Parental Guidance Suggested

When we selected DIVERGENT, we knew it was a choice that needed to be paired with a certain amount of tact.  While the pros of the novel far outweigh the cons, it is a book that involves violence.  Is DIVERGENT more violent than THE HUNGER GAMES or THE HOBBIT?  Perhaps not.  But while Katniss shoots a bow and Bilbo wields a sword, Tris shoots a revolver. 

Guns make people nervous.  We get that.  Guns make US nervous.  Still, at its heart DIVERGENT is a book about a young woman who is raised to believe that being a part of a community is so much more important than being an individual that she would rather die than be factionless.  I don't think it's a stretch to say most middle school students feel similarly about fitting in.  To a typical early adolescent, there are few fates worse than sitting alone at lunch.  And so the story of Tris - her evolution from a girl who seeks to belong to a young woman who must leverage her individuality to save her world - is a story worth putting in the hands of kids.  However, as Tris journeys from a meek Abnegation child to a determined Divergent, she carries a gun in her hand.  And she fires it.  And that's something we didn't feel we could put in front of kids without involving parents. 

 (Retrospective side-note by Mary, mom to the blonde 6th grader in the photo on the left: I wonder if we may have over-reacted.  I'll admit, I was nervous about the guns.  I have a sweet 11 year old daughter who leads a fairly sheltered life.  She hides under a blanket when previews of popular crime/zombie/police TV interrupts her viewing of America's Funniest Videos.  She had nightmares after our school's Rachel's Challenge assembly.  She's...sensitive.  Yet she read DIVERGENT in a weekend, only ever expressing concern after a certain scene involving a butter knife, and even then it was to comment that it was "gross," not scary.  I didn't quite understand the difference between the novel and the assembly; how could one be so terrifying and the other so entertaining? Mrs. D, veteran teacher and mom to teenagers, helped me figure it out.  One is real, one is fiction, and she's old enough to know the difference.  Perhaps my worry was born from me not giving my daughter enough credit.  ~Sigh~ I guess she's gonna keep growing up.)

Step one in parental involvement: send a flyer home with each student at the end of the reveal assembly.  Said flyer acknowledges the gun violence of the novel, and it also identifies the redemptive concepts that are explored, including courage, belonging, and strength. Now, we Crazy Reading Ladies haven't taught middle schoolers for a collective 15 years without learning a thing or two about the habits of our cherubs.  We had very, very little faith that more than 5% of those flyers would make it all the way out of the auditorium, into a backpack or folder, and into the hands of parents.  So we made use of our school's ConnectEd messaging service and we sent the flyer into the email inbox of every parent in the school.  (Try to turn *that* into a paper airplane, kids!)

Step Two: invite the parents to participate in the fun.  The invitation itself isn't anything new.  We've had parents read along with us before.  Some of our favorite stories of years past involve children reading books with their father, brother, mother.  One story moved us so much we tried to get approval for an 18 year old brother to be a movie chaperone.  (It didn't work, but we did manage to save him a T-Shirt.)  Parents have always been invited to read along with us.  This year, to raise the bar, we invited the parents to take part in some of the activities.  

Our first parent-friendly activity was held Monday, Nov. 18th. You can read all about it in the blog post titled "HMMS families are All In!"  In order to make the activity accessible, we partnered with our local public library and held our first book group meeting 6:30-7:30pm.  Our fabulous PCC arrived to help with set-up and to provide refreshments.  (Mary's Rule #1 - All Meetings Will Have Food.)

That's as far as Operation Mom and Dad has gone thus far.  We do have plans to involve parents further.  As always, we'll ask for parent chaperones to the movie.  We've planned at least two more evening events at the library, and we're hoping to host a weekend games activity in which parents can participate.  

As for the potentially upsetting content of DIVERGENT, we hope that by involving parents, any risky behavior addressed in the book will spur conversations  - important conversations - between parents and their kids.  Reading together not only helps parents bridge the generation gap and give them a common experience to share and process with their kids, it's also a great excuse to spend some time together.

@allinoleary
@mzcotillo