Read Me

A Memorable Scene

The scene I chose to depict is when Junior is seating on the steps of his porch with his teacher from the reservation. Junior had just been suspended for throwing a math book at this particular teacher because he was so excited to start geometry and when he received the book his mother’s name was in it. The book had not been updated in over 30 some years. He was pent up with anger and chooses to throw the book and hit his teacher. Junior depicts this scene with his comics but the scene I have illustrated is the after scene when the teacher comes to Junior and asks him if he knows why he threw the book than follows it up by confessing his sins “we were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child.” All the years he been teaching he was squashing his pupils dreams, culture, and hopes. Junior is so surprised, confused, and suddenly takes on a new outlook on his life and the direction he must take. This scene is one of the turning points in his young life and he starts to take his future in his own hands and decides to stop the cycle set by his parents and sister. I chose to illustrate the scene differently than the illustrator of the comics in the book to put a more serious and realistic tone to the moment instead of comical.

If a teacher assigned a project to illustrate a memorable scene and explain, I believe they would uncover the student’s deeper understanding of the text not just from the illustration, but from the explanation of the illustration too.  By allowing students to illustrate a memorable scene they have to dissect the text in order to figure out what section was the most memorable and why. Even though the text offers illustrations throughout the student must choose to copy the same character of the drawing or add their own design to the scene. This type of project would also work well with students who may be struggling readers or those creative students in the classroom. By allowing those to take a creative avenue it opens up so many possibly view points. I might after assigning this project have students do a small group follow up and share their illustrations and discuss together who chose which event and why. This will allow them to discover more points of view and find out what their fellow classmates got out of the same book. 

I really had to reflect on what I wanted to illustrate and why. As there are currently illustrations throughout I didn’t want to just mimic what the author was doing but rather create my own reflection on the text. I skimmed through and tabbed several events throughout the chapter worth illustrating and had several reasons to do each one. However, the one I choose was a real turning point in Junior’s life and I think the decision he made at this point determined the rest of his decisions not just throughout the text but possibly throughout his future.