Angela's Ashes

When thinking about a memoir or bibliography to read for this week I immediately thought about how I had been wanting to reread a the book Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. I read this book in the eight grade and remembered some about it but not enough to know if I wanted to use it in my classroom or not. Rereading it made me remember so many things that I thought I did not remember about the book. This book describes the childhood of McCourt in Ireland and the beginning in New York. It describes graphic scenes of the poverty his family faced and chronicled the life of his father who was an alcoholic. The scenes might be a little to much for younger middle grade students but for eight grade I think it would be wonderful and eye opening. The fathers problem causes him to spend money on the pubs in town and not his family. That is difficult to read about but really helps you see the lives of so many people in other countries and even in America. This book would be great to use because it has so much students can learn and see from it. It kept my attention throughout the entire book and was really interesting when the Irish songs were included. I would absolutely use this memoir in my classroom. I am so happy I was able to read it over a second time.