Response to "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian"

First, I must say that I really enjoyed this book. I read all of it in the library yesterday and was pleasantly surprised.

With that noted, this book can be used in an ELA classroom for a variety reasons. At the back of the novel is a 'Discussion Guide' that provides plenty of ideas itself that can be adapted to study guides, projects that could involve drawing to engage more students, classroom discussions, individual or group research assignments, maybe even a field trip to locales in the book, etc. I'm not worried about that. I do want to touch on some subtle strengths of the novel though.

This novel has two real strengths intrinsic to teaching it.

The first strength is reader engagement:

Its cartoons can help appeal to students that may be hesitant on reading a 230-page novel. In addition, the cartoons help engage different types of students, such as artistic students that like to draw; Its relatively local ties may also appeal to students that may be tired of reading about far-off cities and worlds they've never seen and may never see; and that it is a novel, almost a personal narrative written in the first-person from a narrator of the same age as 9th-10th graders, so students may be more willing to engage the text because of that. Additionally, the personal issues discussed in the book make it more likely that young adult readers will connect and engage with this text.

The second strength is its ties to social studies:

The race relations, the history behind the plight of Native Americans and the challenges facing Native Americans and their tribes today, the local geography, the socioeconomic differences between the Reservation and Reardan, etc.

This novel could be used in a social studies/ELA block class effectively because of all it offers.