i came across "the composition" by antonio skármeta in a flavorpill post about great multicultural books for kids. after reading the synopsis, i had to check it out.
"the composition" is the story of a young boy, pedro, growing up in chile which is under a dictatorship. at first pedro, due to his age, was naïve about what is occurring in his country. his primarily concern is playing soccer (as should be fore a kid). one day he witnessed the father of his friend daniel being arrested. when pedro asked why he was arrested, daniel responses that his father was against the dictatorship. pedro did not understanding what that meant and daniel explained it to him.
once home, pedro relayed the story to his father and being a kid is excited about the prospect of getting free candy now that his friend is in charge of the store. then pedro asked his father if he was against the dictatorship, his father nodded yes. then he asked his dad, if he , pedro, was against it. pedro's mother responded that no kids were kids and they had important responsibilities like going to school and being good. pedro then begins to realize what is going on.
the next day at school, a captain came to pedro's school to run an essay contest about what their family does at night. pedro was slow to start and talked to a boy next to him. he asked the boy if he was against the dictatorship to which the boy responded "of course." and discovered that that boy's father was taken away as well. pedro then wrote his essay. this part reminded me of "1984" and how it was the children who became the worse enemy. it is sad to think how the dictatorship attempted to turn their children against their parents.
weeks passed and pedro came home with his essay. he told his parents about the contest which made them uneasy. i myself was also scared that pedro wrote about his parents listening to the radio at night. pedro read his essay and he made up a story about his family playing chess. to which is father responded that they needed to get a chess set.
just as it was described in flavorpill, it was serious and edgy. i find it interesting in the sense that as a children's books, it questions something that kids should have blind faith in, the government. yes, children should respect authority figures but they should also be aware of the fact that the government may not always for the rights.
at the end, antonio skármeta explained dictatorships in a short essay. i thought it was a good inclusion so that kids could truly understand what they had read about. and maybe it's in the historian in me but i think this is an important read and a discussion point to have with kids, so that they are better aware of the world they live in.
one last note, it was kind of kismet that I had this book because i recently watched "no" and googled because both were about dictatorships in chile. and i discovered that the author, antonio skármeta, wrote a play, "el plebiscito" which "no" was based on. if you haven't seen it yet, you should see "no", you should check it out.
This is something we talk about ALL the time at both Teach for America and in my library science master's program. Children are not being exposed to multicultural literature and adults are not exposed to translated fiction. I've read that publishing companies say there is no market for it, but I call shenanigans. Thanks for linking to the Flavorpill article, I'll definitely check out some of the books.
ReplyDelete/Juliana