Primary Source’s Journeys Through History
The Globe Corner is pleased to offer the reading list for Primary Source’s “Journeys Through History: A Global Book Group” at a 20% special discount.
Primary Source promotes history and humanities education by connecting educators to people and cultures throughout the world. In partnership with teachers, scholars, and the broader community, Primary Source provides learning opportunities and curriculum resources for K-12 educators. By introducing global content, Primary Source shapes the way teachers and students learn, so that their knowledge is deeper and their thinking is flexible and open to inquiry.
See Primary Source’s web site for registration information
Journeys Through History: A Global Book Group
Late Afternoon Book Group
Course Dates: Oct. 13, Nov. 10, Dec. 8, Jan. 12, Feb. 16
Time: 4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Location: Primary Source
October 13th
Heart of a Samurai
by Margi Preus
In 1841, a Japanese fishing vessel sinks. Its crew is forced to swim to a small, unknown island, where they are rescued by a passing American ship. Japan’s borders remain closed to all Western nations, so the crew sets off to America, learning English on the way. Manjiro, a fourteen-year-old boy, is curious and eager to learn everything he can about this new culture. Eventually the captain adopts Manjiro and takes him to his home in New England. The boy lives for some time in New England, and then heads to San Francisco to pan for gold. After many years, he makes it back to Japan, only to be imprisoned as an outsider. With his hard-won knowledge of the West, Manjiro is in a unique position to persuade the shogun to ease open the boundaries around Japan; he may even achieve his unlikely dream of becoming a samurai.
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November 10th
The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette’s Journey to Cuba
by Margarita Engle
In this stunning new work in verse, a Newbery Honor winner paints a portrait of early women’s rights pioneer Fredrika Bremer and the journey to Cuba that transformed her life.
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December 8th
Black Mamba Boy
by Nadifa Mohamed
Yemen, 1935. Jama is a “market boy,” a half-feral child scavenging with his friends in the dusty streets of a great seaport. When his mother dies young, she leaves him only an amulet stuffed with one hundred rupees. Jama decides to spend her life’s meager savings on a search for his never-seen father; the rumors that travel along clan lines report that he is a driver for the British somewhere in the north. So begins Jama’s extraordinary journey of more than a thousand miles north all the way to Egypt, by camel, by truck, by train, but mostly on foot.
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January 12th
Partitions: A Novel
by Amit Majmudar
A stunning first novel, set during the violent 1947 partition of India, about uprooted children and their journeys to safety. As India is rent into two nations, communal violence breaks out on both sides of the new border and streaming hordes of refugees flee from blood and chaos.
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February 16th
Zahra’s Paradise
by Amir and Khalil
“Zahra’s Paradise” weaves together fiction and real people and events. As the world witnessed the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections, through YouTube videos, on Twitter, and in blogs, this story came into being. The global response to this gripping tale has been passionate–an echo of the global outcry during the political upheaval of the summer of 2009. “Zahra’s Paradise” is a first on the internet, a first for graphic novels, and a first in the history of political dissidence.
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