Pistes d'exploration

From the jacket cover and accompanying illustrations, predict what the story will be about (go on a picture walk). After reading, discuss why Josepha’s eyes are closed. Come up with another title for this book.

Name the prairie provinces. What circumstances led Josepha to live on the farm? Where do you think his family came from originally? Besides not speaking the language, what other difficulties do you think Josepha faced? 

“That’s what you do if you have to laugh.” How does this sentence make you feel? What can you infer about Josepha’s life from this statement? Looking at the accompanying illustration, why do you think his sisters are so well dressed and he isn’t? Name one quality that describes Josepha.

What is a “baggink”? Why did Josepha leave? Where do you think he was going and why didn’t his sisters go with him? Fast forward five years. Imagine you are Josepha and have learned English. Write a letter to the boy you gave your knife to, telling him about your life now.

Who is telling this story? Identify the key elements (characters, setting, problems, solution) of this story. Sequence the story; identify the beginning, middle and end. Discuss the general ideas in this story.

This story contains many rich, less familiar and unknown words. Discuss how you managed to understand the general idea of this challenging story even though there are many words you do not understand. 

Discuss Josepha’s situation in school. How does he manage to communicate? How can you understand the emotions depicted? 

Compare your situation as an ESL learner to Josepha’s situation as an immigrant learning English. 

Choose five interesting words from the text. In small groups, deduce their meanings from the story context and pictures. Look them up in a dictionary to see how well you inferred. 

With a partner, list facts you know about the Canadian prairies (in both the past and present). Look at the book cover for more ideas.

Write a journal entry, from Josepha’s point of view, about his struggles as an immigrant, unable to communicate with the people on the prairies. How does he overcome the challenges?

Research the demographics of Canadian immigration in the early 1900s and compare it with more recent data. Use graphs to represent the origins and number of people who have relocated to Canada. Why do people around the world want to move here?

One Green Apple, This Is the Rope: A Story From the Great Migration, I Know Here, Pushes & Pulls: Why Do People Migrate?, Beatrice's Goat, Boy of the Deeps

Mots-clés

Picture book , bullying , Canada , illustrations (oil paint) , immigrants , poverty , school life

Commentaire descriptif

Through potent scenes, this story honours a good friend, Josepha, from the perspective of a young prairie farm boy in the early 1900s. Josepha’s family used to be shopkeepers, the narrator explains. Now they are desperately poor farmers, among a community of poor farmers. The narrator recounts Josepha’s struggles at school (“To the newcomers our words must have sounded like sheep talk”), his inadequate clothing: “yet he tramped to our farm and back, his feet wrapped in burlap sacking,” and his loving nature (“he twirled about his sisters.… That’s what you do if you have to laugh”). Illustrations use soft masses of painted colour to define figures and landscapes. These are complemented with small detailed pencil-drawings. In one spread, Josepha squats to clean the narrator’s precious boots, “far too big and all,” even while he himself is naked except for a pair of dungarees and twine suspenders. The final image shows the little boy walking over the rich brown furrows of a plowed field. He’s now barefoot, having given his boots to his beloved friend as a goodbye gift. This powerful and upsetting story offers the opportunity for rich discussion about ethics, empathy and immigration history.