Witness

Witness.  Karen Hesse. Scholastic Press. 2001.

This book is about a small town in Vermont in 1924 that becomes inhabited by the Ku Klux Klan.  The novel is told in prose in the points of view of eleven citizens of this town telling their thoughts and experiences about the state of the town and the KKK.  The two main characters are twelve-year-old Leanora Sutter who is African-American and six-year-old Esther Hirsch who is Jewish.  Esther witnesses her father get fatally shot by an ex-member of the Ku Klux Klan trying to regain his position.  The town believes that a young member of the klan is responsible, a classmate of Leanora who is not shy about his prejudice towards her, and Leanora is the only one who can testify that he was elsewhere.

This book may be confusing for students at first because of its poetic style; it lacks proper punctuation and capitalization, and rather than being told in story-like format, chapters are short accounts of the thoughts of characters.  The book would a great accompaniment with lessons about the 1920’s or racial issues.  It does a good job talking about and explaining the Ku Klux Klan without being too overwhelming for a young audience.  It also shows that the KKK was against many groups, Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and not just African-Americans.  This book would be great for teaching students to focus on character development.  The two main characters are females, but there are multiple male characters, so it could appeal to both male and female students.  The language used is very simple, so it could be taught to a 6^th grade class, but if you wanted to get into discussions about the KKK I would suggest reading it with a 7^th or 8^th grade class.