28.
Author(s): Loree Griffin Burns
Title: Tracking Trash
Publication: Paperback
Pages: 64 Pages
Genre: Nonfiction
Acquisition: Work Text
Date Completed: March 20, 2011
Rating:

I used this text to lead a fifth-grade student through utilizing the different components of a text - including the use of an index, analyzing publication information, and utilizing images and graphic displays as isolated sources - with great success. The writing is well-suited to this age group, and the visual representation makes it an appealing text to work with.

27.
Author(s): T.C. Boyle
Title: Greasy Lake and Other Stories
Publication: Paperback
Pages: 240 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Acquisition: Work Text
Date Completed: March 22, 2011
Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5

I inherited Greasy Lake and Other Stories when I accepted an additional lit and comp course last minute, and looked forward to the opportunity to explore new short fiction - a genre which I do not generally pursue on my own. I was reassured that students really relate to the works in the collection, and that it is an ideal text to teach short fiction at this level.

As a tool for teaching literary devices, I certainly see the worth of Greasy Lake; Boyle himself writes like an undergraduate creative writing student, and each brief story is dripping with immediately recognizable devices and techniques. For this I appreciate the collection - after all, one of my primary goals is to introduce students to techniques such as similes, personification, and onomatopoeia, and Boyle's stories provide extensive examples for quick and dirty references. Students gain confidence as they learn to spot these devices on their own, increasing their own strengths as developing scholars.

However, in terms of general content and appeal I'm afraid that the collection simply does not resonate. Like the narrator of the title story in this collection, T.C. Boyle seems to be trying his best to be a Bad Character, but his work is dated in a way that Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" or John Updike's "A&P" don't seem to be (for example, my students did not recognize the stock character of the "greaser," and so this basic allusion had to be explained in order for students to understand the narrator of the title story). In the future I will likely continue to use stories such as "Greasy Lake" and "Caviar," but I will be certain to supplement a reading of Boyle with other short stories in order to capture the attention of my classes.

As a teaching text, I would give Greasy Lake a four-star rating, but in terms of personal opinion and taste I would have to rate the collection far lower.