Title: The Name Jar
Author: Yangsook Choi
Illustrator: Yangsook Choi
The book The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi follows Unhei on her first day of school after moving to America from Korea. Unhei is very nervous to be the new student in her school. She finds that students on the bus on her first day have trouble pronouncing her name. She decides that when she introduces her to her school, she won’t use her real name. She instead tells her class that she will decide her name next week. Her classmates help her in this project by putting names in a jar for her to choose from. Before she is able to choose her new name, one of her friends visits her home and neighborhood and learns about the meaning of her real name. When it comes time for Unhei to choose her name out of the jar, the jar has disappeared. Her classmates then encourage her to go by her real name and all of her classmates learn the correct pronunciation of her name.
This book and the messages that students can take out of it can be used to engage in critical literacy. Part of Shor’s definition of critical literacy states, “Essentially, then, critical literacy is language use that questions the social construction of the self.” (Shor, 1999) Shor also places this in a classroom setting and says that in a critical writing class students are able to question and deepen their knowledge on the global world through what they’re learning. The conversations and lessons that could come from The Name Jar connect to these ideas. If the teacher teaching the book can force students to look beyond the text, they can engage in important conversations about issues such as belonging, one’s identity and culture and how moving from one country to another can affect that.
Works Cited
Choi, Y. (2001). The name jar. Dragonfly Books
Shor, Ira (1999) “What is Critical Literacy?,” Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice: Vol. 1 : Iss. 4 , Article 2. Available at: https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/jppp/vol1/iss4/2
Contributor: Ava Ravitz