Two Great Books, but Fighting Words in a Unanimous Decision

 

One of the joys and frustrations of The Mighty Smackdown is when we get two rich, but fundamentally different reading experiences, paired up in one round. Oh wait, that basically is a description of the Smackdown in most rounds, but it really smacked us in the face on this one. Our general consensus was that we all really enjoyed both Fighting Words and This Place and we were struck by what important - and even, perhaps, visionary - books they are in terms of creating a space for our kids to hear some under-represented - and maybe find their own - voices. 

 I think we were all smacking our lips at the prospect of teaching This Place, both as English teachers, where one could do a ton with the various modes of graphic storytelling, and in Social Studies where there are such profound connections to the curriculum, particularly at the junior high level. We were also very excited about getting Fighting Words into the hands of as many kids as possible - even though it actually wasn’t our choice to go through when we first read it last round - because we found it not only immensely readable, but also one of those books that would likely activate the sometimes dormant empathy chip in a wide range of students (again, particularly at the junior high level). A tough decision all around and we’d encourage you to find a space for multiple copies of both books in your classroom/office libraries, but, ultimately, Fighting Words was our choice to move on. We had a fairly nuanced discussion about this the other day, and I won’t hash all of that out, but I think that what it boiled down to for us is that the very nature of an anthology is that not every story is going to land for everyone and such was the case with This Place. That is also, however, one of its strengths as I know that there would be at least one,and probably many more, of these stories that would hit home for anyone. It sounds like we all savored This Place in bite sized morsels, befitting its form and structure, but Fighting Words had us reading right through because we wanted to see that things were going to be ok for these girls. I’m not sure either is a more or less powerful reading experience, but we ultimately thought that Fighting Words was probably the book that we would see more of our students connecting with independently and it was our choice to move through to the final round. 

As noted above, despite Fighting Words being our pick in this round, it actually wasn’t our pick in the previous round. Our Zombie pick (for all of us at SBS) is - to no one’s surprise if you read our blog last round- When The Ground is Hard.  We feel really fortunate to have been able to read these three great books in our last two rounds.