The Round House

The Round House by Louise Erdrich was an excellent read, though not without its challenges.

I think this text would be appropriate for a high school audience. The depth to which issues of rape, sexuality, violence, and emotional trauma are addressed in the book might make it too difficult to teach to a middle school audience. Aside from these issues, the difficulty of the text is mostly found in its informal style and shouldn’t be too difficult for high schoolers to approach. As this is a coming of age story, its themes should be accessible to a high school audience.

I could see this text being used both within a lit circle/book talk setting as well as being explicitly taught in the classroom. The Round House offers ample opportunity for analysis of linguistic choice and its impact on tone (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.4). Students could analyze the impact that casual language, simple sentences and short paragraphs have on the tone during specific occurrences in the story. The narrative also interacts with time in a way that warrants analysis (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5). Students could analyze the impact that the retroactive retelling of the story has on the narrative or analyze the interjection of “Linda’s Story” as another narrator takes over the narrative.

This book comes with some difficulties that are obvious and some that aren’t quite as obvious. Content-wise, teachers who want to teach this novel will need to be careful with the issues of rape, violence, trauma, racism, and sexuality that occur within. Some students may struggle with these topics, some parents may push back, and administrators who haven’t heard of the novel will likely need an explanation before it is incorporated.  Structurally, the challenge of this novel is mostly found in its casual style (which is ironic for a novel that handles such serious issues). The novel doesn’t make use of quotation marks which can make fluency a little challenging at times (also a stylistic choice which warrants analysis). The first person narration also leaves parts of the story feeling ambiguous (another stylistic choice which warrants analysis). None of these challenges are crippling however, and most of them are actually further reasons why this novel would be great for teaching in the classroom. Nonetheless these challenges do need to be addressed and handled carefully by any teacher who wants to teach this text.