Stargirl
BY JERRY SPINELLI
Learning Objectives & Essential Questions
-What does it mean to be an individual?-What is the power of love? -How can we accept others as they are? -How can we practice acceptance in our daily lives?
-How can we create art that represents the theme of acceptance?
-How can we use the symbolism in Stargirl to enhance our understanding of the novel?
-Students will be able to understand the main themes of Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, including acceptance, individuality, and the power of love. -Students will be able to analyze and interpret the symbolism in Stargirl, both literal and figurative. -Students will be able to compare and contrast Stargirl to other stories and works of art.
Warm Up
In your journal write a response to the following: "Think of a time when you felt different or unique. How did it make you feel? How did others react?"
"Stargirl"
WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
Stargirl is an homage to individuality and self-confidence by Jerry Spinelli (b. 1941), an American author of award-winning children’s and young adult fiction. The novel and its sequel, Love, Stargirl, have inspired many students to start their own “Stargirl Societies” in schools around the country. When Stargirl first shows up at Mica Area High School, the students don’t know what to make of her. She acts and dresses differently from everyone else. She doesn’t try to fit in; instead, she stands out. Stargirl’s antics have everyone convinced that she cannot be real—or is she?
As we read
The novel is about a young girl named Stargirl who is very unique and different from others her age. She is kind, friendly, and outgoing, but also quite different from anyone else. It is very important to understand and accept people for who they are, even if they are different from us.
Define
Acquire
Intensely
Vocabulary
Variant
Non conformity
Heritage
Miniature
Boggles
Bizarre
A Summary
We are not going to read the whole novel, but here is a summary to prepare you.
Summary
Stargirl is a new tenth grader at Mica Area High School (MAHS), but her classmates think she is “unreal” because she is a nonconformist. Stargirl wears eccentric clothing, invents songs about isosceles triangles, carries a pet rat in her bag, and dances in the rain during gym class. In the beginning of this chapter, the narrator watches in disbelief as Stargirl picks up her ukulele and winds her way through the lunchroom to sing a happy birthday song to an unpopular boy. The narrator believes that Stargirl’s unusual behavior will prevent her from fitting in at MAHS. In the end, while watching the moon through his window, the narrator gets a sense of the otherness of things and decides that although Stargirl is unusual, she definitely is real.
Stargirl
from CHAPTER TWO
I had to admit, the more I saw of her, the easier it was to believe she was a plant, a joke, anything but real. On that second day she wore bright-red baggy shorts with a bib and shoulder straps-overall shorts. Her sandy hair was pulled back into twin plaited pigtails, each tied with a bright-red ribbon. A rouge smudge appled each cheek, and she had even dabbed some oversized freckles on her face. She looked like Heidi. Or Bo Peep. At lunch she was alone again at her table. As before, when she finished eating, she took up her ukulele. But this time she didn’t play. She got up and started walking among the tables. She stared at us. She stared at one face, then another and another. The kind of bold, I’m-looking-at-you stare you almost never get from people, especially strangers. She appeared to be looking for someone, and the whole lunchroom had become very uncomfortable. As she approached our table, I thought: What if she’s looking for me? The thought terrified me. So I turned from her. I looked at Kevin. I watched him grin goofily up at her. He wiggled his fingers at her and whispered, “Hi, Stargirl.” I didn’t hear an answer. I was intensely aware of her passing behind my chair. She stopped two tables away. She was smiling at a pudding-bodied senior named Alan Ferko. The lunchroom was dead silent. She started strumming the uke. And singing. It was “Happy Birthday.” When she came to his name she didn’t sing just his first name, but his full name: “Happy Birthday, dear Alan Fer-kooooh” Alan Ferko’s face turned red as Bo Peep’s pigtail ribbons. There was a flurry of whistles and hoots, more for Alan Ferko’s sake,
I think, than hers. As Stargirl marched out, I could see Hillari Kimble across the lunchroom rising from her seat, pointing, saying something I could not hear. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Kevin said as we joined the mob in the hallways, “she better be fake.” I asked him what he meant.
“I mean if she’s real, she’s in big trouble. How long do you think somebody who’s really like that is going to last around here?” Good question. Mica Area High School-MAHS-was not exactly a hotbed of nonconformity. There were individual variants here and there, of course, but within pretty narrow limits we all wore the same clothes, talked the same way, ate the same food, listened to the same music. Even our dorks and nerds had a MAHS stamp on them. If we happened to somehow distinguish ourselves, we quickly snapped back into place, like rubber bands. Kevin was right. It was unthinkable that Stargirl could survive-or at least survive unchanged-among us. But it was also clear that Hillari Kimble was at lea st half right: this person calling herself Stargirl may or may not have been a faculty plant for school spirit, but whatever she was, she was not real. She couldn’t be. Several times in those early weeks of September, she showed up in something outrageous. A 1920s flapper dress. An Indian buckskin. A kimono. One day she wore a denim miniskirt with green stockings, and crawling up one leg was a parade of enamel ladybug and butterfly pins. “Normal” for her were long, floor-brushing pioneer dresses and skirts. Every few days in the lunchroom she serenaded someone new with “Happy Birthday.” I was glad my birthday was in the summer.
In the hallways, she said hello to perfect strangers. The seniors couldn’t believe it. They had never seen a tenth-grader so bold. In class she was always flapping her hand in the air, asking questions, though the question often had nothing to do with the subject. One day she asked a question about trolls-in U.S. History class. She made up a song about isosceles triangles. She sang it to her Plane Geometry class. It was called “Three Sides Have I, But Only Two Are Equal.” She joined the cross-country team. Our home meets were held on the Mica Country Club golf course. Red flags showed the runners the way to go. In her first meet, out in the middle of the course, she turned left when everyone else turned right. They waited for her at the finish line. She never showed up. She was dismissed from the team. One day a girl screamed in the hallway. She had seen a tiny brown face pop up from Stargirl’s sunflower canvas bag. It was her pet rat. It rode to school in the bag every day. One morning we had a rare rainfall. It came during her gym class. The teacher told everyone to come in. On the way to the next class they looked out the windows. Stargirl was still outside. In the rain. Dancing. We wanted to define her, to wrap her up as we did each other, but we could not seem to get past “weird” and “strange” and “goofy.” Her ways knocked us off balance. A single word seemed to hover in the cloudless sky over the school: HUH?
Everything she did seemed to echo Hillari Kimble: She’s not real...
She’s not real...
And each night in bed I thought of her as the moon came through my window. I could have lowered my shade to make it darker and easier to sleep, but I never did. In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn’t the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.. It was during one of these nightmoon times that it came to me that Hillari Kimble was wrong. Stargirl was real.
Assignment
Character Analysis: You will choose one character from Stargirl and create a character profile, including physical traits, personality traits, motivations, and conflicts. You will create a "Facebook" page for that character on a template.
Exit Ticket
How does the narrator feel about Stargirl’s lunchroom antics? Cite specific evidence from the first three paragraphs in the excerpt to support your answer.
STARGIRL
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Transcript
Stargirl
BY JERRY SPINELLI
Learning Objectives & Essential Questions
-What does it mean to be an individual?-What is the power of love? -How can we accept others as they are? -How can we practice acceptance in our daily lives? -How can we create art that represents the theme of acceptance? -How can we use the symbolism in Stargirl to enhance our understanding of the novel?
-Students will be able to understand the main themes of Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, including acceptance, individuality, and the power of love. -Students will be able to analyze and interpret the symbolism in Stargirl, both literal and figurative. -Students will be able to compare and contrast Stargirl to other stories and works of art.
Warm Up
In your journal write a response to the following: "Think of a time when you felt different or unique. How did it make you feel? How did others react?"
"Stargirl"
WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
Stargirl is an homage to individuality and self-confidence by Jerry Spinelli (b. 1941), an American author of award-winning children’s and young adult fiction. The novel and its sequel, Love, Stargirl, have inspired many students to start their own “Stargirl Societies” in schools around the country. When Stargirl first shows up at Mica Area High School, the students don’t know what to make of her. She acts and dresses differently from everyone else. She doesn’t try to fit in; instead, she stands out. Stargirl’s antics have everyone convinced that she cannot be real—or is she?
As we read
The novel is about a young girl named Stargirl who is very unique and different from others her age. She is kind, friendly, and outgoing, but also quite different from anyone else. It is very important to understand and accept people for who they are, even if they are different from us.
Define
Acquire
Intensely
Vocabulary
Variant
Non conformity
Heritage
Miniature
Boggles
Bizarre
A Summary
We are not going to read the whole novel, but here is a summary to prepare you.
Summary
Stargirl is a new tenth grader at Mica Area High School (MAHS), but her classmates think she is “unreal” because she is a nonconformist. Stargirl wears eccentric clothing, invents songs about isosceles triangles, carries a pet rat in her bag, and dances in the rain during gym class. In the beginning of this chapter, the narrator watches in disbelief as Stargirl picks up her ukulele and winds her way through the lunchroom to sing a happy birthday song to an unpopular boy. The narrator believes that Stargirl’s unusual behavior will prevent her from fitting in at MAHS. In the end, while watching the moon through his window, the narrator gets a sense of the otherness of things and decides that although Stargirl is unusual, she definitely is real.
Stargirl
from CHAPTER TWO
I had to admit, the more I saw of her, the easier it was to believe she was a plant, a joke, anything but real. On that second day she wore bright-red baggy shorts with a bib and shoulder straps-overall shorts. Her sandy hair was pulled back into twin plaited pigtails, each tied with a bright-red ribbon. A rouge smudge appled each cheek, and she had even dabbed some oversized freckles on her face. She looked like Heidi. Or Bo Peep. At lunch she was alone again at her table. As before, when she finished eating, she took up her ukulele. But this time she didn’t play. She got up and started walking among the tables. She stared at us. She stared at one face, then another and another. The kind of bold, I’m-looking-at-you stare you almost never get from people, especially strangers. She appeared to be looking for someone, and the whole lunchroom had become very uncomfortable. As she approached our table, I thought: What if she’s looking for me? The thought terrified me. So I turned from her. I looked at Kevin. I watched him grin goofily up at her. He wiggled his fingers at her and whispered, “Hi, Stargirl.” I didn’t hear an answer. I was intensely aware of her passing behind my chair. She stopped two tables away. She was smiling at a pudding-bodied senior named Alan Ferko. The lunchroom was dead silent. She started strumming the uke. And singing. It was “Happy Birthday.” When she came to his name she didn’t sing just his first name, but his full name: “Happy Birthday, dear Alan Fer-kooooh” Alan Ferko’s face turned red as Bo Peep’s pigtail ribbons. There was a flurry of whistles and hoots, more for Alan Ferko’s sake,
I think, than hers. As Stargirl marched out, I could see Hillari Kimble across the lunchroom rising from her seat, pointing, saying something I could not hear. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Kevin said as we joined the mob in the hallways, “she better be fake.” I asked him what he meant. “I mean if she’s real, she’s in big trouble. How long do you think somebody who’s really like that is going to last around here?” Good question. Mica Area High School-MAHS-was not exactly a hotbed of nonconformity. There were individual variants here and there, of course, but within pretty narrow limits we all wore the same clothes, talked the same way, ate the same food, listened to the same music. Even our dorks and nerds had a MAHS stamp on them. If we happened to somehow distinguish ourselves, we quickly snapped back into place, like rubber bands. Kevin was right. It was unthinkable that Stargirl could survive-or at least survive unchanged-among us. But it was also clear that Hillari Kimble was at lea st half right: this person calling herself Stargirl may or may not have been a faculty plant for school spirit, but whatever she was, she was not real. She couldn’t be. Several times in those early weeks of September, she showed up in something outrageous. A 1920s flapper dress. An Indian buckskin. A kimono. One day she wore a denim miniskirt with green stockings, and crawling up one leg was a parade of enamel ladybug and butterfly pins. “Normal” for her were long, floor-brushing pioneer dresses and skirts. Every few days in the lunchroom she serenaded someone new with “Happy Birthday.” I was glad my birthday was in the summer.
In the hallways, she said hello to perfect strangers. The seniors couldn’t believe it. They had never seen a tenth-grader so bold. In class she was always flapping her hand in the air, asking questions, though the question often had nothing to do with the subject. One day she asked a question about trolls-in U.S. History class. She made up a song about isosceles triangles. She sang it to her Plane Geometry class. It was called “Three Sides Have I, But Only Two Are Equal.” She joined the cross-country team. Our home meets were held on the Mica Country Club golf course. Red flags showed the runners the way to go. In her first meet, out in the middle of the course, she turned left when everyone else turned right. They waited for her at the finish line. She never showed up. She was dismissed from the team. One day a girl screamed in the hallway. She had seen a tiny brown face pop up from Stargirl’s sunflower canvas bag. It was her pet rat. It rode to school in the bag every day. One morning we had a rare rainfall. It came during her gym class. The teacher told everyone to come in. On the way to the next class they looked out the windows. Stargirl was still outside. In the rain. Dancing. We wanted to define her, to wrap her up as we did each other, but we could not seem to get past “weird” and “strange” and “goofy.” Her ways knocked us off balance. A single word seemed to hover in the cloudless sky over the school: HUH? Everything she did seemed to echo Hillari Kimble: She’s not real... She’s not real...
And each night in bed I thought of her as the moon came through my window. I could have lowered my shade to make it darker and easier to sleep, but I never did. In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn’t the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.. It was during one of these nightmoon times that it came to me that Hillari Kimble was wrong. Stargirl was real.
Assignment
Character Analysis: You will choose one character from Stargirl and create a character profile, including physical traits, personality traits, motivations, and conflicts. You will create a "Facebook" page for that character on a template.
Exit Ticket
How does the narrator feel about Stargirl’s lunchroom antics? Cite specific evidence from the first three paragraphs in the excerpt to support your answer.