Reading Application Four Jacob Jonas University of Missouri, Kansas City GECRT-AH 103, Children’s Literature and the Arts Dr. Hillary McNeil June 30, 2024 Reading Application Four For this week’s reading application, I chose two books that represent something I can identify with, and the other is something I do not identify with. A book I chose from the list of realistic fiction that I identify with is Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson. The plot of the book tells the story of a young girl named Maya who moves to a new school. On the first day of class, she was introduced to her classmates and immediately they were dismissing her and ignoring her. Maya’s smiles would not be returned by the narrator of the story or her friends in class. The …show more content…
Parts of the story that do not reflect myself or my experiences include the gender of the student, myself being a male, and the parents moving away from the school due to their child’s dissatisfaction with her classmates. My adopted family did not care about the bullying I endured, so I was forced to shut myself off and find other ways to entertain myself, including books at school and video games at home. The story itself does contribute to a point made that many stories are “also found to be lacking the structure of the American economic system including social institutions, education, and business as well as how these structures can perpetuate generational poverty” (Kelley and Darragh, 2011 p.266). For the book I see as a window, I selected Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman. The plot of the book is a young black girl named Grace who has an active imagination and sees herself as the protagonist in her adventures. She plays an important character in many stories, including Aladdin, Anasi the Spider, and Joan of Arc. Grace’s desire to be a protagonist in these stories leads to a point where her school is putting on a performance of Peter Pan, and she wishes to play the role of the main character, Peter. The other students try to prevent her from taking the role, as Peter is a white male character, and