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The Education of Margot Sanchez Book Review

The Education of Margot Sanchez - By Lilliam Rivera

We read the first chapter of this book in class and my first thoughts were... I would not read this book out loud in class. That being said, I would still like to use this book and I think it has a lot of great themes young adults and teens could relate to, especially in the modern world dealing with status and ways to fit in. I remember feeling that if I wasn't on the top of my game all the time I would be excluded as a kid, and being excluded felt like a death sentence. There is a song from the musical Heathers (based off the pop-culture classic movie Heathers) where one of the Heathers sings about suicide and relates high school to a life boat. It is a beautiful analogy and I think I would consider playing that song in class if I were to do a unit on this book. I think the book is interesting because it is easy to relate to even for those who don't have to deal with the factor of race. For example, we all have parts of ourselves that we are embarrassed of and try to hide, and other parts we think shine a little brighter than others. I saw a play this last week titled Ferguson. It dealt with a lot of themes in this book especially in reference to race and culture, and how we feel forced to disregard part of ourselves in order to fit in. I think this book has a lot to offer to students and shouldn't be ignored for it's use of profanity. Kids cuss. They cuss a lot and even though it is something that we shouldn't encourage we shouldn't discourage a book for that fact. The simple truth is, students will only put effort into things that are worth it. For some students it is easy for them to give everything they have into the classroom because they see school as something worthy of their time. But more often than not you are going to have students who don't feel that way for a variety of reasons. So we should give them opportunities to read outside of the same old American and British classics, and give them a glimpse of something that reflects their own lives.

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