LITERARY TEXTS

At the Bronx Academy of Letters, literacy development is stressed in every curricular area, and literary texts are used throughout the disciplines. In social studies, in addition to textbooks, we use biographies and works of historical fiction. If the class is studying the Vietnam War, books might include classic nonfiction accounts such as Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie, as well as Tim O’Brien’s novels The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato.

Even in science and math, crossover books—books by people who can write accessibly about these two subjects—are read as supplementary materials. Examples include It Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science, a collection of twelve essays on modern scientific equations written by eminent scientists, historians, and science writers; and First You Build a Cloud: And Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life by K.C. Cole, who has been called the Leonardo da Vinci of science writing. The students might read Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash and then see the movie. Science can also be approached through literature and theater. Possible texts are excerpts from Dava Sobel’s novel Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love or Roger McDonald’s Mr. Darwin's Shooter, about a twelve-year-old boy who works for Charles Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle. Another approach to the literacy of science is through plays that deal with scientific subjects, including Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and Hapgood, Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, and David Auburn’s Proof.