Dear Martin

This has been on my TBR list for winter break and I just finished it now because sometimes, work, school observations, commissioner duties, and watching grandkids gets in my way of reading, but I am glad I finally carved out time to read this, it is fabulous and wrenching, hopeful and sorrowful - - the whole package.

Description:

Justyce McAllister is a good kid, an honor student, and always there to help a friend—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. Despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can't escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates.

Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out.

Then comes the day Justyce goes driving with his best friend, Manny, windows rolled down, music turned up—way up, sparking the fury of a white off-duty cop beside them. Words fly. Shots are fired. Justyce and Manny are caught in the crosshairs. In the media fallout, it's Justyce who is under attack.

My Thoughts:

Teri Lesesne wrote a book called Reading Ladders  that basically talks about a way to start with what students are interested in and "rung by rung" connect students from their preference to more complex reading. I would like to say the Dear Martin is a rung to lead to The Hate U Give, however, I don't think it is a rung, I think it is a parallel scaffold to talk about social injustice, racism, finding a voice and literature as a catalyst for social activism.

Dear Martin, with the male protagonist is more in tune with the struggling male reader that I try to reach. I know that some classrooms are already using THUG as a class novel, but one of the reasons why I do not believe in the class novel is that for struggling readers, it just teaches them how to "not read" and still get the work done. For readers that devour the book, the pace of doing one book, chapter by chapter over a month just kills the aesthetic enjoyment of the book. Martin should sit next to a book like THUG as an alternative reading, an excerpted mentor text, and a way to talk about similar issues through different voices.