YA-HF-Dodger by Terry Pratchett 2012

Dodger is a 2013 Printz Honor book. The story takes place in London during the time of Charles Dickens.   Dodger is an orphaned  teenaged “tosher” who does his “work" in the sewers of London. By work, I mean he scours the mucky sewers for anything of value. He’s also been known to be somewhat of a petty thief, but mostly he’s a decent kid. Needless to say, Dodger is not very high on the social ladder. He encounters  a situation where a young lady is being assaulted and he rescues her. As the consequences of his involvement play out, it’s obvious that someone very important wants this girl dead and Dodger  can be of assistance to very important people because of his street smarts. This is a fast moving and highly entertaining story that keeps the reader on their toes and always guessing.  The elements of class and power are continuous themes and to make the story even more interesting a few well known people of that era like “Charlie”  Dickens as Dodger gets to call him,  Disraeli and even Queen Victoria make an appearance.  

I chose to read this because I’ve always wanted to read Terry Pratchett and I wanted an award winning book. So I didn’t do this with 6th graders in mind, but I would recommend this book as a challenging read to any student who was interested.  I would use this as a model for learning and teaching vocabulary.

 

Craft Technique 

Are there any hard or important words is one of the four basic questions students will have to answer YES to so they can understand and enjoy this complex story.

 

Words like “skint”  “shonky” “toffs”  “clobber” “peelers”  “mudlarks” “mumping”  had me  using my Nook dictionary more than ever!   The author does a decent job of using context to give the observant reader a pretty good idea of the meaning and that is what I'd teach. Additionally, some of these words have an element of class to them; as an example only lower class people would probably use the word shonky.  That would be thought provoking to teach that along with figuring out meanings.

 

Connection to MN  Language Arts Standards

 

Craft and Structure: 6.4.4.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone.

Vocabulary Acquisition and Use 6.11.4.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 6 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. a. Use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence or paragraph; a word’s position or function in a sentence) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.