After the Fall

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The After the Fall book presents a tale of resilience, courage, and how a growth mindset helps Humpty overcome his fears. After the Fall activities include: Activity: Students could create a diagram mapping out After the Fall’s main causes and effects. This activity enhances understanding of cause and effect relationships and promotes critical thinking. Think of American capitalism and culture devoid of liberal values and democratic policies, and you'll get something approximating the Chinese Communist Party. Overcoming Fear: The story shows Humpty Dumpty overcoming his fear of heights, an essential aspect of developing a growth mindset. If someone asked me to do an elevator pitch for this book in one sentence I guess I’d be forced to say something about how it encourages readers to get up again after they fail or get hurt or have some sort of challenge in their life that they need to overcome. That sort of makes the book sound overly simplified, though. I think what Santat’s managed here is something very deft and fleet of foot. This could be an inspirational picture book that people hand to graduates or adults that have suffered some kind of a trauma, no question. But its primary purpose is to speak to children, even if those kids can’t entirely understand what it is that it’s trying to say. There’s no getting around its message. The question you have to ask yourself then is, would you want to?

The author’s thesis here is that “After The Fall” of the Berlin Wall there was a trend towards nationalistic and right-wing authoritarian governments in several countries, including eventually as we all know, the United States. When the wall came down it symbolized the victory of democracy. It also unleashed a worldwide torrent of profit-seeking capitalism that increased income inequality and encouraged corruption. Reading Illustrations – After the Fall is illustrated by Caldecott Medal winner Dan Santat, and so the book’s illustrations are particularly worth analyzing more closely. Help students develop their skills at reading and analyzing visual images. Review artistic principles, such as color, line, light and shadow, and texture with students to support their visual literacy skills. Teach about symbolism and motif, too. Teach students how to closely read an image, using these skills to construct deeper meanings. For example, how does Santat use the principles of light and shadow to enhance the meaning of the text? What about the principle of perspective? Project a variety of images for students to observe and discuss, increasing the complexity of each image to scaffold students’ learning. You might also want to read aloud and share Molly Bang’s book Picture This (see below) to help introduce illustration principles to your class. A highly recommended story that reminds us all that accidents happen and sometimes it takes time heal.

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The After the Fall book has clear depiction of cause and effect relationships, emotional consequences, resolution through action, and visual representation of these concepts. After the Fall activities include:

Activity: Initiate a class discussion where students share their fears and brainstorm ways to confront them. This activity promotes critical thinking and helps students understand that overcoming fears is part of personal growth. Desperate for a second chance, Martha and Kit decide to emigrate to New Zealand. Kit is a talented artist, and he dreams of fulfilling his potential out there. Working so hard in London to provide for his family, he’s had no time to paint and longs for a fresh start. Activity: Ask students to keep a ‘Persistence Diary,' noting down instances where they didn't give up. This exercise encourages self-reflection and fosters an understanding of the role of persistence in personal growth.Visual Depiction of Cause and Effect: The book's illustrations powerfully depict the causes and effects, aiding students in visualizing these relationships.

Endeavoring to understand the rise of authoritarianism and nationalism across the world, he tells the stories of people who fight for democratic rights in increasingly authoritarian countries and how they are imprisoned, tortured, poisoned, and silenced. Whether or not you're a foreign policy nerd (guilty!), I think this a book everyone would benefit from reading. It's both a memoir and a closer look at current events that may just change your view of the world. History of Humpty Dumpty – As a popular nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty has a long history in oral folklore. With the help of your school or local librarian to ensure your students locate reputable sources, have students research the history of the nursery rhyme. When is the earliest recording of it? What inspired the rhyme? Who passed it on throughout history, and why? Has the meaning of it changed over the centuries? Some resources to begin the this inquiry, such as this, are listed below in Further Explorations. Have students share their research findings in multimodal ways, such as via drama, art, song, essay, and video.Now, this is a book I approached in a manner similar to which I would approach a movie written by Murali Gopy. You know Gopy is bound to push a pro-right wing message, but would be careful to wrap it in a wrapper that would appeal to the liberals. Here is Obama's speechwriter Ben Rhodes, who is so enamoured of America, but is concerned at the path it is taking currently in the post-Obama era, under Trump. There is a very personal element to After the Fall in which Rhodes admits to disorientation and a desire for purpose in the long spiralling descent from the Oval Office. “I was a thirty-nine-year-old with as little idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life as I’d had as a twenty-three-year-old,” he reflects. “History was no longer something that took place in rooms where I sat.” The introspection, coupled with an itinerary of venerable European destinations, such as Paris, Budapest and Baden-Baden, sometimes gives the book the feel of a melancholy Chekhovian tale: the young courtier in the retinue of a revered, recently ousted monarch, touring old watering holes. He meets like-minded contemporaries, including Hungarian, Russian and Hong Kong dissidents, and they try to come to terms with the implosion of the world they had once hoped for. Open-Ended Conclusion: The story ends on an open note, allowing readers to infer Humpty Dumpty's future. As much as he is concerned about the rise of the right in America, he is also expressing his disappointment at its fall from pre-eminence and the rise of China. It has to be said that he makes some right noises in pointing out America's past misdemeanors, including interventions in multiple countries, as well as the structural inequality of the capitalist system, but these seem to be mentioned just for the sake of balance, because balance is not something one can find in this, especially when he talks about Communism, for which he always sets aside the choicest of adjectives. At the core of this complex, ambitious book is a simple truth: we are living at a historical inflection point. The currents of history are sweeping us all in the wrong direction – toward autocracy, toward technological dystopia, toward collapse – as a direct consequence of the past three decades of American hegemony, but it's not yet too late to reverse course. To do so, Americans invested in the victory of democracy over autocracy must forge solidarity with (and learn from) others struggling against authoritarianism, corruption, and injustice around the world.

This book clearly describes the world at a crucial pivot point. I appreciated the mix of interviews, more global takes, and personal experiences having lived through much leading up to the world we're currently in. I do not know how much hope there is, but certainly I can see it as a call for action.Emotional Journey: Humpty Dumpty's emotional journey is subtly depicted through the story and illustrations, requiring students to infer his feelings. When Rhodes no longer had a job in the White House, he put some serious thought into how his next move would best serve not only himself but his fellow Americans. The result is this book. What do the persona of Nemtsov, Skripal, Navalny, Khashoggi, Snowden, Assange, or even the Dalai Lama have in common? They were all prosecuted, shunned, banished, injured, or even killed with the more or less obvious involvement of the respective government that they were criticizing. Rhodes, himself a victim of relentless right-wing propaganda media and conspiracy theorists in the USA, travels the world and talks to the family members of dissidents (Hungary, Russia) and to anonymous protesters (Hong Kong) who are fighting to be heard. The author tries to put the new and evolving authoritarianism throughout the world into perspective and sheds a critical light on how the USA played a leading role in creating this hostile environment ever since the fall of the Iron Curtain. The arming of Muslim factions in the 90s, the overreaction to 9/11, the dangerous wars it created, the unregulated investment banking crash of 2008, the idleness concerning Syria, social media, Trump; all these issues helped break the Pax Americana, leaving strongmen around the planet with new choices. An excellent read, all stars from me.