The mission seemed jinxed from the start and nothing could have prepared the team for the challenge of being stranded in earth’s orbit after the destruction of the shuttle Columbia and its crew. Finding a way home was a herculean feat of teamwork on and off the planet.
Out of gratitude for the poet’s art form, Newbery Award–winning author and poet Kwame Alexander, along with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth, present original poems that pay homage to twenty famed poets who have made the authors’ hearts sing and their minds wonder. Stunning mixed-media images by Ekua Holmes, winner of a Caldecott Honor and a John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award, complete the celebration and invite the reader to listen, wonder, and perhaps even pick up a pen.
This young people’s version of the adult bestseller, Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to Make a Difference, is a complex and inspirational story about the Fugees, a youth soccer team in Clarkson, Georgia made up of diverse refugees from around the world, and their formidable female coach, Luma Mufleh. The author explores how the community changed with the influx of refugees and how the dedication of Luma Mufleh and the entire Fugees soccer team inspired an entire community.
Thematic pairings of novels/short stories with movies can help students access difficult texts and can lead to deeper comprehension and lively classroom discussion. This article suggests pairings for some commonly assigned middle and high school texts.