Author: Randa Abdel-Fattah

Published: 2008

Genre: YA lit, fiction, journey/quest

Reading/ Grade level: roughly middle-school, grades 6-8, or ages 10+

Pages: 307

"I suddenly understand that there is dignity in being able to claim heritage, in being able to derive identity from a rocky hill, a winding mountain road. Sitti Zeynab's village has never stopped calling her, beckoning her to return home. Her soul is stamped into these hills, and I feel her presence as strongly as if she were standing on the peak of one of the mountains." Hayaat pg. 181

This week in our notes in preparation for our many creative options for the final we are going to be looking at several different sites for ideas about visual presentation and just different ways of interacting with and presenting books. All videos are shorter excerpts, and the interviews too are not terribly lengthy.  Look at all:

First up this adaption with author commentary:

Now look over informative book trailer that pulls in a lot of various images. Think about how you might want to incorporate visuals into your final should you choose one of the creative visual options (note: the most popular and frequent choice).

Third, let's look this excerpt from a play production of Where the Streets Had a Name. You'll notice from the beginning some reinterpretations.

To warm up critical analysis muscles, read this interesting and well-written review. Some of you may choose for the final to continue working on literary analysis.

 http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2010/09/22/review-of-the-day-where-the-streets-had-a-name-by-randa-abdel-fattah/

Now let's look at two really good interviews with Randa Abdel-Fattah. For one of the final options you might choose to incorporate a genre like a mock interview with one of the characters.

1)

https://electronicintifada.net/content/breaking-down-stereotypes-randa-abdel-fattah-interviewed/9912

2)

http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/both-freedom-and-constraint-an-interview-with

Finally some of you may be considering our creative writing final option or just want to incorporate a poem as one of your genres for the multimodal final. Look at this poem by Hirshfield and the incredibly moving letter she received from a young sixth grader responding to it and making an interesting connection the Israeli–Palestinian conflict :

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/dear-jane-hirshfield-alexi

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/weighing