Hot Dogs and Language Arts: 7th Grade's Literary Journey

This Wednesday at the start of the SGS basketball tailgate, seventh graders were shocked, stunned and stupefied to encounter a little hot dog stand called, wait for it, Dante’s Inferno Dogs. The universe works in mysterious ways: the day before, they had learned about Dante Alighieri’s 14th Century epic poem, in which the poet Virgil guides Dante through the nine circles of Hell. Why, you ask, are seventh graders learning such things? Well, because our class novel is Hello, Universe by the great Erin Entrada Kelly, and the main character is an introverted kid named Virgil! And it seems, as we reach the book’s halfway point, that our Virgil is going to have a dark encounter with something underground, much like his literary namesake…

One of the big ideas we’re working with in this unit is that novels are like tapestries, in which myriad meaningful stitches come together to reveal an intricate pattern. We’ve been reading this book like detectives, tracking the subtle “stitches” that only the most careful reader would notice. Students are collecting these notes in their Novel Notebooks and will ultimately use their notes to create a project that shows the thematic patterns woven throughout the book. 

As one of the book’s characters repeats, “There are no coincidences!” Hello, Universe has gotten us talking about fate and destiny, which is good stuff to chew on in this life, but we’re also beginning to see that novels are intricate creations with details and patterns that warrants close reading. Learning about literary allusions (Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is another allusion we recently discussed) adds further depth to our close reading.

Hot dogs, basketball, Dante, books, language arts, the color red… does it make sense yet? Talk to your seventh grader to understand the mysteries of this literary universe.

– Emelio

BONUS POSTSCRIPT: Hello, Universe won the 2018 Newbery Medal, making Erin Entrada Kelly the first Filipinio American to win this major award. Shortly after our class started reading Hello, Universe, it was announced that she won a second Newbery Medal, for her recent book The First State of Being! Coincidence? I think not!