The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold novel was a #1 national bestseller in 2002 and was recently turned into a movie. It is a first person narrative about Susie Salmon who was raped and murdered on December 6Th, 1973. Susie is the person telling us the story about her neighbor murdering her and her family's healing process and search to find the killing. Her sister and father take big risks to assure that nothing like this will happen again in the neighborhood.

It scares me to think that most rapes and murders occur by people that the child knows and happens close to home. I definitely won't teach this to middle school students or Freshman. It has too many raw details and made me emotional and kept asking "why" so I think it would depress my students.

For my teaching around a text project, I'm thinking about using this novel to teach foreshadowing, flashbacks and voice. Sebold does an excellent job taking us from "heaven" with Susie back to the exact moment of the rape. She also does an outstanding job of adding humor en though it is a very depressing novel.

Rape is something a lot of people do not want to discuss and Sebold establishes that if you give it time you can always find answers even if they are right in front of your eyes the whole time. It is a novel of courage, hope, forgiveness and love. Susie was truly loved.

Inside the snow globe on my father's desk,
there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white
striped scarf. When I was little my father
would pull me into his lap and reach for the
snow globe. He would turn it over,letting all
the snow collect on the top, then quickly
invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall
gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone
in there, I thought, and I was worried for him.
When I told my father this, he said, "Don't worry,
Susie; he has a nice life. He's trapped in a
perfect world." -The Lovely Bones

No matter how many times I read this I feel like I could help Susie if I were there. I feel she was too naive to say no and run. I feel helpless. This novel will bring up a ton of discussion, what could we do? How do you feel?