Books can save lives, I know this for a fact.” Blume’s books were first banned in the 1980s. That’s not necessarily a book for everyone, but it’s a book for that person. Sometimes they need to find themselves in books. According to a report, more than 350 books have been banned in Florida school districts since last summer.īlume tells us, “People need different kinds of books. One is the freedom to read.”įlorida has passed legislation that has led to confusion over the removal of books. We are supposed to celebrate all the freedoms that we have. Judy Blume - the famed author of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” whose books have been on banned lists since the 1980s - is taking a stand against the recent surge in censorship.ĭuring a screening of her new documentary “Judy Blume Forever,” the YA author, whose 1975 book, “Forever,” was just removed from shelves in Marin County, Fla., in March, told us “This is America. As the year concludes, the students learn of where they have been accepted to college, and they plan a Freedom Writer reunion trip to Europe the next summer.Brooke Shields and daughter Grier suit up for ‘Pretty Baby’ premiere The company GUESS? sponsors travel for 45 students to New York to accept the award, and, shortly thereafter, the students learn that Doubleday wants to formally publish their book of diary entries. Gruwell learns that they have won The Spirit of Anne Frank Award and must accept it in person in New York. Their senior year, as the students begin to think about their future, they are the subject of a Los Angeles Times feature that draws increased media and public attention to their project. Once the book is completed, they raise money for a trip to Washington, D.C. The students decide to call themselves Freedom Writers after learning about the Civil Rights-era Freedom Riders, who took bus trips through the south in the 1960s to protest segregation. Gruwell asks them to turn their diary entries into a book. This same year, the students are also visited by a Holocaust survivor and Miep Gies, the woman responsible for hiding Anne Frank’s family and later, retrieving the dead girl’s diary.įor the students’ junior year, Ms. They write her letters, and she agrees to come for a visit. After reading these books, the students have the idea to invite Zlata, a teenager their age who wrote her diary from 1992 to 1993, during the Bosnian War, to visit their classroom. Gruwell organizes a “toast for change” and a “Read-a-thon for Tolerance.” Among the books that the students read are Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo. Still, the students deal with many difficulties that distract them from school, including race-based gang violence, domestic violence, illness, drug and alcohol addiction, and homelessness.ĭuring the students’ sophomore year, Ms. Gruwell compares the Capulets to a local Latino gang and the Montagues to a rival Asian gang and gains the respect of more students. In the spring, when they read Romeo and Juliet and, Ms. The fall of their freshman year, they read Durango Street, a book about an African American teenager living in the projects after being released from a juvenile work camp for stealing cars, and then they make a movie about it. They bet she will quit within the first week or month, but she quickly wins them over with unique teaching methods and reading material the students find relatable. Gruwell’s freshman class are almost all African American, Latino, or Asian, and at first, they are suspicious of their white, suit-wearing teacher. Gruwell to teach “at risk” freshman for the rest of that year, rather than continuing teaching the class Sharaud was in. Her school department head, leery of her unconventional teaching methods and worried about negative publicity, assigned Ms. Her efforts attracted positive attention from the media, but she also received death threats and endured disparaging racial comments from neighbors. When she compared this drawing to the propaganda the Nazis used during the Holocaust, she realized her students didn’t know what the Holocaust was and decided to focus the remainder of the year on tolerance. Gruwell found a racial caricature one of her students had drawn of Sharaud, her most difficult student. As a student teacher the previous year, Ms. Gruwell is just about to start her first official year as an English teacher.
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