by Katherine Applegate
4th Grade
RL.4.2 Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.
RL.4.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including words that affect meaning and tone.
RL.4.6 Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated, including the difference between first- and third-person narrations.
4.L.1 Understand the effects of environmental changes, adaptations and behaviors that enable animals (including humans) to survive in changing habitats.
4.C.1 Understand the impact of various cultural groups on North Carolina.
1. What is a community?
2. What is immigration?
3. What is an immigrant?
4. What is discrimination?
by Katherine Applegate
Applegate, K. (2017). Wishtree. New York, NY: Feiwel and Friends.
Fiction
Fantasy
Novel
Wishtree is a novel told from the perspective of an oak tree, Red, who is rooted in the yard of a house that a new family moves in to. Samar, the daughter of the family, is not just the new kid in school but the new kid in the neighborhood. Samar’s neighbor, Stephen, makes attempts to become Samar’s friend. Even though Samar wishes for a friend, she is not so easy to trust or open up, especially after a hateful message is carved into Red, left for Samar and her family to find. What follows is Red’s journey to grant Samar’s wish for a friend, all while knowing that she might be cut down by the owner of Samar’s house, Francesca, who has a surprising connection to Red’s past. When Red was a younger tree, Francesca's ancestor, Maeve, was an immigrant herself from Ireland and became a pillar of the community by healing all in it. The parallel stories show the importance of never discriminating against immigrants. While Red works to grant Samar's wish, the animals that Red is home to work to save her from being cut down. Wishtree is a beautiful story of community, told by a tree.
While Wishtree is a novel, there are illustrations throughout the book that add images to the written text. While the majority of the illustrations are leaves, which makes sense as the story is being told from the perspective of a tree, there are some images that depict the animals that live within Red’s ecosystem, further personifying them as characters. The illustrations may help the visitors visualize the characters and the events of the story. The interesting thing about the illustrations is that the human characters are never drawn throughout the entirety of the novel. Even though Wishtree is written in simple language, there is vocabulary in the text that necessitates background knowledge and a vocabulary foundation to build off of. If the novel is not taught at the suggested grade level, young readers could become confused and frustrated by some of the new vocabulary introduced in the text. While Katherine Applegate is not an immigrant herself, she and her family have moved around seven states. This could have created a situation for her children where they were the new kids in school, which mirrors Samar’s experience in the book. Not only her children, but Applegate would have also been new in the communities each time she moved. Using these experiences, an award-winning author like Applegate could create an accurate portrayal of being new, and possibly unwelcome, in a new community. Since Applegate herself is not an immigrant, she has no personal agenda in writing Wishtree, no personal reason for writing the story. However, in creating the stories and characters that she did, it is clear that Applegate hopes that readers will walk away from this story being a bit nicer to those who are new in their schools and communities, as well as stand up against injustices. If the readers a new student or neighbor being the target of a bully’s aggression, hopefully after seeing the way Samar was treated and how Stephen stood up for her, they’ll do the right thing and be an ally and friend to their new classmate or neighbor.
Wishtree has not won any major awards, but does have connections to the social studies content area because of its accounts of historical immigration experience and connection to the science content area because of its inclusion of Red as an ecological habitat.
For this initiating experience, students will be divided into six groups. Teachers will choose six of the ten myth statements from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2011/ten-myths-about-immigration. Teachers will then pass out one myth statement, and only the statement (none of the accompanying research refuting the statement), to each group. Students will take no more than three minutes to discuss their initial reactions to the statements with their group mates. Then, each group will share their statement with the whole class and briefly summarize their group member reactions. This sharing should also take no more than three minutes. After the discussion of students' initial reactions, teachers will then pass out research that refutes each myth statement to the corresponding group that had the statement. Students should be given no more than five minutes to look over the research, and then an additional three minutes to discuss the research with their group member and reflect on their initial reactions. Again, each group will share back out with the whole class the key points in the research, taking no more than four minutes to share. This initiating experience should be used to launch the unit.
For this initiating experience, students will work independently. They will be asked to respond in their writing journals to the following questions: "What is a community?" "What makes a community a community?" and "What does it mean to be a member of a community?" Students should be given no more than five minutes to write down their initial thoughts. Then, without sharing their writings, students will be asked to add on to their initial thoughts by answering the following questions: "Who makes up a community?" "Does it always have to be people who make up a community?" "Can you think of an example where a community wouldn't be made up of people?" Students should again be given no more than five minutes to answer these additional questions and expand on their initial thoughts. Then, students should pair up to share their thoughts and writings with a partner. After no more than five minutes sharing with a partner, the teacher will open the discussion to the whole class and encourage all ideas about what a community is and who makes up a community. This initiating experiences should be used to introduce the anchor text.
References
Applegate, K. (2017). Wishtree. New York, NY: Feiwel and Friends.
Teaching Tolerance Staff. (2011, Spring). Ten Myths About Immigration. Retrieved November 13, 2018, from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-2011/ten-myths-about-immigration