Lessons of Hope and Memory: Using Picture Books to Supplement Secondary Holocaust Education

Presented at the Fall 2015 Michigan Council for Teachers of English Conference, this project captures thoughts on trauma theory and the value of using picture books to teach the Holocaust to secondary students.

Transcript

1. Lessons of Hope and Memory: Using Picture Books to Supplement Secondary Holocaust Education Melissa E. Hoak
2. How many of you teach… high school? Holocaust education? Do you believe it should be taught? Why or why not?
3. Why Holocaust education?
4. Night Elie Wiesel
6. Elie Wiesel A God Who Remembers: NPR 2008 “What is a witness if not someone who has a tale to tell and lives only with one haunting desire: to tell it. Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.”
7. truth of the Holocaust
8. Picture books in secondary Holocaust education can transform units from potentially traumatic to lessons of hope, triumph of spirit, and the importance of memory.
9. • Do any of you use picture books in your classrooms? • Which texts? • Are they effective?
10. “Writing for children must be life-affirming and offer hope; at the very least, it mustn’t traumatize child readers” (Sokoloff 176)
21. leaves readers with hopeful conclusion
33. triumph of spirit
56. speak about the Holocaust paradox “at once ‘unspeakable’ and yet something that must be spoken about, not to make it meaningful but to make its reality imaginatively possible so that the next generation is vigilant about the hatred inside all of us” (Baer 391).
58. children’s literature low status rarely deemed worthy or serious yet it should it has a lot to teach us — how adults have interpreted history what they are wiling to impart on the next generation (Sokoloff 176)
60. questions?
61. works cited contact information Baer, Elizabeth Roberts. “A New Algorithm in Evil: Children’s Literature in a Post Holocaust World.” The Lion and the Unicorn 24.3 (2000): 378401. Web. Baum, Rachel N. “What I Have Learned to Feel: The Pedagogical Emotions of Holocaust Education.” College Literature 23.3 (1996): 4457. JSTOR. Web. 15 Feb. 2015. Billman, Linda W. “Aren’t These Books for Little Kids?” Educational Leadership 60.3 (2002): 4851. Web. Dauvillier, Loïc, Marc Lizano, and Greg Salsedo. Hidden: A Child's Story of the Holocaust. New York: First Second, 2014. Print. Gibson, Mel. “Picturebooks, comics and graphic novels.” The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature. Johnston, Tony, and Ron Mazellan. The Harmonica. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, 2004. Print. Kiefer, Barbara. “What is a Picturebook, Anyway? The Evolution of Form and Substance Through the Postmodern Era and Beyond.” Postmodern Picturebooks: Play Parody and SelfReferentiality. Sokoloff, Naomi B. “The Holocaust and Literature for Children.” Project MUSE. Johns Hopkins UP, 2005. Web. 15 Feb. 2015. Zee, Ruth Vander, and Roberto Innocenti. Erika’s Story. Mankato, MN: Creative Editions, 2003. Print. Melissa Hoak mhoak@emich.edu