So, first we read Lit. Circle books about immigration; the book that I was assigned was called Hello, America by Livia Bitton-Jackson. Hello, America is a book about a girl that comes to America after surviving the Holocaust. I liked reading this book more than any other Lit. Circle book we had to read this semester. I was glad that I chose this book for Lit. Circles, it was my third choice, and at first I was kind of disappointed that I was assigned this book because it did not seem as exiting as the other book choices, but it turned out to be my favorite Lit. Circles book all year. When I read this book I learned about new immigrants and what their life was like wen they would first come to America. If I were to change anything about the whole Lit. Circles experience, I don't think that I would change anything, I think that everything is fine just the way it is. I like blogging a lot more than what we used to do before with Lit. Circles where we had to write out everything. I did not have any problems with the blogging experience, I liked reading the comments and seeing what my group thought about the book.
When we finished reading the book we had to create a painting to represent the book. Before we could start painting we had to draw 2 sketches to represent what we were going to paint. The first sketch that I was thinking of doing was a symbol from the book, it was a drawing of an old letter addressed to Eli Friedman man because at the end of the book she got a very important letter in the mail. My second sketch was a re-done book cover; it said Hello, America & it had many symbols that represented the book. I ended up painting my second sketch because I could not paint all of the words on the letter. I felt like there was a very easy connection between my art piece and the novel, I felt like the book cover i made had more of a connection than the books actual book cover. I liked the way my final product turned out and I don't think I would change anything at all. If I were to do it again maybe I would have painted slower so that it would come out better. I really enjoyed interpreting the book that I read through art and I hope that we can do it again with our future Lit. Circle books.
The third part of this project was the interview process; we had to interview someone that had immigrated from a different country to America. I interviewed Jean-Michael Diot, an immigrant from France. I feel like the interview process went really well and there were not really any problems. The fact that I had to do 3 different interviews was not a problem and I thought that it was a better way to do it because that way you can get more information. During the interviews I learned many different new things about Jean-Michael Diot, France, and overall immigration. Interviewing an immigrant and hearing their story's made everything that we learned in class come to life; we got to hear first hand what it was like coming to America. Overall I really enjoyed this project because it was fun and i learned a lot at the same time.
