Keith’s response describes how he was transformed as a reader while reading about Kek’s immigration experiences. Through their conversation, they explore the themes and issues that were relevant to them, and make connections to our professional readings on the importance of global literature for considering multiple perspectives. They document Kek’s emotions and feelings in the novel, as well as pose questions about his acculturation process in the U.S. Michele and Keith selected to create a Cultural X-Ray for their initial response to the story. We feel his pain as he remembers his life before the “men with guns,” and we befriend a cow, when Kek meets Gol.įrom our literature discussion in class, this week Keith and Michele share their personal response to Home of the Brave, and their ideas for how to make use of this novel to foster intercultural understandings in the elementary classroom. We are with him as he descends from the “flying boat,” the plane that brought him to his new life, and we witness when he sees snow for the first time. Applegate’s creative use of figurative language invites the reader to live through Kek’s experiences. In this unforgettable story of hopefulness and resilience, Applegate makes use of spare free verse to tell Kek’s immigration story. Unaware of her mother’s whereabouts, Kek joins his aunt and cousin in the U.S., and begins a memorable journey into learning to live in a different culture and in a different language.
In this story, we meet Kek, an 11-year-old refugee boy from Sudan, who is relocated to Minnesota escaping the civil war in his country, after witnessing the death of his father and brother. This is the third book in the text set I created focusing on Global Explorations in verse for my children’s literature graduate course. Our writing for this week will take us to explore Home of the Brave, by Katherine Applegate (2008).
By Andrea García, Keith Donnelly, and Michele McGuinness, Hofstra University.
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