Witness by Karen Hesse

Hesse, K. 2001. Witness. Broadway, New York:  Scholastic Inc.

Synopsis:

Act I

There are many characters in this book all from a small Vermont town in 1924. The Ku Klux Klan is moving into town, and people are trying to decide if they want to be a part of it or not in Act I of the book. This first part is getting a feel for the characters, the main ones being Leanora Sutter, Esther Hirsh, Merlin Van Tornhout, and Johnny Reeves. Leanora is an African American 12-year old girl, and Esther is a 6-year old Jewish girl. Neither of them or their families is safe.

Act II

Violence is getting worse. There is a story of a Chicago 14-year old boy that was hit by a car and put in a ditch naked; just because the boy was Jewish. This act in the book discussed more violence since the Ku Klux Klan was coming into town. They burned a cross up on the hill at the Independence Day Celebration. Someone threw a rock with an awful note on it since Sara Chickering houses the young African American Leanora.

Act III

The Ku Klux Klan all say they are all American, only wanting to help the people do right, but they are not. In this act, some drunken KKK members broke into the church, and stole all they had; it wasn’t much, but they did it anyways. The cold blooded kills of the Chicago boy got to live out their life sentences, instead of a hanging; Judge did not like to kill minors, so they both got life. Another character got his car stolen by a KKK member by knifepoint. Another was hung and a liquor bottle stashed in his pocket while his death was named a “suicide.”

Act IV

The local newspaper editor was warned by a letter that he better watch what he writes, or his day will come when he won’t be able to write or publish anything every again. The Klan decided they were going to teach one of the Jewish characters a lesson, so they sent a member to put rat poison in their drinking well to make them really sick, but that person couldn’t, so he ran away. Someone else had to come back and finish the job of trying to kill Esther’s father, so they shot him dead, as well as their dog. The town constable called in help to find Mr. Hirsh’s shooter.

Act V

Esther saw how shot her daddy. The one who was blamed for the shooting, but innocent, jumped off the tallest part of the bridge, and was carried away by the river. Elections were coming up, and President Coolidge won by a landslide. He was the calmest and most collected candidate there ever was.  The new President got rid of all the Klan in the Vermont area. Everything finally all went back to normal in the little town of Vermont.

 This novel was a full of free verse of the many characters in the book. It had an introduction of the characters by name, age, and picture before the story. This book was a very nerve-racking book to me. It contained no capital letters at all. Each page was dedicated to a different character that just kept rotating back around. Each page had that character’s thoughts and actions at the point of view of that character. Each page was in short lined- paragraphs, and in the language and dialect of the characters themselves. The illustration on the front cover is a great look to what the characters from the time of the books setting would look and dress like. It has the “old-timie” single person black and white snapshots of people in their everyday settings. There is no rhyme to this poetry, but it does have paragraphs in similar size for each person’s thoughts and actions.  

Lesson Connection:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.5 Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems when writing or speaking about a text, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.10 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, independently and proficiently.

Curriculum Activity: Literature Circles and Role playing each of the characters with voices to mimic what they may have sounded like.

Big Question: Compare and contrast the Ku Klux Klan to the Duck Dynasty clan.