Pam Munoz Ryan
brings magic and music to a novel about social justice in Echo (Scholastic,
2015, ages 10-14). I talked recently with Pam about this new novel, set during
World War II, and its magical harmonica.
Click here for the KidsPost/WashingtonPost article.
Below
are a few writing prompts for the classroom or for individual writers ages 8
and up.
FAIRY TALES AND
MAGICAL OBJECTS: The book opens with a fairy tale and an
unlikely magical object: the ordinary harmonica.
Classroom
Discussion: Ask students how the harmonica helped the
three children in the separate stories.
What did students learn about harmonicas?
Classroom
Writing: Ask students to bring in an ordinary object
from home (baseball bat, stuffed toy, box, charm, etc.). Have them write their own tale in which this
object is magical. What does it do? If they do some research into the object (as
Pam did with the harmonica), how might it enter into or make the tale even more
interesting?
SOCIAL JUSTICE: All the young characters wrestle with issues
of social justice. In Nazi Germany,
Friedrich is marked as “undesirable” because of his birthmark. In Pennsylvania, Mike and his younger brother
can be farmed out to do unpaid labor by their orphanage. In California, Ivy, who is Mexican American,
must go to a school that’s different (and has fewer resources) than the one for
white children.
Classroom
Discussion: How do these three children deal with the
injustice in their lives? Brainstorm
other times in history when there was injustice (slavery, Civil Rights era, women
denied the vote, etc.). How did things
change? Have students think about some
rules they may consider unfair at school or ways they feel they may have been
treated unjustly at home or in the wider world.
How did this make them feel? What
did they do? Have them list, first alone
and then as a group, some injustices they see in this country and in the wider
world. What are some ways they might
create change?
Classroom
Writing: Make up a character (or write about yourself)
in a moment of injustice. First describe the injustice and how it affects
others. Then write about what happens to
you or your character. Read aloud and
discuss.
MORE DETAILS
ABOUT PAM: Pam’s author website is www.pammunozryan.com.
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