Overdue - Overdue?

The podcast I looked at is from a series called Overdue, and this particular episode talks about the book The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. This is, more or less, a children's novel that I read when I was about ten years old. The book outlines the story of Milo, a boy who goes through this magical gate (which is the Tollbooth, for all intents and purposes) and embarks on an adventure like no other. The book is rife with wordplay and fun life lessons that are worked into the plot of the story - The Phantom Tollbooth was one of my favorites growing up and I was happy to find a podcast that talked about the book.

As for the podcast itself, finding Overdue came on a bit of a stroke of luck. While I was looking for a podcast to listen to for this assignment I just went to one of the home pages on Spotify and this pod was one of the first that came up. I had never heard of it, and the concept sounded interesting. Basically what Overdue does is take a book that the two hosts have read and they explain it in detail as if they were summarizing the book for someone that has not read the book. The premise is, after all, crossing off books on one’s “to read” list that are long overdue. Get it?

I initially thought that this podcast would be a great tool to use in the classroom as a way to summarize the book for students after we had read it, and I believe that notion still holds true. However, after listening to the episode that I did, I wonder if these recaps of the book are a bit more opinionated than they ought to be. If this is in fact the case, then there is still value in these podcasts, but I think it would then only be accessible to students at the higher levels of high-school. With these opinionated reviews, the students will be able to both recap the simple plot lines of the book, as well as stack up their own interpretation of the text against the opinion of the podcast hosts. The more I think about it, the more I believe this would be a fun activity for students to do in order to reinforce and defend their own opinions against those of the podcast creators. It would be easy to work these ideas into a writing unit, and it may be something that I consider in a classroom moving forward.

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 11, 2018 at 12:36 PM

    Troy-- I also love that book! It could be a fun class activity to assign 1/2 of your students to agree with the podcast and have to disagree and then engage in a debate. They could practice finding evidence in the text to support their claim and you could introduce them to concepts like a rebuttal. At the end, you could let students express their real opinions.

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