Cristina James, of The Benjamin School, explained how they started inviting authors for literary events and how they get the most impact from this program.
Would you tell us a bit about your program? For instance how long has The Benjamin School been hosting author events, how did it get started, and how have you seen it change since your involvement with it?
I have been the Curriculum Coordinator at The Benjamin School since 2010, and I have been an English Literature teacher here since 2004. We didn’t actually seek to have a program of visiting authors, but I suppose at this point we have unintentionally fostered one. My colleague and the English Department Chair, Kathleen Devine, first brought Mary Murphy to the school. She wrote a seminal biography about Harper Lee entitled Hey Boo, and as we always read To Kill A Mockingbird and wanted the book to really come alive for the students, this visit was groundbreaking. It inspired us to bring the entire 8th grade who are now rising seniors to Monroeville, Alabama to see where Harper Lee was born and to see the annual play of To Kill A Mockingbird that locals perform at the actual courthouse in the novel. We also were actually able to send Ms.Lee a packet of letters written by our 8th grade students. Each student assumed the role and voice of a character from the novel and wrote to Ms.Lee about what they thought of her. The curator of the Harper Lee/Mockingbird museum which is ensconced in the courthouse where Atticus would have defended Tom Robinson in Monroeville said they never deliver such things to the renowned author, but they made an exception because the quality of our work was so heartfelt. Bringing books to life for our students became a passion after that. I guess we were also inspired by the novel Old School by Tobias Wolff which chronicles the experiences of a young man who attends a private boarding school. The school in the novel hosts famous authors like Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway, and the students vie to write the best piece of short fiction in order to win an audience with these famous authors. While I am not going to be able to exhume Rand or Hemingway to come to our school, my partnership over the past few years with Books in Common and Christie Hinrichs in particular has made it possible for us to have our Middle School students meet authors whose books they read.
The Benjamin School (with the help of Books In Common) has hosted Garth Stein and Sonia Nazario the last two years, with Michael Hingson secured for the fall. Can you tell us a bit about how these events went, and the kind of programming you incorporated?
When Garth Stein was slated to come to our school to talk about Racing in the Rain (the young reader adaption of The Art of Racing in the Rain) I knew that I wanted this author visit to have real resonance for our students, faculty, and parents, more resonance than would come from simply having the 7th grade read Mr. Stein’s book prior to his arrival. So, Mrs. Devine’s and my 7th graders dug our heels in! We not only read the book, we analyzed it and read canonical texts to which Stein’s text might be juxtaposed. For instance, driving, the authority to use one’s hands, and being in the driver’s seat are all related and relevant motifs in Stein’s novel, so the 7th grade read James Thurber’s short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in which the title character is henpecked by his backseat driver wife who will not even allow him the autonomy to wear his gloves when he wants to. Stein’s Denny and Thurber’s Mitty have so much in common. We also read Hard on the Gas, a poem by Janet Wong which opens with the speaker reflecting on his or her grandfather: “My grandfather taught himself to drive/rough, the way he learned to live.” Analyzing this poem allowed us to understand that Denny in Racing could only understand life when he drove, and thus he needed to drive to become the person he needed to become for his daughter. We also investigated Stein’s biography and learned that he had produced an Academy Award winning short film in 1989 called The Lunch Date, and we watched this film and analyzed its brilliant commentary on race in the US. We also learned that Stein’s sister had undergone significant surgery to help with her epileptic seizures and that Stein had chronicled her journey in a documentary entitled When Your Head’s Not a Head, It’s a Nut. We were able to learn from this documentary that Stein’s preoccupation with the brain and matters neurological in Racing and in his other novels (particularly When Evan Broke His Head) must be linked to experiences in his own life. This was an amazing hands-on lesson for our students to realize that an essential element of literary critique is biographical criticism. The students, as a result of their analysis of the novel and the fact that Stein was coming, organized a literary conference on all things Garth Stein. Ninety 7th graders, divided into nine sessions, all on various aspects of Stein’s work, held a two hour conference for faculty and parents several weeks prior to Stein’s visit. In addition to sessions on the documentary, the poem, and the film short, we also had a dog trainer host a session in honor of Enzo, the famous dog from Stein’s novel. I like to think we at The Benjamin School were some of the most prepared and well versed literary critics of Stein’s work that he had ever encountered.
Click here to read Garth Stein’s interview
What did you learn from past years’ program that is helping you this year? What are you changing, and what worked well?
I learned that if you want the faculty, parents, and student body to attend an author’s event, a book club (with generous extra credit furnished for the students) and a meal is a great way to draw a crowd. Try and make the food related to the read. This year when Sonia Nazario visited our school to speak about Enrique’s Journey, her book was the second offering of a new diversity book club I have begun at The Benjamin School. Nazario, the first author we have had visit for the diversity book club, was a brilliant and inspiring speaker and we had easily 100 students, faculty, and parents to hear her, while we all enjoyed Tex-Mex food.
What advice can you share with others just launching an author series, and/or All Campus reads, or to those who are considering it?
Again, have a meal, give the students extra credit and invest them in the book and author prior to the visit so the students are really anticipating meeting someone who has become “famous” to them. If the book can be contextualized as part of a school initiative – as in our case, diversity – this helps frame the visit and bring more people out to hear the author. For instance, we are looking forward to having Michael Hingson, author of Thunder Dog, visit us next November as part of our diversity series. Hingson chronicles his experiences as a blind person and juxtaposes his bildungsroman against the perilous story of his descent through the World Trade Center on 9/11 accompanied by a colleague and Roselle, his guide dog. We are hoping Mr. Hingson will work with us to create some meaningful post-presentation activities to consider physical handicaps as diversity and to help us place ourselves in the shoes of those who live and overcome these handicaps every day.
What are some of your fondest or most notable memories so far?
I loved meeting Sonia Nazario. Such a formidable woman. She rode the tops of trains running between Honduras and the Rio Grande to write knowledgeably and with empathy about illegal immigrants. She is a journalist of great gravitas and repute, and yet she was the most down to earth, friendly, and fun person to be around that I have encountered in a long time. The two days that I spent picking her up, having meals with her and shuttling her to events were a joy. It was like hanging out with a best girlfriend. It restored my faith that people who are a big deal don’t always think they are a big deal, and you know what? In my mind that makes them an even bigger deal. I will always treasure what she wrote in my copy of Enrique’s Journey: To Tina, My Florida Soul Sister. I consider her mine as well.
