Literature / The Language of Literature (Grade 6)

First published in 1997 by Mc Dougal and Littell, this textbook Anthology is part of a series of books used to teach American children the English language. The focus is on using a mix of fiction, nonfiction, and poetic verse to teach American students how to understand English as a form of communication.

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Works in this Anthology:

Unit 1 and Pre-Unit Strategies

• "The Dog Of Pompeii" by Louis Untermeyer

(excerpt)

• "The All American Slurp" by Lensey Namoika
• "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros
• "Whos The New Kid?" by Lois Lowry
• "President Cleveland Where Are You?" by Robert Cormier
• "Scouts Honor" by Avi
• "Nadia The Willful" by Sue Alexander
• "Life Doesnt Frighten Me" by Maya Angelou
• "Tuesday Of The Other June" by Norma Fox Mazer
• "Primer Lesson" by Carl Sandburg
• "Matthew Henson At The Top Of The World" by Jim Haskins
• "Into Lucid Air" by Walt Whitman
• "Summer Of Fire" by Patricia Lauber
• "Ghost Of The Lagoon" by Armstrong Sperry
• "The Fun Of It" by Amelia Earhart (excerpt)
• "Older Run" by Gary Paulson
• "A Life In The Day Of Gary Paulsen" by Gary Paulsen
• "Woodsong" by Gary Paulsen (excerpt)

Unit 2

• "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?" by Emily Dickinson
• "It Seems I Test People" by James Berry
• "Growing Pains" by Jean Little
• "Three Haiku" by Basho, Issa, and Raymond R Patterson
• "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury
• "Change" by Charlotte Zolotow
• "Chinatown" by Laurence Yep
• "Flowers And Freckle Cream" by Elizabeth Ellis
• "Same Song" (or "La Misma Cancion") by Pat Mora
• "Aarons Gift" by Myron Levoy
• "The Circuit" by Francisco Jimenez
• "The1st" by Lucille Clifton
• "Oh Broom Get To Work" by Yoshiko Uchida
• "Western Wagons" by Stephen Vincent Benet
• "Night Journey" by Theodore Roethke
• "Ta Na E Ka" by Mary Whitebird
• "Saguaro" by Frank Asch

Unit 3

• "Damon And Pythias" by Fan Kissen
• "Cricket In The Road" by Michael Anthony
• "Mean Song" by Eve Merriam
• "The Quarrel" by Eleanor Farjeon
• "Fable" by Ralpoh Waldo Emerson
• "The Southpaw" by Judith Viorst
• "Analysis Of Basebell" by May Swenson
• "Abd Al Rahman Ibrahima" from Now Is Your Time! by Walter Dean Myers
• "The Wolf And The House Dog" by Aesop
• "The Story Of My Life" by Helen Keller (excerpt)
• "Street Corner Flight" by Norma Landa Flores
• "Words Like Freedom" by Langston Hughes
• "The School Play" by Gary Soto
• "Ode To My Library" by Gary Soto
• "Who Are Your Readers?" by Gary Soto
• "The Jacket" by Gary Soto

Unit 4

• "Lobs Girl" by Joan Aiken
• "My First Dive With The Dolphins" by Don C Reed
• "Something Told The Wild Geese" by Rachel Field
• "Questioning Faces" by Robert Frost
• "Zlateh The Goat" by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• "How To Bring Up A Lion" by Rudyard Kipling
• "Chang Mc Tang Mc Quarter Cat" by John Ciardi
• "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Susan Nanus
• "All The Is Gold" by J. R. R. Tolkien
• "The Walrus And The Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll
• "Fairy Lullaby" from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
• "Three Limericks" by Edward Lear, Jack P Relutsky, and Ogden Nash
• "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein
• "Under The Back Porch" by Virginia Hamilton
• "The Fun They Had" by Isaac Asimov
• "The Sand Castle" by Alma Luz Villanueva

Unit 5

• "Words On A Page" by Keith Leckie
• "Bringing The Prairie Home" by Patricia Mac Lachlan
• "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum
• "You Sing Sonnet 52" by Pablo Neruda
• "How To Paint The Portrait Of A Bird" by Jacques Prevert, translated by Paul Dehn
• "The Scribe" by Kristin Hunter
• "Crow Call" by Lois Lowry
• "The Dog Of Pompeii" by Louis Untermeyer
• "Tutankhamen" by Anne Terry White
• "Ancestors" by Dudley Randall
• "The First Emperor" by Daniel Cohen
• "Barbara Frietchie" by John Greenleaf Whittier
• "Beethoven Lives Upstairs" by Barbara Nichol

Unit 6

• "The Boy Who Flew" retold by Anne Rockwell
• "Arachne" retold by Olivia E Coolidge
• "Ceres And Prosperpina" retold by Mary Pope Osborne
• "The Disobedient Child" retold by Victor Montejo
• "The Bamboo Beads" retold by Lynn Joseph
• "In The Land Of Small Dragon" retold by Dang Manh Kha
• "King Thrushbeard" retold by The Brothers Grimm
• "Why Monkeys Live In Trees" retold by Julius Lester
• "The Legend Of The Hummingbird" retold by Pura Belpre
• "The Living Kuan Yin" retold by Carol Kendall and Yao Wen Li
• "The Frog Who Wanted To Be A Singer" by Linda Gross
• "Where The Girl Rescued Her Brother" retold by Joseph Bruchac

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This Anthology provides examples of the following tropes:

• The Annotated Edition: The excerpt of "The Dog Of Pompeii" is annotated by two fictional kids to demonstrate how students are supposed to be "active readers", identifying predictions, connecting, visualizing, evaluations, and clarifications.
• Biography: Many, but not all, of the stories in this textbook also contain "About the Author" sections to share additional background information for the reader.
• Book Ends: "The All American Slurp" starts with the Lin family being dinner guests at the Gleeson's house and ends with roles reversed; the Gleeson family are dinner guests at the Lin house.
• Chain of Deals: "President Cleveland Where Are You?" culminates in Jerry, the protagonist, needing to fix his bicycle tire to ride over to the North Side of the town to trade his extra Warren G Harding collectable card for a Grover Cleveland card to sell to Rollie Tremaine, the antagonist, for five dollars so he can buy his brother a corsage and new shoes so he can take Sally Knowlton to a fancy dance.
• Character Narrator:
  • "The All American Slurp" is narrated by the daughter of the Lin family, but her name is never mentioned. It's about how her family learns to adopt American customs.
  • "Eleven" is narrated by Rachel, who tells about her terrible eleventh birthday with a rhythmic repetition.
  • "President Cleveland Where Are You?" is narrated by Jerry, a kid trying to collect cards of presidents.
  • "Scouts Honor" is narrated by nine-year-old Avi, about his abortive effort to go camping with two friends.
  • "Tuesday Of The Other June" is narrated by a girl named June and how she dealt with a bully also named June.
• Compressed Adaptation: This Literature textbook contains excerpts from several stories too long to republish in this Doorstopper:
  • "The Dog Of Pompeii" by Louis Untermeyer
  • "The Fun Of It" by Amelia Earhart
  • "Woodsong" by Gary Paulsen
  • "The Story Of My Life" by Helen Keller
• Doorstopper: There's over one thousand pages in this book, not including the index and the copyright pages.
• Footnote Fever: Because this is a textbook used to teach English language reading, there are many definitions given with footnotes, additional questions/challenges in sidebars, certain phrases are highlighted, and sometimes multiple stories/poems share a page.
• New Transfer Student: "Whos The New Kid?" is about the protagonist's first day at a new school and her embarrassingly short haircut.
• No Fourth Wall: As a reading textbook, the audience is often addressed and given questions to create a deeper understanding of the text.
• One-Word Title:
  • "Ancestors", by Dudley Randall
  • There's a retelling of the "Arachne" myth by Olivia E Coolidge
  • "Change", by Charlotte Zolotow
  • "Chinatown", by Laurence Yep
  • "Eleven", by Sandra Cisneros
  • "Fable", by Ralpoh Waldo Emerson
  • "Saguaro", by Frank Asch
  • "Tutankhamen", by Anne Terry White
  • An excerpt from "Woodsong", by Gary Paulsen
• Point of View: "The Dog Of Pompeii" is told in third person omniscient, juxtaposing the boy and his dog to reverse their normal roles.

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