Jeff Lemire uses hockey to connect generations, communities, families and the whole country. He calls on the nostalgia associated with the “good ole hockey game” to beckon us in to the story. As a reader, I could hear the radio broadcaster’s voice as the puck flew down the ice, I could recall sticks hitting the ice on a cold rink, and television footage of all the games I had ever watched with my dad in my childhood flooded into my memory, especially in the second book. Additionally, I could feel how hockey was a part of the being of many of the characters in Essex County.
Hockey being so much a part of the LeBeuf family identity, it is significant to note that when Jimmy and Lester start hanging out, it is this that Jimmy falls back on to connect with his “long-lost” son. On their visits down to the creek, between fighting off alien attacks, a quick game on the creek under the bridge makes the relationship between Jimmy and Lester reciprocal: Jimmy indulges and encourages Lester’s interest in comics and drawing; and Lester plays the game, that Jimmy can share a piece of himself and relive some of his favorite memories. Lemire reveals later in the book that Vince and Lou played hockey as boys on this very same creek. The way Jimmy chooses to connect with Lester makes a whole lot of sense, because that’s ultimately how he got to connect with his own grandfather. After his mother’s death, the biweekly visits he shared with his grandfather and his great uncle become a very important part of his upbringing. This becomes a very important connection, because it is the only connection he has to Lou and Vince. Raised in the culture of hockey, it makes sense that both Lou and Vince would share this passion with the next generation in their family. Around hockey, the two men shape their lives, though in very different ways. Vince, though successful, ultimately retires from hockey to raise a family, though like many proud Canadians, we get the sense that he doesn’t miss a game (especially if it involves the Toronto Maple Leafs). For Lou, it ultimately becomes the single most steadfast thing in his life. He comes to think of his life as a reflection of a hockey game, and we see this in how he shapes his narrative in “Book 2: Ghost Stories.” Lou’s life begins with an exciting and promising first period which ultimately comes to a staggering end: his brother joins him in Toronto, redeeming the position of the Toronto Grizzles; however, Lou and Beth’s transgression ultimately builds unspoken tension between the two brothers (in Lou’s perception). The first period closes when Beth (now pregnant) and Vince return to the family farm in Essex County to build their family, and Lou blows his knee out, rendering him unable to play professionally ever again. Period two has few remarkable events for Lou: he spends most of his time, lonely in Toronto, working during the day and watching hockey at night (maybe with an old teammate); he returns temporarily to Essex County at his mother’s death, but a confrontation with Vince (who knows the truth about Lou and Beth’s illicit, yet brief relationship) sends him quickly and firmly back to Toronto, where he spends the rest of his days until hearing loss forces his early retirement. In the final period, Lou seems to come out of his shell for a bit: he returns to the arena, working as a handyman, and, later, a coach for the little “mites” team. He must ultimately return to Essex County when a car accident takes the lives of Beth and her daughter Mary, leaving Vince in critical condition and Jim (Mary’s baby) to be placed in an adoptive family. Lou spends his remaining years caring for Vince, and some time after Vince’s death, Lou is transported to Forest Glades Nursing Home to reminisce, review old scars and deep feelings of remorse, and wait out his final years. Throughout Essex County, Lemire “broadcasts” hockey games: sometimes, we view the game through a character’s television, and other times, we are part of the live audience, chilly at the rink and ears ringing as the puck (and players) slam against the sideboards. Anyone who was raised on hockey, like I was, can immediately appreciate how deeply hockey runs, and how, by virtue of having a pair of skates, a connection can be made. My dad and I played as kids, and I remember countless early morning and late night trips to get my youngest sister suited up and in a practice or game. Watching hockey (specifically cheering for the Montreal Canadiens), playing it (even when figure skates were all I had), and bickering with my mother (a San Jose fan) are some very strong memories. I think that’s an important part in how Lemire brought us into Essex County.
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While I was reading Essex County, I documented the process I took while reading -- the mechanics, if you will. This is to give insight on how one might go about teaching a novel.
1. Read back cover and inside flaps to get a sense of the book 2. Read “About the Author” and visited his website/blog 3. Read about graphic novels in Reading Canada 4. Researched Essex County 5. Peruse the book, getting a feel for it’s imagery 6. Examine the table of contents 7. Read Book One - Record observations, questions, and vocabulary, including the page numbers where each occurred - Use small post-its to mark pages that struck me - Built character profile and list on top of my page 8. Write reflections on book one, including a summary of events, things I wondered or still wonder and a general response to the characters and story 9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 for the next two books 10. Make connections between the books, referring to repeated imagery Hopefully this offers other teachers some insights! It was a great process to undertake, so that I can make my own students aware of their reading habits. Last night I was very fortunate to find in a class reading the second chapter from Peter McClaren's Cries from the Corridor. He filled it with poignant anecdotes from his final month as a teacher at a suburban inner city school in Toronto. These stories, simultaneously heartwarming and tear-jerking, had me crying the whole time I read them (I'm tearing up just thinking about them). It felt like I knew the kids from his classroom, and I wept at the thought of all the challenges living in such poverty created for them. Where McClaren used this anecdotes to seemingly count reasons to quit (his heart hurting too much), they represent for me some of the very important reasons that I am an educator. McClaren's writing reminded me that the child comes before the education. It is important to teach to the curriculum, and of course I will always do my best in that regard, but before that can happen, a teacher needs to know the child. A passage from "The Suburbs Was Supposed to Be a Nice Place..." demonstrates the way a teacher needs to get to know it's students: ... Tell me, what are your pupils like?" Through his writing, you can come to see just how much McClaren cared for the kids that passed through his doors. He recognized, repeatedly, what sorts of challenges these kids would face. He especially recognized the challenges they faced even in just returning home after the school day.
From Barbie-doll play that might have indicated domestic abuse, and admissions of being a victim of current and ongoing physical abuse, to visiting the parents, student letters of appreciation, and visits from past students, McClaren demonstrates just how much these students mean, and just how far he would go to help these kids succeed. He knew of the odds stacked against inner city schools, but he recognized the great potential and great character of every student he met. Reading this passage inspired me, because it emphasized what I think is one of the most important parts of a meaningful classroom experience. McClaren paints a picture of a safe haven, of sorts. He demonstrates just how flexible a teacher can be - and reminds me that I can be just as flexible. McClaren reminds me that there is always more than meets the eye, and that children are incredibly resilient. It reminded me that even in the direst circumstances, a safe classroom can be achieved, and even though a teacher may be helpless to do anything, an invested effort and heart can go a long way to change the lives of kids like these. The thing, I think, that still leaves me crying about this is that I can easily see myself in McClaren's shoes. I think most educators can. I struggle to think about how helpless I might be in the future to help kids like these in my own classroom. I can imagine how worried a teacher might be over what might become of these children as they grow. I think it's safe to say that we want every child that enters and leaves our class to have the whole entire world, and the painful reality is that this will be hard to achieve, if it is attempted at all. It makes me want to take each child and safely bring them to wherever they want to be in life, but it seems like there's no realistic way to do that. It's incredibly heartbreaking. On a different tone, there was a film I watched recently that mirrors this text very well. It's called Detachment, and it was made in 2012. Well worth the watch. This is a book that will soon be finding itself on my shelf. WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!Here it is: the final instalment, the book that puts all the pieces together. In this book we are introduced to Annie Quenneville, a travelling nurse in Essex County. During one day in her travels, we the reader learn all of what ties the characters we’ve met so far together. Annie makes a number of stops throughout the day:
1. Jim’s Esso – checks on his medication and gasses up; tries to get him to visit Lou 2. Ken’s Farm – checks on his stitches (we don’t know where the injury comes from), and tries to get him to tell Lester “the truth”; the dialogue suggests that Jimmy is the father of Lester 3. Her husband, Doug’s, grave – has her lunch, unloads her troubles about being lonely and raising their son Jason 4. Forest Glades – discovers that Lou, one of her favourites, is dead; visits her grandmother 5. Lou’s House – gathers up some things and checks over his house 6. Jimmy’s Esso – lets him know that Lou has passed, and gives him the things she’s gathered (even though the house will become his anyways) The memories of her grandmother, Margaret, fill in the 40 years of history preceding the Lebeuf boys’ journey into Toronto. Margaret was a nun working at a secluded orphanage east of Essex County. One night in a very cold winter, the orphanage caught fire. All of the children were saved, but at the expense of the caretaker, Mr. Charles Gerrard, who happens to be Annie’s grandfather (that is to say, Margaret broke her vows). Margaret hurries the children in the bitter cold to Essex County, where she settles down (and still lives, past at least 2004). Annie’s “meddling” uncovers the secret as to why Ken and Jimmy disagree: Jimmy is indeed the father of Lester, but he left Claire, which is something he regrets to this day. When Annie passes the news about Lou on and leaves him the box of memories, Jimmy decides to go to Ken, and leave it in his hands as to whether or not Ken will tell Lester about his history. Ken ultimately shares the information with Lester. There was one character whose appearance I could not understand, except that he seemed markedly similar in situation to Lester. Lawrence was the eldest boy at the orphanage, and Mr. Gerrard was very fond of him. It was Lawrence left in the burning orphanage that Mr. Gerrard went to save. As he wanders to Essex County for the others, he vows to protect all the children. To say that this story is about reconciliation would be an understatement. Margaret is forever haunted by that fact that she never reconciled with Charles before he died in the fire. Jimmy and Ken only just come to understand each other when Jimmy shows up on Ken’s door with a box full of memories. Jimmy, who all along felt remorse for how he had left Claire, does his best to reconcile with her ghost by supporting him in his endeavors – the comics, the fort, the alien invasion. Lou and Vince were forced to deal with their problems after Beth and Mary died, though Beth and Lou never seemed to have overcome their own mutual feelings of shame. It is strange how these fragile and tenuous bonds hold a town together. I think that is an important thing that Jeff has to say. Coming from one myself, I can say that small towns are a funny sort of place. Worlds of history can be contained in just a few little streets, and yet it all hangs above each other’s heads; people don’t talk about the scars in their community – gossip is a whole lot safer. This story is about grief, and is there ever a lot of it. Margaret loses her lover. Lou loses his world. Vince loses his wife and his daughter. Ken grows up alone. Claire loses her lover. Lester grows up believing he has no father, and loses his mother. And as to not upset the balance, Jimmy watches Lester grow up without him ever knowing that his father is just down the road. This book is about grief. I grieved for these characters. To think of them even in writing this makes my eyes fresh with tears. Small towns hide scars, and Jeff Lemire busted that open, forced his characters to talk about those scars, and started them on a healing process. How can your heart not weep at the tragedy, and hope, of this story? This story is about memory. It was memory that preserved those bonds, memory that preserved the town, and memory that brought people together and forced them violently apart. Most of all, this story is about love, in all of its many shapes and forms, in all of its complexities and beautiful, precious moments. This book is about love. WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!This book is told from the point of view of Lou Lebeuf, brother to Vincent Lebeuf, Jimmy’s grandfather, starting in Toronto in 1951. In this chapter, we embark on a vivid journey with Lou through his memories – visiting his ghosts, really. Living on his farm in Essex County, he is deaf and must be looked after by a visiting nurse. He is eventually moved to Forest Glad Nursing Home, as a bought of bad behaviour (disappearing and returning soaked from the creek, and caught drinking) warrants more supervision than a farm in isolation allows. Lou recounts his life, slipping in and out of reality seemingly at will. His first flashback is to the arrival of his 18 year old younger brother Vincent, and his girlfriend, Beth, to Toronto to play for the Toronto Grizzles hockey team, which up until this point weren’t doing so well. While Vince is timid at first, he eventually throws himself into the game, bringing the team to the playoffs. The brothers enjoy this success for a time, and Vince often writes home to their mother. On the night when the Grizzlies are celebrating their advancement to the playoffs at Vince and Lou’s house, after everyone has left and Vince has passed out drunk, Lou and Beth go out on the rooftop to watch the new snowfall. Even though Lou knows Vince plans to settle down and marry Beth, the two have feelings for each other which they act on – they make love on the rooftop, unbeknownst to anyone. The hockey season is quickly ended when the boys fall out of the playoffs, and with Vince’s announcement of Beth’s pregnancy, the couple returns to the Essex family farm to settle own. At this point, it seems Vince doesn’t know what has transpired between Lou and Beth. The brothers don’t see each other for twenty five years, but Beth sends out occasional pictures of their baby girl, Mary Margaret. This brings Lou to his second flashback. His hockey career over when he blew his knee, he now drives streetcars for Toronto public. All this time, he maintains no contact home (with the exception of a few sparse letters to his mother), and lives a lonely and unhappy life, slowly becoming deaf. When his mother dies, he returns to Essex for the funeral. He meets his niece, Mary, for the first time, and she seems very interested in this distant family relation from the big city. Beth quickly removes Mary from the situation and directs Lou to the shop where Vince is. The two brothers break into conflict over Beth, and we learn that Mary is Vince’s daughter. Lou admits what Beth has seemingly already disclosed to Vince, and Vince sends him away from the farm. Where before Lou couldn’t feel at home in Toronto, now he feels it is his only home. He fills his days working, meeting old hockey friends at the bar, and watching hockey alone at night with a Molsen in hand. The final flashback. Lou is forced to retire when his inability to hear even with hearing aids renders him no good for meeting the needs of his patrons. Though he has a good pension, he chooses to work at a local hockey rink doing odd jobs to pass the time. Though he wants to be on the ice, he never goes. Nostalgia eventually brings him back into skates, and he starts coaching a “mites” team. During this time, Mary begins writing to him often, looking for support when she has a baby boy, Jimmy, out of wedlock – her parents are disapproving. This life is brought to a screeching halt when the whole family in Essex gets in a car accident on Christmas Eve 1985, which takes the lives of Mary and Beth, and cripples Vince. Lou returns to the farm to care for Vince, and Jimmy is sent to be raised by a nearby family, visiting the two brothers on a biweekly basis. Though the brothers have an unpleasant history, they live amicably enough, fighting sometimes. After a terrible fall, and much heartache over his lost loved ones Vince dies, leaving Lou alone on the farm. These are Lou’s ghosts, and they haunt him all his life. During his retelling, we are also privy to his real life, though it seems he suffers from mild dementia. His disappearance to the creek (on Ken’s property in the future years) where he and his brother used to play hockey (and where Jimmy and Lester play hockey for a time) is the final straw which causes him to be moved to the nursing home. He is isolated and unhappy in the nursing home, perceiving his hearing disability as the reason why people make fun of him (which he doesn’t know to be true) and generally avoiding him (he avoids them). Sometimes, he spends his whole day in his room, but he eventually starts to make some friends. He lives with a lot of regret, and we see a lot of ravens appear in Lou’s life. I thought this was an important deal, a sort of allusion to Poe’s “The Raven”. The book ends with Lou escaping back to the homestead farm (on his long walk back, he meets Lester, on his way to Jimmy’s Esso in the middle of the night; Lou doesn’t seem to take heed of the Esso). In the final frame, after Lou has recounted all his ghosts, he meets eyes with a raven that has just cawed at him. There is a very important tie to hockey in the Lebeuf family. Lou and Vince are raised on it, play it often as children, and ultimately play competitively as adults. Their abilities bring them to Toronto, and Lou is even so generous as to “broadcast” a few games to us. Viewing hockey on TV is a sort of connection between Lou and his past teammates, and even crosses physical and emotional barriers (unspoken), as both brothers are tuned in to the game they love. Televised hockey also becomes something that Jimmy shares with his father and uncle as he grows up. The game of hockey is especially important to Lou, who frames his flashbacks and his life around the three periods of a hockey game. I’ve included a chart that makes this connection more clear. It is for this reason that I think that at the end of Lou’s third period, he passes away – the game is over; his life is over. Some things I wondered about as I read were ultimately revealed as a read on, such as what was between Lou and Beth to make him remember her so. I often thought about “The Raven” as I read, because it seemed to me that Lou’s act with Beth was a killing or severing of the relationship with his brother. A lot of his regret stems from this choice – it is, after all, why he remains in Toronto and has no contact with his brother. It is why he takes no other woman. Ultimately, it is the thing that haunts him long after everyone he loved has passed, or moved on. I was also intrigued by Lou’s tendency to slip out of reality – he always seemed confused about when and where he was in reality, but this seemed to transfer into his flashbacks as well. Even for all this disorientation, it was back to these ghosts that Lou returned whenever he didn’t want to face reality. It felt like these memories were something he had spent his entire life picking over. I wonder, at the end of his life, what becomes of that homestead – does Jimmy go on to live there? Or is this the same house attached to the creek that Ken and Lester live in in the present? Who was the father of Mary’s baby? Who mentored Jimmy in becoming so great as to move on and play for the Leafs? What did Lou and Vince make of Jimmy’s accident? Why didn’t Lou stop in at the Esso on his escape back to the farm?
My friend Jo used this video a while back with her grade threes to practice making inferences. I'm doing a writeup on my website about having my literacy lessons revolve around formats that students will most often experience literacy in. This video seemed like a really good example to me, because it is so widely applicable. For example, in early elementary, it could be played to talk about literacy. In late elementary, it can be used to practice making inferences (i.e., why does this character feel the way he/she seems to feel?). In later grades, it might be a good way to touch up on face-to-face conversation, especially in an age where most communication and social relationships are developed through phones. WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!This book starts off with Lester Papinau, 10, staring out into a field in the summer in Essex County, probably around the year 2000. We soon find out he’s living on his Uncle Ken Papinau’s farm because his mom, Claire, died of cancer a year ago. Lester is a fan of superhero comic books and is always pictured wearing a cape and mask. Consequently, he is shunned by his peers, and is very lonely. This book tracks the events of a year, interspersed with frequent memories of Claire in the hospital (on both Ken and Lester’s parts)
When the local Esso gas attendant, Jimmy Lebeuf, gives Lester a comic book for free, Lester finds himself a friend. Jimmy is a middle-aged man who suffers of cognitive delay resulting from a head injury he sustained in his first and only game playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs. The two meet again on the creek on Ken’s property, and build a fort nearby to fend off an impending alien attack. Lester mostly spends his time here; Ken doesn’t know Jimmy is on the property. Jimmy is very accepting and supportive of Lester’s comic book interests and superhero fantasies, and becomes Lester’s confidante in short order – Lester shares with Jimmy a comic book he’s written and illustrated himself. We learn that Jim is not fond of Ken, and this affects Lester’s behaviour towards Ken in a negative way – he starts acting out at home, leaving the farm for long periods of time, and generally making himself scarce. Ken, at a loss for how to help the seemingly grieving boy cope, struggles to help the boy who he’s promised his late sister to care for; having never married or had kids of his own, his interactions with Lester are difficult. Eventually, Ken discovers that Jimmy is responsible for Lester’s change in behaviour and confronts him at the Esso, only to be quickly scared away. There is bad blood between them, but we don’t know why. After a period of absence, Lester returns to the fort to find Jimmy dressed in his old hockey gear. We are immediately and suddenly transplanted into a battle scene when Jimmy is shot – the aliens have arrived! Since Jimmy can no longer fight, Lester rises to the challenge, and becomes the superhero he’s written so much about. With his superpowers, he quickly vanquishes the aliens. He returns to an ailing Jimmy’s side, who requests to be put on a raft down the creek after gifting to Lester his Toronto Maple Leafs trading card. Lester leaves the fort and his cape and mask behind, and returns home, much to Ken’s delight, who thought Lester went missing. The book ends and we don’t find out if Jimmy has actually died or not. As I read this, I found myself easily able to step into the story as an invisible observer. I have trouble visualizing the imagery in books, so the graphic approach really helped to bring me in. As I read, I marked pages or frames which really spoke to me. One was the opening scene – a cornfield blowing in a summer breeze – and I was immediately transported to the small fields of my foothills childhood. I could feel myself in the field, smelling the breeze and listening to the squeak of a rusty farm bell trying to move with the breeze. I used to have chickens and Lester’s chore to feed them reminded me of my own chicken chores – strangely enough, I have fond memories of that time in my head. When I discovered Lester’s family situation, my heart immediately went out to him. I wondered how I as a teacher could offer support for this student who appears to have no support and is still stuck in the grieving process, alone together with an uncle he hardly knew until after his mother’s death. I wonder, too, how his uncle must feel. Helpless, I’m sure. Not only is he grieving, but he knows no way to help his nephew move on. I wonder how long it was before Lester started taking care of the chickens, before farm life became an easy adjustment (if he wasn’t previously raised on a farm already). I wonder how far away the gas station is from his farm house, what his school is like, how Ken managed financially and how lucrative farming is in the county that is closely tied to Detroit, the automobile city. I noticed that flashbacks occurred in a lighter shade, and that there was always a return to the image of the homestead, and the dinner table at night. As the year comes to an end in this book, I noticed that Lester appears in the same summer frame from the book’s opening, albeit smaller. The flashback between Ken and Claire was so heartbreaking I cried. We discover that Claire touched many lives; there is a later image of Jimmy crying at her funeral, but we don’t know their connection at this point. When Claire begs Ken to care for her son because they know the end is near, I had to put the book down. Was Lester present when she passed away? The transition to the alien scene was particularly interesting because there was no transition at all. The whole scene was interesting. Jimmy in his hockey gear, reliving his greatest moment as he died, Lester becoming the superhero his mom always knew he was and fighting back against the evil which had once again wreaked havoc on his already fragile and finite number of close relationships. I wonder about Jimmy’s send off – was this real or not, and if it was, how does Jimmy really die (if he does at all)? When Lester leaves his cape and mask behind, it demonstrates to me a very sad and powerful moment: the tough realization that his childhood ended the moment his mother died, and that he must now move on. All this at eleven years old is incredibly hard to take. We leave the book with our hearts low. As I read, I had to be very conscious of slowing down, examining the detail in each frame and then looking at the page as a whole. To be thorough, I jotted notes as I went – feelings, questions, info I wanted to look up, etc. I also made a list of characters and drew their connections. The whole process – reading, reflecting, researching, reviewing – takes about two hours. Hello! Long time, no talk! My apologies! I was enjoying a wonderful, reading-filled Christmas break, but now I'm back into it! Let's go, PSII! Speaking of reading, I would like to share with you a very special reading project that is happening in my Curriculum and Instruction for English Language Arts class. We are doing a Canada Reads project to monitor how we close read, so we can teach that skill to our own students! For information on Canada Reads, visit the CBC website. Robin Bright and Leah Fowler have posed a Canada Reads - esque project as a marvelous way to encourage reading in the classroom. From a selection of 5 or 6 books written by Canadian authors (roughly within the last decade), groups are to read and examine their book, track their reading process, and make the case for why their book should be the top book in Canadian fiction in a group presentation. I have sunk my teeth into Essex County by Jeff Lemire: Here's a blurb about the text, taken from the back cover: "Where does a young boy turn when his whole world suddenly disappears? What turns two brothers from an unstoppable team into a pair of bitterly estranged loners? How does the simple-hearted care of one middle-aged nurse reveal the scars of an entire community, and can anything heal the wounds caused by a century of deception? Award-winning cartoonist Jeff Lemire pays tribute to his roots with Essex County, an award-winning trilogy of graphic novels set in an imaginary version of his hometown, the eccentric farming community of Essex County, Ontario, Canada. In Essex County, Lemire crafts an intimate study of one community through the years, and a tender meditation on family, memory, grief, secrets, and reconciliation. With the lush, expressive inking of a young artist at the height of his powers, Lemire draws us in and sets us free." This book was voted as the Essential Canadian Book of the Decade! As I read this, I would like to share with you my own reading process (i.e., how do I employ skills of close reading to increase comprehension), as well as some of my reflections (thought I must warn you, spoiler alert!)
I look forward to sharing this reading journey with you! |
Meagan Fullerton-LeeMeagan is an aspiring teacher, voracious reader, tentative motorcyclist, and passionate gardener. In all things she sees education. Here she shares her passions. Archives
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