After the Rain

I had a group of seventh graders that had already read the novel the student teacher was teaching, so I pulled this group of five and we did enrichment.  They flew through the novel I gave them before their peers were even half way done with theirs.  I had a classroom set of After the Rain by Norma Fox Mazer.  I saw this was on the list of recommended novels in our revised graded course of study, so I asked the group if they wanted to read this with me for the first time.  They were eager.

Long story short--they hated it.  We stopped in the middle.  I have never done that before.  I did plug through to the end of the novel to see what we were missing.  It got slighly better, but I would never teach this novel in junior high.  First, the main character was too old and at a different stage in her life for the kids to relate to her.  She was a high schooler with boy issues--not an appropriate forcus for my Catholic school middle schoolers.  Was this book about coming of age or about death?  The focus was off.  I could not relate to the flat characters.

I flat out did not find this book interesting nor well-written--even though it is an award winning book (a 1987 Newbery Award).