The Chocolate War was a book that at first I found to be predictable, formulaic, and of lacking substance. However, after our in-class discussion on the book, I found it to be something I find suitable to teach to young adults. I thought that at first it might be too mature for students. The book really doesn’t have that typical ending of solace and finality. It kind of just…ended. And that was my original issue with it: students would not get a message, and if they did, it wouldn’t be a good one.
After pondering and discussing this, though, I reversed my thinking. Children are not dumb, and we should not patronize them thinking thus. We cannot, as (future) educators, generalize how students may think and react, especially to a piece of literature. I must say that I truly find censorship to be abhorrent. I think censoring students, especially from books like this, is just hiding them from reality. I was reading in our “Is Crutcher a Hero or Villain” article and noticed a student had said something along the lines of this in one of their reviews. It’s very true. Students know what is going on in the real world, and to shield them from what is just pandering to a far too conservative school of thought.
Although the book did not have a positive message at the end, where someone gets what is coming to them or lessons are learned, students do get a critical view of what it might be like to be in an all-boys school. Corruption and elitism exist, and exposure of this to our students is neither harmful nor detrimental to their development. I applaud Cormier’s ability to go past the typical formula of young adult literature and provide a hard-hitting realistic tale of a Catholic boy’s school fundraising event.
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