For this discussion you looked at two examples of popular contemporary fiction. Although the situations are shaped and imagined, the style is designed to read like realistic works that focus on contemporary social issues (freedom of expression, media manipulation, the breaking down of authority in education, attempts to break through ethnic and economic barriers, and so on).

Answer either one of the questions below:

  1. It's very hard to find a completely likeable character in Avi's Nothing But The Truth. Some of the characters manipulate contraversy to personal advancement; some try to lay blame elsewhere to cover their own rears. Still others live vicariouslly through their children or refuse to recognize that their children could possibly do wrong. The book satirizes (points a critical finger at) the media, politicians, celebrities, parents, administrators, teenagers as each tries to promote convenient truths (or even lies disguised as truths) for their own advantage.

    Discuss, with examples, any one element that is satirized in the novel. Describe the character that represents this element of society and how he or she uses the situation in the book for personal advantage. Be sure, as always, to cite some examples.

    As an added challenge, if there is any character in the book that you really think is a solid, strong, likeable character, who is it, and what is likeable about the character?

  2. Discuss the following idea:

    More than one famous author (Voltaire, Chekhov) has noted the benefit of cultivating a garden. There were many attempts to create communes around garden back in the 1970's (of those, only one significant commune/farm remains). Paul Fleischman revisits this idea of people coming together in a garden microcosm, of learning to overcome differences. But is Seedfolks just an idealistic social tract about barriers magically falling away through shared labor, a symbolic vehicle for healing racial, ethnic, social, economic discord? Or is it a little more realistic than that? The garden solution, at least in the book, is not a complete solution; many of the characters do change, but there are still divisions within the community and the garden. In what ways does the community garden serve as a symbolic vehicle for healing racial, ethnic, social discord? Be sure to site some examples.

    As an added challenge (it's only fair; there was an added challenge for question 1), consider which approach is more likely to cause a unified community, the rule-bound, controlled society of The Giver or the gradual change of human nature suggested by Seedfolks? Why?