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Use these links to supplement and complement students’ reading of the work and to increase their overall enjoyment of literature. Challenge them to discern parallel themes, engage through visual and aural stimuli, and delve deeper into the thematic possibilities presented by the title.

Recommended Texts for Pairing

Efrén Divided by Ernesto Cisneros

• a contemporary middle grade novel in which Efrén’s hardworking mother is deported
• shares themes of Recognizing a Higher Justice and Inclusion and Acceptance
• Efrén Divided on SuperSummary

Letters from Rifka by Karen Hesse

• a historical middle grade novel written in epistolary form
• shares themes of Giving and Receiving between and within Families and Inclusion and Acceptance
• Use an excerpt from Letters from Rifka in the Paired Text Extension Activity.
• Letters from Rifka on SuperSummary

“Every Day We Get More Illegal” by Juan Felipe Herrera

• a poem that shares the novel’s theme of Inclusion and Acceptance

“Bent to the Earth” by Blas Manuel De Luna

• a poem that shares the novel’s themes of Recognizing a Higher Justice and Inclusion and Acceptance

“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes (short story version)

• a type of epistolary story told in the main character’s progress reports (similar to a diary)
• shares the theme of Inclusion and Acceptance
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