Fire from the Rock

Fire from the Rock

• Genre: Fiction; middle grade/young adult historical
• Originally Published: 2007
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 760L; grades 8-11
• Structure/Length: 36 chapters plus author’s note; approx. 231 pages; approx. 8 hours on audio
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: In 1957 Little Rock, Arkansas, 15-year-old Sylvia Patterson is tapped to be among the first Black students to attend Central High School in the integration of Little Rock schools. She must decide between the resources and opportunities of Central High versus the potentially safer environment of the segregated high school in an atmosphere of increasing conflict, racism, and violence in her community.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Racism and racial violence; anti-Blackness; prejudice; privilege; anti-Semitism

Sharon M. Draper, Author

• Bio: Born in Cleveland, Ohio; loved being read to and reading from an early age; attended Pepperdine University in California; well-respected classroom teacher of English and writing; National Teacher of the Year (1997); bestselling and highly lauded writer of fiction for young people; 5-time winner of Coretta Scott King Literary Award; earned The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English Lifetime Achievement Award (2011) and ALA’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement (2015)
• Other Works: Tears of a Tiger (1994); Out of My Mind (2010); Stella by Starlight (2015); Blended (2018)
• Awards: Notable Social Studies Committee Trade Book for Young People (2008); New York Public Library Best Books for the Teen Age (2008)

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• Different Ways of Combatting Racism
• The Power of Representation
• Courage and Community

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:

• Develop an understanding of the historical, political, and social impacts of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision on the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.
• Analyze short paired texts and other resources to make connections via the novel’s themes of The Power of Representation and Different Ways of Combatting Racism.
• Craft a short opinion essay that considers the Different Ways of Combatting Racism.
• Integrate historical research into a reflection on the process and impact of integration on America’s schools.