Discuss how you would use this text in your own classroom

In my 9th grade ELA ICT class, we are extending our work on the importance of protest against power by incorporating lit circles into our unit. So far we have read Elie Wiesel’s nobel peace prize speech, “Hope, Despair & Memory”, MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail and “Antigone”. Luna is one of the four texts that we are using for our lit circles. We chose this text as a lower lexile level (500) for differentiation purposes. The other texts that we have chosen for our lit circles are “I Am Malala” by Christina Lamb and Malala Yousafzai, “March” by Andrew Aydin, John Lewis, and John Noel Claude Lewis and “In The Country We Love” by Diane Guerrero.

The reason why Luna fits into the theme of protest against power is because she is protesting against her dad, family, society to be who she really is. In the world we live in people that are transgender are assaulted and killed more often than anyone else in our society and it largely goes under the radar. Therefore, just to be out as a trans person is an act of protest. 

In our lit circles, students will be grouped based on reading level, with some flexibility based on interest, which we will determine from a survey. Each group will have guiding questions that they will work on together and a final group project. This will be a change of pace since the groups that they were in prior to lit circles were heterogeneous as a strategy to promote reading comprehension among the lower level readers.  

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon is about a teenage boy, Christopher Boone. While not directly acknowledged in the text, Christopher seems to be on the autism spectrum and struggles with social norms and understanding human emotions, including his own. He also loves animals, so when Christopher finds his neighbor’s dog, dead, in front of their house, he decides to investigate the murder and write a book about it. His neighbor, Mrs. Shears, finds him investigating the dead dog and calls the police on him, which results in him going to jail for a few hours. 

Once released from jail, Christopher’s dad makes him promise not to investigate the murder of Mrs. Shears’ dog. However, Christopher continues interviewing people in the neighborhood about the incident. His father finds out what he is doing and instructs him to stop, but Christopher continues anyway. Eventually, Christopher’s father finds Christopher’s book about the murder and takes the book away from him. Although Christopher’s father was very upset about Christopher disobeying him, Christopher looks for the hidden book anyway. 

When Christopher finds the book, he also finds a stack of letters addressed to him, from his mother. This comes as a surprise to Christopher because he had thought his mother was dead, but she was actually living in London. Once his father admits and apologizes for lying to Christopher, he also admits to killing Mrs. Shears’ dog. He did this because he had unrequited feelings for Mrs. Shear and was upset that she didn’t love him back. 

Christopher is so upset by his father’s confession that he decides to go live with his mom in London. When he arrives, Christopher learns that his mother is living with Mr. Shears and explains to her that his father told him that she was dead. His father comes looking for him, but he stays with his mother for another week and eventually returns home with her in order to take an exam that will help him get into college. He anxiously takes the exam and meanwhile, his father tries to get Christopher to forgive him by buying him a puppy. In the end, he receives his exam results and learns that he scored the highest points possible.

I enjoyed reading this book because it gives the reader an opportunity to look into the mind of someone who has autism. Because Haddon writes this book in first person, we are given a step by step guide to everything going on inside Christopher’s mind and body when he experiences something. Instead of feeling and expressing a direct emotion, he often explains what is happening in his body, physically. We often say that people with autism have trouble understanding human emotion, but it is rarely acknowledged that maybe people without autism have trouble understanding the physical process of their own bodies. Christopher is able to do this well. Sometimes, when he explains his physical reactions, even without him expressing it, I can infer that he is experiencing anxiety. Many people are unable to acknowledge and understand the physical feelings of anxiety the way Christopher does. I found this to be very eye opening.