The Card People

The Card People

James Sulzer

2016

ISBN:  978-0-9974956-7-6

Fuze Publishing

274 pages

“Who’s ready for a card game?” James Sulzer has written a young adult novel entitled ‘The Card People’.  This is the story of Paul Kapadia and his voyage to know his father and continue his dad’s work.  Paul’s dad was into nanotechnology and with a deck of cards that he and his dad used came alive and asked for help to combat the scissors people and make the world safe.

James Sulzer has described in this book that the deck of cards on page 19 is like a family of 52 little people of four families; number cards were children- low cards were twos and threes are toddlers and fours and fives are young children and the older children were the sixs through tens are the teenagers.  The face cards were the grownups and the aces were leaders.  I really thought this was a very creative idea.  Other than the story of ‘The Card People’ it is a story of Paul and his friend Nim and their survival of middle school and various diverse ideas that are presented.

This is a good book because the author has provided a reader’s guide for classroom book discussions.  He has also provided a study guide of questions for each chapter.  Other ideas that teachers and parents can have students do could be to have them design and make their own card and scissors people as a craft project as well as have them write and then perform their own stories/scenes from the book to the younger classrooms.  This is a very creative and imaginative idea in using such a subject as nanotechnology.

Lesson

Grades:  Upper Elementary and Middle School

Materials:  The Card People book

Printed out study guide to have the students answer questions.

Printed out discussion questions to increase oral skills.

Arts and Crafts project to make card and scissor people.

Materials-   Construction paper, crayons-markers-pencils and pens, scissors, glue, or stapler.

Procedure:  The teacher will make points from the story as giving a very basic introduction to Nanotechnology with a definition.  Asking some of their own questions, for example, Do you think this is possible for playing cards to come alive in this way?  We have now read ‘The Card People’ do you think that Paul is coping well without his Dad around and in what ways does Paul keep his Dad close?- (this question could be for the older students).  Do you think that Paul is fitting in at school or even at home and in what ways?

After the craft of making the card and scissor people, the class could pick a scene from the book to act out or even create their own scene and present their various scenes to other classrooms as mentioned in the review itself.