Today in the library, we decided to take a closer look at the tale of Moby Dick. The students generated a lively discussion about what they already know about this famous story and infamous whale both from their theater workshop with Mrs. Brentano, from movies and from storybooks. We also honed on a few questions that we wished to answer: who survives? who does the coffin at the end of the story belong to? how did they fight the whales? why did so many people die whale hunting? Allan Drummond’s illustrated adaption of Moby Dick provided us with many of these answers. While this book is designed for elementary school children, it paints a fair picture of the harsh realities of whaling and the fear inspired by Ahab in his crew. Our post-read discussion included noticing many new details about the story. These included: there were several harpooners, Ahab lost his leg twiceto Moby Dick, the crew threw harpoons from smaller whale boats, not the Pequod and the harpoons had ropes attached to them. Lastly, we touched upon Herman Melville’s presence in PIttsfield, where he wrote Moby Dick, and how close Arrowhead is to Henry’s house. Our very busy library class concluded with book browsing and checkout. Happy Reading!
