theme and classroom management...
At any rate, I remembered loving Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler as a preteen and, because of it, wanting to live in a museum, or at least visit the Met, but I had forgotten how wise some of the advice is. One of my favorite quotes is what Mrs. Frankweiler says to Claudia:
“I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside of you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It’s hollow."
I think I feel this way not infrequently these days. We take in a lot of information. Eventually it becomes numbing. I don't feel anything when I read the paper about wars and elections and protests. I still am irritated when I read about the race to develop new AIs by every tech whosit, all of which require obscene amounts of energy to power the data processing centers. What sense does it make to avoid using straws when these tech genius companies are building equipment that uses the equivalent amount of energy of thousands of homes a day - in the name of what improvement? AI may save time on some repetitive tasks, but the end result is a devaluation of human life and dignity.
Tangent there. I meant to comment instead how reading TOO much can lead to decision/action paralysis. When we have too many options, we no long know what to do. How do we make decisions about how to live life? In a related quote, Claudia reflects on how we should let life/vacations teach us something. It's these experiences and the memories and lessons we hold on to that make us who we are -that make us valuable to ourselves. They help us know what we value.
“The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you. It's the same as going on a vacation. Some people spend all their time on a vacation taking pictures so that when they get home they can show their friends evidence that they had a good time. They don't pause to let the vacation enter inside of them and take that home.”
At any rate, another thing I love about this book is the sibling relationships. Claudia and Jamie's sibling relationship really develops beautifully throughout the story. By sharing in such a memorable experience, they forge bonds and a collective memory that cements their relationship. Instead of being people who share a roof while they go about their individual pursuits, they become collaborators whose strengths complement each other. Claudia is the idea person. She dreams big and makes plans, although she is bad about saving money. However, Jamie, even though he isn't as good at planning ahead, is good at saving his dimes and nickels. He is frugral where Claudia loves her little luxuries. Together they are able to survive for a week on their own by budgeting for travel, food, and even laundry. Finding change in the fountain helps them subsist a little longer.
“What happened was: they became a team, a family of two. There had been times before they ran away when they acted like a team, but those were very different from feeling like a team. Becoming a team didn't mean the end of their arguments. But it did mean that the arguments became a part of the adventure, became discussions not threats. To an outsider the arguments would appear to be the same because feeling like part of a team is something that happens invisibly. You might call it caring. You could even call it love. And it is very rarely, indeed, that it happens to two people at the same time-- especially a brother and a sister who had always spent more time with activities than they had with each other.”
That was pretty astonishing to my students, some of whom are afraid to walk across the street by themselves (maybe exaggerating there...). I see excessive caution in my own kids - partly because I was afraid to let them roam out of fear of being turned in by the neighbors, as well as the bad guys we all hear too much about.
The book makes it clear that we need one another. Claudia knows she doesn't have enough money to run away by herself; she never really admits she would be lonely. But as the book goes on, it is clear that the adventure is better because it is shared. The siblings help each other avoid being caught, and they feed off each other's ideas while learning about Egyptian art and European decorative arts, like the big Renaissance era bed where they sleep. Their discovery of an angel statue that might be the work of Michaelangelo leads them on an adventure to discover its true providence, doing research at a library, and finally making their way to Mrs. Frankweiler's country estate to confront her, since she is the one who put the statue up to auction.
Mrs. Frankweiler makes them work for the answer, and in the process, they discover the truth about the statue. However, Mrs. Frankweiler convinces them that sometimes it is better to have a secret than to share all you know with the whole world.
This is a valuable perspective in today's show and tell all culture. People want to be known and loved, but Konigsburg's book illustrates how important it is to have confidence that you are worthy of being loved whether or not you receive public admiration. Claudia ran away because she was unappreciated at home, but her escapade does not teach her family to appreciate her more. What it teaches her is that she doesn't need appreciation to know she is valuable as a human being. She learns to be independent, to value learning, to value beauty, and to work collaboratively, as well. She finds worth in appreciating what she knows and what she is capable of learning. She realizes that the value of something is not necessarily the price tag or public adulation, but the value is related to the appreciation of one person. Claudia loves the statue because it is beautiful, and it speaks to her for some inexplicable reason. Learning more about it cause her to learn more about herself and her potential.
“Angel" became part of Claudia's story about finding herself, about how the greatest adventure lies not in running away but in looking inside, and the greatest discovery is not in finding out who made a statue but in finding out what makes you.”
I'm not sure all this came through to the 7th graders, but we did talk quite a bit about value and worth - they liked try to calculate costs in today's dollars. They appreciated that the two did so much with so little and that they were so responsible. And hopefully, just a smidge of that idea that you don't the world's approval to know you are worthy will stick with them.
https://cahughesbookreviews.com/2023/07/29/book-review-from-the-mixed-up-files-of-mrs-basil-e-frankweiler-by-e-l-konigsburg/
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