Night

Rationale:

Our world is filled with evil and to not repeat the mistakes of the past everyone needs to know the mistakes. Our world has seen some awful things with the Nazis. This is a great book to discuss in History class or in Language Arts class. This book is a real-life account of the things that happened when the Nazis tried to change things in Europe. There is a lot of symbolism and imagery in this book that can help students to learn how to write using symbolism and imagery. This book should only be taught to 11^th or 12^th graders because they will have more maturity to understand the content of the book.

Teaching Ideas:

History: By teaching this in a history class we can show students the impact of the Nazis decisions as well as compare this story to others that have been written about that period in history.

Language Arts: This is a great book to use for imagery and symbolism. As we work through the book we can have students analyze different things that are brought to the readers attention. For example, the title Night is an example of symbolism and represents death and the death of Wiesel’s childhood. Once we understand this symbol we can compare it to later symbols such as fire, silence, and corpses.

Challenges:

Students: This book is a bit graphic and is based on real life experience. Students will have to be able to understand that they are reading this to better understand themes and look at this as a historical piece of evidence.

Parents: Some parents may have an issue for this book due to the very vivid imagery and the content. As a teacher we must explain to them our rationale for teaching it and explain how we plan on using the content to help students learn.

Administration: The administration may have an issue with this book only because of some of the things that are discussed in the book, but this book is a real-life account of events and should be approached with that in mind. Explaining to the administration and parents the rationale and how to discuss certain topics in the book will help the students to understand it better.