ALAN Picks: Celebrate Hope in Nature, Humanity (April 2025)

ALAN Picks: Celebrate Hope In Nature, Humanity

In this month’s ALAN Picks we feature books that are connected to the exploration of hope, life and nature. Nature’s Best Hope: How You Can Save the World in Your Own Yard (Young Readers’ Edition) by Douglas W. Tallamy; adapted by Sarah L. Thomson is a nonfiction book that helps young readers explore a grassroots activism approach to saving the planet. Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust Written by Neal Shusterman and Illustrated by Andrés Vera Martínez is a graphic novel that tells five stories that center different aspects of the Holocaust. Isabel in Bloom by Mae Respicio is a middle grade novel in verse about a young Filipina girl who moves to the United States and finds hope in a school garden. Our Bodies Electric by Zackary Vernon is a young adult coming of age story full of life, community and the hope inspired by a Walt Whitman poem.

Looking For Teen Reviewers: If you know students who are interested in writing book reviews of recently published young adult and middle grade books, let them know they can write for ALAN Picks too! 

ALAN Picks Book Selections: ALAN Picks accepts reviews of books published from spring 2020 to present-day, including soon-to-be-released books. This gives ALAN members who are interested in reviewing books more great titles to choose from, as well as accommodate some great books released during the beginning of the pandemic that still deserve highlighting. If you have some books in mind that you would like to review, please reach out to me!

Let Us Know How You Use ALAN Picks! If you read an ALAN Picks review and end up using the book with your students, let us know! We want to hear all of your great stories and engaging ways you are using young adult and middle grades literature in your classrooms. Remember, ALAN Picks are book reviews by educators for educators! Click on the archives to see previous editions. 

Submit a Review: Would you like to submit a review? Check out ALAN Picks for submission guidelines and email ALAN Picks Editor, Richetta Tooley at richetta.tooley@gmail.com with the book title you are interested in reviewing. Rolling deadline.

–  Richetta Tooley, ALAN Picks Editor

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Synopsis: In Nature’s Best Hope, Douglas Tallamy asks readers to explore the powerful ways that they can participate in conservation through advocacy for native plants and other practices to support nature in their yards (and/or school’s yards) to help contribute to a Homegrown National Park. This relevant informational text for grades 6-12, adapted by Sarah L. Thomson, translates Tallamy’s bestseller in order to empower young readers to save the planet through a grassroots conservation approach in their own backyards. Tallamy uses real-world examples, simple terms, and photographs to unpack key concepts.

Review:

Nature’s Best Hope empowers readers to take action. Teens (and adults!) anxious about the state of the world find comfort in this book’s applicable ways to make a difference in their worlds through connections to nature and their communities. Tallamy writes from his wealth of experience and long scientific career, yet this adaptation translates his central message about life into digestible form for readers of all ages. Short chapters with lists and resources make the book easy to excerpt and/or extend for a range of readers.

The book provides practical ways to engage challenging climate realities through actionable choices in both our home and school spaces—making this a book suitable for community reads, cross-curricular units, and interdisciplinary approaches. Suggestions seem doable in all types of communities from spreading the word, hands-on-projects, and easy-to-implement changes. 

Suggestions for Curriculum & Classroom Use

Empowering Questions to Explore with Nature’s Best Hope:

• What can be done in the face of climate change? 
• How can teens use their own yards (or other outdoor spaces) to help combat the negative effects of climate change? What does it mean to support life in your yard?
• What direct actions can teens take as they read to understand science related to conservation?
  • Examples: Plant key species at home, like oaks or asters 
• How can we increase biodiversity in our schoolyard?

Thematic Connections to Explore with Nature’s Best Hope:

• Human relationships with nature and each other; environmental justice
• Role of nature and learning (e.g. benefits of trees outside classroom windows, Vitamin N[ature], etc.)
• Role of grass ecosystem, invaders, and native plants in how life is supported (or not)
• Concepts of life and priorities: “little things that run the world” (Ch. 9); the role of insects, caterpillars, birds, and the right plants

Teaching Strategies and Activities to Use in 6-12 ELA Classrooms:

This book provides a key starting place for ELA instruction that applies Gholdy Muhammad’s principle of criticality as a way for “unearthing joy” through culturally and historically responsive teaching and learning.

Getting Started

• Spark students’ interest by engaging them in techniques for connecting a new book to their identities and lives (“Introducing a New Book” on facinghistory.org) 
• Partner with a master gardener, school garden network, or use an outdoor classroom space to apply Tallamy’s ideas.
• Visit Homegrown National Park with young readers.
  •  Look up your city on the HNP Biodiversity Map. What do you find?
• Look up your zip code with native plants related to birds
• Explore options for biodiversity in a (school)yard or container garden.
• Take a field trip to a local native plant garden or invite a guest speaker.
• “Go On A Poetry Walk” to encourage student writing and thinking. To prepare: read nature poetry from “Nature: Poems for Kids” (poets.org), a poetry collection, or related children’s literature like Honeybee by Candace Fleming.

Exploring Project Ideas and Formative/Summative Assessments

• See Tallamy’s project ideas in “Ten Things You Can Do” (Chapter 14).
• Help students develop inquiry projects based on the “Spread the Word” section:
  • Example: “Can you ask your teacher or principal if you can start a piece of Homegrown National Park next to the playground or on your school’s front lawn?” (226).
• Read Spread the Word examples from your community:
  • Example: Farm Blog by an organic farmer in Peoria: Growing More Than Food – Broad Branch Farm
• Engage with your school’s outdoor space:
  • For schools with gardens, students can ask questions about what they are planting or research additional plants that would help support homegrown life.

Making Interdisciplinary Connections

• Create a proposal with students to increase diversity of plants in some part of the community. Consider partnering with a middle school science unit like Symbiotic Schoolyard middle school science unit:
  • Symbiotic Schoolyard – Homegrown National Park
• Explore the Junior Master Gardener Curriculum (Junior Master Gardener). 

• Explore: How can kids make a local contribution?
• For instance, the Symbiotic Schoolyard has site links that help students research which native plants make sense at their specific location (with easy-to-locate bundles if students are pricing plants for proposals, etc.)
• Partner with History, Social Studies, Civics, and Citizenship: (See facinghistory.org)
  • “Reflecting on Climate Change and Ecological Grief” mini lesson
  • “Young People Respond to Climate Change” mini lesson

Stakeholders To Keep In Mind:

• Master Gardeners
• Parent Councils or Parent-Teacher Groups (for volunteers, donations)
• Local Businesses (for seeds, plants, donations)
• School Maintenance Staff and local Park District 

Related Books for Young Readers:

• The Outdoor Scientist: The Wonder of Observing the Outdoor World by Temple Grandin
• Citizen Scientists: Be Part of Scientific Discovery from Your Own Backyard by Loree Griffin Burns 
• Where Have All the Birds Gone?: Nature in Crisis by Rebecca Hirsch.
• Honeybee by Candace Fleming
• The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe by Loree Griffin Burns

Review by: Dr. Melinda McBee Orzulak, Associate Professor of English, Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois 

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Synopsis: The YA graphic novel Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust is divided into five stories with a two-page spread of historical information separating one story from the other. Each story is assigned one of the first five letters in the Hebrew alphabet, with explanations of the letters included at the end of the book. The graphic novel combines historical fiction with surrealism to illustrate the power of hope when faced with the unthinkable. 

• “He Opens a Window” focuses on those who risked everything to help Jews during the Holocaust. A story that echoes that of Anne Frank, is given a fresh take with a fantastical element.
• “The Golem of Auschwitz” takes place in Auschwitz and introduces the folklore surrounding the golem. 
• “Spirits of Resistance” tells of resistance groups who worked against the Nazis. The unique story combines historical fiction with Jewish and European folklore, with focus on Baba Yaga.
• “Exodus” depicts the plight of the Jews of Denmark and the work of the government and people of Sweden to save them. The staff of Moses figures prominently in this story. 
• “The Untold” explores what the world would have been like had the Holocaust never happened.Please note: Graphic scenes of violence are depicted within some of the stories.

Review

I have read my fair share of Holocaust-related texts over the years, and Neal Shusterman’s Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust stands out because of its varied and unique perspectives. Each of the five stories within the novel has the potential to stand alone and promote rich discussion, and together they convey the power of hope even in the darkest of times. Regardless of the devastating events the characters witness – courage and hope remain central to each story. Additionally, Shusterman intertwines fantasy and folklore with historical accuracy. Appealing to young adults and adults alike, the stories within are sure to open readers’ eyes to new ideas and topics related to WWII and the Holocaust. Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust is an excellent addition to high school and college reading lists, and it offers a bridge to other examples of hope, humanity, and resistance while providing connections to current and historical events. Lastly, the graphic novel offers a window into other people’s experiences and urges readers to look inward and ask difficult questions.

Suggestions for Curriculum & Classroom Use

Themes Connections and Analysis

Thematic Topics:

• Hope​​​​​/Hate
• Humanity/​​​​Power
• Dehumanization​​​/Resistance
• Complicity/​​​​Heroism

Discussion Questions: 

1. Before the novel begins, Shusterman explains that we all have the potential for good, evil, and inaction. He tasks readers with considering the following question while reading the novel: “‘Who would I be if the impossible suddenly became real?’”
2.  What role does hope play in people’s lives? What happens when one loses hope?
3.  Provide an example of a time when a door closed but a window opened in your life. What is the lesson to be learned from such experiences?
4.  Discuss the metaphor of a drop in the bucket in “The Golem of Auschwitz” (pp. 57-103).
5.  Why does it take courage to dream, and why is such courage essential to survival?

Preliminary Activities:

To introduce the graphic novel and spark discussion, instructors may choose to read Elisa Boxer’s Hidden Hope: How a Toy and a Hero Saved Lives during the Holocaust and The Whispering Town by Jennifer Elvgren to their students, two picture books that detail people who risked their lives to help those who were being persecuted.

Eve Bunting’s Terrible Things: An Allegory of the Holocaust illustrates the bystander effect and serves as an approachable introduction to the Holocaust.

Empowerment Activities:

Individually or in small groups, students research one of the groups persecuted by the Nazis during WWII. Shusterman includes some such groups on page 103. Later, the students teach the class what they learned.

Divide the class into five groups, one for each story in the novel. The groups are responsible for reading and reporting on their assigned story as well as ancillary material they collect through research. The research may include but is not limited to Jewish folklore, historical information, and psychological connections.

The graphic novel can be used to initiate discussion of the role and power of art when depicting difficult topics. Students are then tasked with using art to introduce difficult ideas, feelings, or concepts.

Reviewed by: Stephanie Terrill, who is an adjunct instructor in Massachusetts. She is in her final semester of the Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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Synopsis: In this realistic fiction novel-in-verse, twelve-year old Isabel is raised by her maternal grandparents in the Philippines, where they teach her to appreciate the natural world and, especially, the plant Jasmine Sampaguita. When her mother, a nanny who left for the United States to better support her family, sends for Isabel to come live with her in San Francisco, Isabel must endure what it means to be uprooted from all she has known. What Isabel learns, though, is that gardens – and herself – can bloom anywhere and her participation in a garden club at her new school helps her learn that she, too, can survive anywhere – just like the Jasmine Sampaguita of her native Philippines and the California poppy seeds she sends her grandfather back in the Philippines. A story of resiliency and hope and love, Isabel in Bloom is a true bloom-where-you’re-planted story. 

Review

Respicio’s middle grades text Isabel in Bloom is everything one could hope for in a novel in verse. Told in named movements, such as “Seed,” “Root,” “Bud,” and “Bloom,” Isabel in Bloom truly brings the saying “Bloom where you’re planted” to life. Isabel’s first-person narration captures her fear about moving to a new place and her desire to “fit in” to a new place. The plants Isabel plants become metaphors for her own self-realization, which blooms just as the seeds she plants. In addition to Isabel’s story of arriving in San Francisco from the Philippines, this is also a text about intergenerational love and support, the evolving nature of a mother-daughter relationship, and how one can not just exist but thrive in two cultures. The historical facts about Filipinos who came to the United States in different time periods as well as an incident where an elderly Filipino man is robbed add much depth to the text and can promote meaningful discussions about cultural understandings. Absolutely stunning lines of poetry characterize this lengthy, yet inspiring, story that grows the typical new-kid-at-school story into something much, much more. 

Suggestions for Curriculum & Classroom Use

Thematic Connections and Possible Essential Questions

As a teacher educator, I like to share texts with my students that they can use to inform their understanding of genres they can use in their classrooms, cross-curricular texts, and how texts can help them learn about the students who will be in their classrooms. 

Pre-Service Teachers
Possible themes pre-service teachers can explore with this text include the following: 

• Significance of school transitions on middle school students as it relates to the way we teach 
• Power of student agency and how to encourage it in our classrooms and schools 
• Intergenerational understandings and how to build upon this in our classrooms 

Essential questions pre-service teachers can answer with this text include the following: 

• How do humans find commonalities even amongst differences?  
• What does it mean to exist within two cultures? 
• How does the natural world help us understand more about ourselves? 

Middle School Teachers
Just as teacher educators can engage their pre-service teachers in a reading of this text, middle grades teachers can also read this text with their students. Possible themes English Language Arts teachers can explore with their middle grades students include the following: 

• The effects of change 
• What nature teaches humans 
• Building relationships with parents 

Essential questions middle grades students can answer with this text include the following: 

• What beauty can be found in change when we open ourselves up to it? 
• How can middle schoolers influence their communities? 
• Is home always a physical space? 

Teaching Strategies and Activities

There are myriad strategies and activities in which pre-service teachers can engage as they interact with Isabel in Bloom. 

Strategy One: Create Welcome Kits  

Colorin’ Colorado (n.d.) recommends creating a welcome kit for new ELLs so that no matter when these students arrive in our classroom, they will have some key information about the school and community. Inviting pre-service teachers to create a welcome kit for a student similar to Isabel who may arrive in their English Language Arts class would be a way for future teachers to create an artifact that demonstrates their cultural responsiveness. 

Strategy Two: Fill Balikbayan Boxes 

In her author’s note, Respicio (2024) discusses the cultural significance of the balikbayan box, a box that those who had come to the United States would fill and send back to the Philippines (p. 359). Pre-service teachers can create a box that either they would send to their relatives in another place or a box that Isabel may send to her grandparents. In this way, pre-service teachers are connecting personally to the text and developing appreciation for cultures that may be outside their own. 

Strategy Three: Observe Students Taking Action 

As teacher educators, we try to make our placement experiences as practical and helpful for our pre-service students. In the spirit of Isabel in Bloom, create an opportunity for future English Language Arts teachers to observe students in their placement taking action. Ideally, this would be a student-led club trying to improve some facet of their school or community. Ask the pre-service teachers to reflect on what this made them think about in terms of student agency and how they may be able to be supportive of students’ causes once they have a classroom of their own. 

Just as there are multiple strategies and activities in which pre-service teachers can engage in terms of Isabel in Bloom, so, too, can middle grades students engage in meaningful activities around this text. 

Strategy One: Home One-Pager 

Isabel makes some realizations about what home really means as she transitions to her new home in San Francisco. Fletcher (2018) writes about the magic of one-pager. Students can create a one-pager about what home means to both Isabel and them. Students can draw, use magazine clippings, quotes from Isabel in Bloom, and quotes from other texts (e.g., books, poems, song lyrics, movie quotes) in order to share about the power of home. Students’ one-pagers can then be used to facilitate meaningful conversations. 

Strategy Two: Friendship Poem 

Middle grades students are learning so much about friendships. Take advantage of the poem-in-verse to have students write their own poems based on the poem “Friendship is a Million Lille Things I Miss” (Respicio, 2024, p. 126). In this poem, Isabel details what she misses about her friendships. Students can use poetic conventions to create a poem that illuminates what their friendships mean to them. 

Strategy Three: Design Extended Metaphor for Life

Respicio’s (2024) text sets up an extended metaphor of a garden to coincide with Isabel’s transition to a new place and school. Invite students to analyze carefully those moments in the text where this extended metaphor really shines through before selecting an extending metaphor for their lives. Ask students to choose movements like Respicio does with her titled sections and then create either a series of poems or prose within each movement. 

Formative and/or Summative Assessments

Pre-Service Teachers

There are multiple ways we can assess our pre-service teachers’ understanding of Respicio’s (2024) Isabel in Bloom so they can successfully teach this book in their English Language Arts classroom. 

Assessment One: Create a Text Set: Respicio’s (2024) Isabel in Bloom sits on the shoulders of several fantastic middle grades novels-in-verse. Asking students to identify an essential question that will help their students understand better Isabel in Bloom before selecting other contemporary novels-in-verse students could read in book clubs will help them create essential questions and think about how to group texts together. Pre-service teachers can create summaries and reviews of each text before sharing how each text will help students answer the essential question. You may also challenge your pre-service teachers to select non-print texts that would fit into the text set. 

Assessment Two: Engaging Families and Community Members Isabel in Bloom (Respicio, 2024) brings up matters of familial connections and how schools can interact with community members. Many scenes (e.g., the sleepover, Isabel’s conversations with her grandparents, Isabel’s conversations with people at the senior center, etc.) relate to finding out people’s stories. Have pre-service teachers design a unit in which students’ family members and community members may play a role. This may look like doing a service project for the community, interviewing family members or community members, etc. Not only will this have pre-service teachers focusing on these familial / community aspects within the text but they will be planning ahead for when they have classrooms of their own.

Middle School Teachers

Just as this text opens up opportunities for teacher educators to assess our pre-service teachers, it also permits middle grades teachers multiple opportunities to assess their students. 

Assessment One: Grow a Resiliency Garden Isabel learns that both the California poppy and the Jasmine Sampaguita, associated with San Francisco and the Philippines, respectively, can grow just about anywhere. This fact relates to the resiliency that she begins to see in herself. Have your students plant seeds of the California poppy the Jasmine Sampaguita, and a flower or plant native to their community or ancestors’ communities. Throughout the growing process, which may include successes and some challenges, invite students to select passages from Isabel in Bloom (Respicio, 2024) that demonstrate the theme of resilience. Invite students to discuss what they learn about Isabel’s and their resilience as they grow a garden in order to step into Isabel’s world.

Assessment Two: Identity Poem

Using “Words for Invisible” (Respicio, 2024, p. 270) as a mentor text, have students create a set of poems, one in which they select a word that represents Isabel and one in which they select a word that represents themselves. Not only does this creative writing piece help students really engage in character analysis and assess their understanding of the text, as they would be asked to support the words they select with passages from Isabel in Bloom but it also allows students to create connections between Isabel’s identity and their identities. A gallery walk in which students walk around and view and comment on each others’ poems would be a wonderful way to showcase students’ work on this assessment. 

References

• Colorin’ Colorado. (n.d.). ‘Welcome kit for new ELLs.’ Retrieved 3 November 2024 from ‘Welcome Kit’ for New ELLs | Colorín Colorado
• Fletcher, J. Y. (2018). The magic of one-pagers. Retrieved 3 November 2024 from The Magic of One-Pagers – National Council of Teachers of English
• Respicio, M. (2024). Isabel in bloom. New York: Wendy Lamb Books. 

Reviewed by: Kathryn Caprino, Associate Professor of PK-12 New Literacies and Director of the Teaching & Learning Design Studio, Elizabethtown College. 

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Synopsis: Tormented by his religious family and the broader conservative community of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, fourteen-year-old Josh struggles with the pressure to conform to their puritanical standards. As he embarks upon his high school years, Josh meets a supportive cast of eccentric small-town characters, falls in love with his classmate, is obsessed with David Bowie, and fumbles in his attempts to make his own thongs. But it’s when his elderly neighbor gives him a copy of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself that he begins to understand his own sexuality. Our Bodies Electric is a coming-of-age story that celebrates the exuberance of youth, the individual quest for sexual identity, and the joy of finding connections in the most unexpected of places. 

Review

Steeped in the confines of Pawley’s Island, S.C., this novel is at turns hilarious and poignant as it navigates the in-between world of middle school and puberty. Main character Josh is a teenage boy who is both confounded and enthralled by his changing body, yet the repressive nature of his family leaves him with no one to discuss his metamorphosis. He is left to figure things out for himself in the midst of a small troupe of peers, who are so keenly drawn you feel like you’ve met them somewhere. When he is gifted (twice!) a copy of Whitman’s Leave of Grass, he begins to realize that his mind is not “filled with maggots” (as his mother claims) when he relishes his sexuality and physical self. Although Josh’s quest for answers about sex are a key aspect of the novel, the quirky characters are a true highlight. The dialogue and boyhood adventures are reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Body, while depictions of nature draw inspiration from Whitman. There are hamsters that give birth in human hands, seagulls that attack, lizards that hang from earlobes, and turtles that sport shells painted like barn quilts. The novel reads like both a guidebook and celebration of life. 

Suggestions for Curriculum & Classroom Use

Themes for Analysis:

• Man vs. nature
• Gender and sexuality
• Morality
• The environment
• Religion
• The role of friendships

Essential Questions:

• In what ways do authority figures influence our thinking?
• How does the environment in which we live shape our lives?
• Are animals and humans more similar or different?
• What role do friendships play in the development of our beliefs?

Teaching Strategies and Activities to Use:

• Discussion and research into the work of Walt Whitman, Transcendentalism (although Whitman was not technically a Transcendentalist), and/or the coastal regions of the Southern United States. 
• Reading Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and/or the poem “Song of Myself” and discussing the themes.
• Writing “walking around” poems in the style of Whitman in which students observe the natural world and write about it.
• Writing realistic dialogue between modern teenagers in the style of Vernon’s Our Bodies Electric characters.

Assessment Possibilities

Formative Assessments:

• Students discuss the text in small workshop groups, which are self-selected. A different student in the small group leads the discussion each day. Another student takes “minutes” from the discussion on an index card. The cards are bound together at the end of the novel study to hand in.
• Students post their impressions and thoughts on the reading on Flip.com. Workshop members must respond to one or more Flip responses.
• After watching a video on YouTube about Pawley’s Island (Pawleys Island, South Carolina – Things to Do and See When You Go), students journal about what life on Pawley’s Island would be like.
• Students complete a one-pager on the novel: Divide a piece of plain paper into quarters. In one quarter, draw a picture to represent an object from the book; in another, write down a key quote; in another, draw a picture to represent the main character; in the last quarter, draw the setting.

Summative Assessments

• Students write a series of journal entries from their own point of view examining one of the themes of the novel. The entries can take the form of poetry, prose, pictures, comic strips, or songs. 
• Students compile a list of songs that connect to the novel and write a paragraph for each song describing how it relates to the book—and to themselves. The finished project can be titled “Song of Myself.”
• Students research a nature topic of interest from the novel (example: turtles, lizards, snakes, beach erosion, masters, seagulls, hurricanes). They present their findings to the class through a presentation, an art piece, a poem in the style of Whitman, or a traditional research paper.
• Students research the influence of Emerson on Whitman and the birth of the Transcendentalist literary movement. They present their findings to the class. 

Complementary texts:

• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
• This Wild and Precious Life: A Journal by Mary Oliver
• The Complete Poems by Walt Whitman
• Walking by Henry David Thoreau

Reviewed By: Dr. Clarice Moran, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English Education, Appalachian State University.