The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney

The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney Finally, Amira is twelve. She wants to learn to read and write, to set free all the big ideas she finds herself sketching in the sand. But girls like Amira don’t go to school. Still, she can’t help but hope for something more. Her dreams are pushed aside when the Janjaweed militia storms her small village, shattering life as she knows it. As Amira starts a long journey toward a new life at a refugee camp, she feels her spirit slipping away...until the gift of one red pencil opens her mind--and all kinds of possibilities. (back of book)

Displaced I don’t know what day this is, but I do know it is day. First light brings a promise. Up ahead, we see it. Old Anwar tells us, “We are at Kalma.” The sign says: DISPLACED PEOPLE’S CAMP. Kalma’s outsides are dressed in wire necklaces, and fences, and tents where workers welcome us by shoving our tired, dirty, very thirsty, dusty bodies through slices of fabric that open onto shanties crammed together, like peanuts in a too-tight shell. Everywhere I look, I see people, people, and more people. I’m glad to stop walking. I’m glad we have finally reached who-knows-where. But already I do not like this place. (Page 138-139)

Scraps Our house is made of rice-bag scraps. No walls, only plastic flaps, billowing in stale breezes. The roof of this rice-bag house is patched together from roots of diseased, brittle trees. This place, this dwelling, a misshapen dome. Home? (Page 142)

Extension What can you infer about what has happened to the narrator? These poems have several powerful images. List three that stand out to you. Rewrite the simile “crammed together, like peanuts in a too-tight shell.” What is an example of end rhyme that you noticed? What is the effect of the question mark at the end of the second poem?