Page 5 - THE BOOK 11 12 2020 8 pm FINAL_Neat
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Introduction to Applegate’s Use of “Sleep Stories”
In Home of the Brave, Katherine Applegate includes chapters that she calls Sleep Stories.
Here, she shows Kek’s nightmares from the traumatic events he has experienced while facing a
civil war followed by a dangerous trek to reach a refugee camp. The Sleep Stories are written in
free verse like the rest of the book, but Applegate deliberately shortens each free verse line to
reflect the momentary quality to dreams as each image floats by, and then is gone. These are the
dreamlike elements she portrays by using figurative language such as metaphors and
personification. She also employs those sudden changes of environment that can happen in a
dream - “morphing,” Joy calls them - when a visual or auditory element changes shape or
sound... These sleep stories include Kek’s recurring theme - not being able to speak in a moment
of urgency or not being heard when he does call out in an urgent moment. Then there are those
standard dream motifs, such as mixing up people and places, as in when the men who attack
Kek’s village appear on the airplane carrying Kek to America or when Minnesota snow falls on
Kek’s African village. The Emerald and Lapis LA groups deconstructed the way that Applegate
wrote the Sleep Stories, and we wrote our own Sleep Stories in the same style as Applegate.
Most of us wrote two Sleep Stories; some of them are from the point of view of one of the
characters from Home of the Brave, and some of them are written from the writer’s point of
view. The Sleep Stories are organized alphabetically by the writer’s last name, but you can use
the Index to find a specific story if you want. Enjoy!
-- Augie DeRose with Joy Lenters
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