Animals As Characters/Subjects: Pushing Against Gender Typing

by Mary Quattlebaum

Starting March 1^st, we’re celebrating Women’s History Month with 31 days of posts focused on improving the climate for social and gender equality in the children’s and teens’ community/industry.  Join in the conversation on Twitter at #kidlitwomen or on Facebook at https:www//www.facebook.com/kidlitwomen (which includes all the posts this month).

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry.  Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.   I read these novels multiple times as a kid. I adored the fierce mare, Phantom, who cared for her domesticated foal until Misty could live on her own, and then returned to the wild.  I cried over the trials of sensitive, observant Black Beauty, the male horse in the 19^th century bestseller that galvanized the movement for more humane treatment of animals.

Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight. The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford. The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith.  No matter their sex, the animal characters in these books were, by turns, loyal, cooperative, intelligent, kind, sturdy, afraid, vulnerable, and angry.  They had personality strengths and flaws.  They fought, strategized, searched for food, and cared for their young.  They persisted.  They triumphed, in different ways.  They were the heroes of their stories.

Growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s, I remember very, very few books with strong human girl and gentle human boy characters.  I didn’t even realize what I was searching for until, as an adult, I examined my favorite books more closely. Yes, I had been a country kid, a lover of animals and the natural world, but even deeper than that, I think I was hoping for depictions in books that better reflected some of the change I was glimpsing in the wider world. The realistic, slightly anthropomorphized critter-characters in these novels pushed boundaries. They brought nuance to, and even subverted the traditional gender-assigned roles and traits of the times.  (Interestingly, for picture books, almost the opposite is true.  In her research, children’s author/scholar Jennifer Mann discovered that anthropomorphized animals—especially parents, teachers and other adults--tended to remain gender typed, especially in terms of clothing.)

In the blog post that opened this #kidlitwomen discussion, Shannon Hale asked us to deeply consider how we as creators and as teachers/librarians/parents present books to young people.  Do we or others unconsciously label or have expectations of a book as being “for girls” or of a particular author as appealing primarily to boys?  How might we work against this?  In their posts, Susan Van Metre, Meg Frazer Blakemore, and Elizabeth Dulemba further explore ideas and possibilities around re-shaping the cultural narrative.

As a writer of nonfiction about/fiction with animal characters, I’ve tried to be alert to my own shortcomings, blind spots, and expectations (with full awareness of how much I still need to learn/unlearn)—and those of the larger society.  And I want to present my work—and that of others—in a way that encourages kids to think more deeply and critically about these issues too.

For a nonfiction chapter book about Hero Dogs, I wanted to broaden the narrative about heroic animals beyond the usual stories about military/law-enforcement dogs and the single act of bravery, so I included true stories about a female detective dog who has found hundreds of lost pets; two female “nurse” dogs at a wildlife sanctuary; and a male Dalmatian who is a fire-safety educator.  At schools, I ask kids to think about the term “hero” and what it means to them—and we talk about examples of heroes in history and their lives who may exemplify a range of heroic traits.

Mighty Mole and Super Soil depicts the real-life superhero of the animal kingdom, a female mole with super strength, super speed, and a super appetite.  Mighty Mole is like Wonder Woman, I tell kids.  Only she has fur and claws and teeny-tiny eyes (and no bustier, I might add, but that’s the subject for another post).

Many kids love reading and talking about animals.  Since #kidlit women encourages solution-based discussions, I want to ask:  What’s your favorite book about animals that works against gender typing?  And/or your favorite book about/with animal characters by a woman?

My choice: Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly.  So much love for this year’s Newbery Medal winner!  I especially admire the characterizations of the gentle boy and his beloved guinea pig and the fierce Nature-loving deaf girl who helps to rescue them.

www.maryquattlebaum.com

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

guest post by Katherine Marsh

Just after midnight, Mary Hayes crept into the kitchen of the Buffalo Asylum for Young Ladies and opened a small door on the side of the enormous cast-iron stove. Then she took a deep breath and shoved herself inside.

These are the first few sentences of my new book, The Door By The Staircase. Want to know what happens next?  If you do, then I’ve done my job as a writer.

“What happens next?” is one of the most important questions to make a reader ask. We have a lot of fancy ways of talking about this: suspense, mystery, conflict, foreshadowing, cliffhanger. But these terms all really mean the same thing: Show your reader that something interesting and unusual, something dangerous or scary or magical or problematic, is about to happen. Make them wonder about it enough to turn the page.

The Door by the Staircase is about magic. Magic works best when you show but also conceal at the same time. That’s a lot like writing. Great writing shows just enough to hook the reader and make them read on but doesn’t rush to give away the whole story.

The first lines of a book are a key place to make your reader wonder what happens next. Here are a few I love:

“’Where’s Papa going with that axe?’ asked Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.” (Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White).

“Kouun is good luck in Japanese, and one year my family had none of it.” (The Thing About Luck, Cynthia Kadohata)

“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” (The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman)

Note that even though only one of these lines starts with an actual question, they all raise intriguing and troubling questions that compel the reader to keep on going: What bad thing could be happening with that axe? And why is Fern’s father marching out with it just before breakfast? What happened to the narrator’s family during the year of bad luck? How bad could it have been? Whose hand was in the darkness? And what were they doing with that knife?

Writing Exercises:

1) Ask students to think of a family story. It could be funny, sad, scary, or exciting. Ask them to come up with a first line or couple lines that would make a reader want to know “what happens next?” Let students read their lines aloud and note the lines that pulled them in most. Afterwards, lead a discussion about the most popular ones: What about them pulled you in? What did they show? What did they conceal or not tell you? How did they make you feel? How did they set up a sense of conflict, tone, or character?

2) There’s more than one way to start a story. Working off another book students have read in your class, ask them to come up with an alternate first line or couple lines that would also draw readers in.

3) Have students come up with a first line or lines for a fictional story. Collect and anonymously read them aloud. Have the students vote on their favorite. 

Katherine Marsh is the Edgar-Award-winning author of The Night Tourist, The Twilight Prisoner and Jepp, Who Defied the Stars. Her middle-grade fantasy, The Door By The Staircase, comes out January. In a starred review, School Library Journal called it, “A sparkling tale full of adventure, magic, and folklore.” A onetime high school English teacher and journalist, Katherine lives in Brussels, Belgium with her husband, two children and cat, Egg. You can visit her at www.katherinemarsh.com

SHOWING CHARACTER THROUGH ACTION

by Claudia Mills

          One of the cardinal rules of writing is “Show, don’t tell.” This means that rather than telling readers that your character is bossy, you need to show her actually being bossy. Rather than telling readers that another character loves to daydream, you need to show her lost in reverie – and show us what the content of her fantasy is.

          

             In my new series, Franklin School Friends, my characters are defined by their interests and passions. Kelsey (Kelsey Green, Reading Queen) loves to read. Annika (Annika Riz: Math Whiz) loves math. Izzy (Izzy Barr, Running Star) loves to run. You get the idea! In each book, my challenge is to find a way for the girls to support one another (in trying to win a reading contest, a Sudoku contest, or a race) while using their own distinctive talent and abilities.

           So: as Izzy is trying to win a 10K race, Kelsey inspires her with the story of Atalanta’s famous race in Greek mythology and Annika helps her calculate how fast she needs to run each kilometer to beat her rival. When Kelsey suspects her rival, Simon, of cheating during a schoolwide reading contest, Annika figures out how many pages Simon would need to read in an hour to make good on his reading claims; Izzy spies on Simon with the plan of running fast if she gets caught.

       

   Here’s a way to share this characterization challenge with students.

1)    Let students pick a fun activity to be the focus of a scene. Examples might be: running a race, baking a cake, building a snow fort, starting a lemonade stand.

2)    Choose names for three characters to be part of the scene, preferably with a mix of boys and girls (and not using names of any kids in the class).

3)    Give each kid a character trait (e.g., shy, imaginative, clumsy, funny, determined, impatient, reckless, conceited, talkative). Or: give each kid a passion/talent (loves sports, science, math, music, reading).

4)    Then: how can we SHOW this in the scene? If our characters are baking a cake, what would the shy character be doing? The imaginative one? The clumsy one? The funny one? What would the sports-lover contribute to the baking? Maybe she’d volunteer to use her arm muscles doing the mixing or she’d be jogging in place as the cake bakes. What would the scientist kid contribute? Maybe wondering how differently the cake would turn out if they left out the flour or baking powder? What would the musical kid be doing? Maybe making up a cake-baking song for them all to sing?

The takeaway point for the students is: character is shown through ACTION. We know what kind of person someone is by seeing what he DOES. So: provide a fun activity, gather together a group of imaginary kids, and let them reveal themselves to us!

Claudia Mills is the author of over 50 books for young readers, including How Oliver Olson Changed the World (an ALA Notable Book of the Year) and The Trouble with Ants (which just received a starred review in Publishers Weekly), as well as the Franklin School Friends series of chapter books from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Claudia lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her family and her cat, Snickers. Visit her at www.claudiamillsauthor.com.

HOME ALONE: THE ART OF SHORT STORY

by Jacqueline Jules

While picture books are always great writing models, short stories can be very effective, too, especially for the middle and high school classroom. Gary Soto’s classic Baseball in April contains eleven stories of adolescence. The collection portrays Hispanic characters in California dealing with universal themes of friendship, family relationships, and self-confidence.

“Growing Up” has a particularly compelling plot of a tenth grade girl who gets her wish of staying home from a family vacation. Yet while her family is away, she worries and regrets her decision. “Growing Up” should strike a chord with middle and upper grade students through its emotional center and imagined scenario of staying behind with your friends while your family travels. Ask your students to write about why they might want to be excused from a trip and if being mature means separating yourself from your family. What would they do at home on their own? Would their parents trust them to obey the rules? How would they feel about being separated from their parents for the first time? After responding in personal narratives, students could then go on to create a fictional character staying home from a family vacation.

Some students might want to make a comparison to the popular movie, Home Alone. A humorous approach is just as acceptable as a serious one, especially since in both the movie and Gary Soto’s story, family relationships and maturity are explored.

“Barbie” in Baseball in April should also resonant with students. This tale revolves around the acquisition of a longed-for doll with a disastrous result. Students should find plenty of inspiration to write about a time when they finally received an object they wanted only to have it ruined. Like the other short stories in this collection, “Barbie” is a great example of a clear beginning, middle, and end.  

Short stories are a unique art form in that they establish a fully drawn character with a specific problem that is resolved in a few pages. Young writers often run into trouble when attempting fiction. They envision themselves writing a novel with hundreds of pages. But before you can tell a long story, you need to be able to effectively tell a short one. Reading and responding to short stories will help young writers strengthen their skills.     

www.jacquelinejules.com 

WRITING WITH EMPATHY

guest post by Kerri Majors

Pencil Tips welcomes Kerri Majors who will give us a bonus-style sneak peak at the kinds of lesson plans contained in the Teacher's Edition (TE) of  This Is Not a Writing Manual: Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World (TINAWM). This lesson on empathy is not in the TE—it’s an extra one just for you.

Empathy

It’s so important for writers to understand the inner lives of the people they are writing about. And beyond that, it’s essential for all young people (future writers, scientists, and politicians alike!) to be able to practice thinking against themselves, and even to try to think as other think. Trying to walk in another person’s shoes, and really empathize with them teaches us about diversity and compassion like nothing else.  This lesson helps students do just that.

Suggested reading from TINAWM: “Eavesdropping,” “Drafting,” “My First Big Mistake”

In this lesson, students will:

·       Practice empathetic thinking

·       Write in the voice of another person

·       Create an interesting character

·       Reflect on the power of empathy for writers, and others

·       Engage in active listening and productive critique

You Will Need:

·       TINAWM

·       The prompt, photocopied or emailed to students

·       Workshop Ground Rules (in the Teacher’s Edition)

To Prepare:

·       Give students the prompt and ask them to write the piece as homework.  You could also set aside the first 20 minutes of class for them to write a short dialogue, but that will truncate some of the discussion time. 

·       Assign students to read the “Workshop Ground Rules.”

·       You might ask your students to read the suggested chapters of TINAWM before this lesson.

The Prompt:

A writer must learn empathy—that ability to fully understand the emotional life of others. Yes, even those we find depressing, boring, or plain old annoying.  It’s that understanding of others that helps us shape compelling, three-dimensional characters.

Take a peek at the News Feed of someone* you once hid on Facebook, or unfollowed on Twitter, and select a particularly grating recent post (Maybe: “Off to Zimbabwe then Paris! Pictures to follow!  Send me a postcard from wherever you are!”), then write at least 500 words in the voice of that person about that post, in a way that helps you better understand him/her without anger, annoyance, or judgment. *NOTE: Please do not select anyone from this class!

In Class: (All times are approximate suggestions)

5 minutes:    Review the “Workshop Ground Rules” with your students, and ask if there are any questions about those.

15 minutes:  Ask for an intrepid volunteer to read his/her piece aloud to the class. 

·       Ask the other students to listen carefully and write down favorite words and phrases.

·       Per the Group Rules, lead with the positive.  After the piece has been read, ask students to talk about what it revealed about the person.  What kind of voice did the person have?  What personality traits were revealed?  Did the writer seem to be trying to really understand the character?  What other strengths did they hear?  Always ask student to be specific and mention lines and places in the text.

·       How could the piece have been improved?  Did the class hear any notes of dismissal, judgment, or willful mis-understanding?  How could those moments be transformed and made more empathetic?

·       You might want to discuss the difference between a “likable” character and an “interesting” or “understandable” character, since some of these pieces are likely to bring this difference to light.

20 – 35 minutes:    Repeat the above for as much time as you have (subsequent discussions will go faster than the first), or break the class into groups and let them discuss the pieces in threes or fours; when I do small-group workshops, I always rotate around the room to keep everyone on task and also answer questions. 

·       Save time at the end, or try to discuss throughout, what students learned from writing these pieces.  How do they think they can use this skill in other classes and situations?

·       Collect the writing so that you can deliver written comments, especially on the students whose writing might not have been discussed.

Reflection:

Ask students to write a brief reflection on what they learned through this writing (if you use journals in class, this is a great exercise for those).  In what other life situations might empathy be useful?

BIO: Kerri Majors is the founder and editor of YARN,the Young Adult Review Network (http://www.yareview.net), a literary magazine of YA writing and winner of the National Book Foundation’s Innovations in Reading Prize. This Is Not a Writing Manual has received wide acclaim and was called a “must-read” by School Library Journal. Kerri has taught writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Columbia, where she also received her MFA in Fiction. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and daughter.

Please feel free to use this lesson in your classes, but if you photocopy any piece of it, I ask that in the interest of fair use, you add something like “This prompt is courtesy of Kerri Majors, author of This Is Not a Writing Manual: Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World (www.kerrimajors.com).”

WHAT'S THE STORY?

by Jane Harrington

I just listened to a pretty right-on lecture about fiction writing by Jenna Blum (The Author at Work: The Art of Writing Fiction), so I’ll share an activity based on something she recommends. I think this can help all creative writers, any age. It’s about writing “log lines.”

For those who dabble in screenwriting, this is probably a known term, but it was new to me. A log line is a one-sentence distillation of a story, and can be a very useful means of getting to the bones of a body of creative writing. Whereas “theme” can usually be expressed in one word or phrase (“making new friends” or “recovery” or “loss”) a good log line includes the protagonist and his/her goal or central conflict. Note that endings (spoilers!) are not included in log lines.

Here’s how this activity might work:

1.     Find a bestsellers list, such as the New York Times “Children’s Best Sellers,” and read all the descriptions for the books there. Some in last week’s NYT—

•   “A filthy bird is persuaded to bathe.” (Mo Willems’ The Pigeon Needs a Bath!)

•   “A teenager uncovers the mysteries of a village surrounded by a beast-filled forest.” (David Baldacci’s The Finisher.)

•   “A girl saves books from Nazi burning.” (Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.)

2. Think about a book or short story you like and know well, and then create a log line for it.

•   For Alice in Wonderland that might be: A girl tumbles into an alternate universe and meets many strange characters in her quest to get home.

•   For Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak: After a traumatic experience at a summer party, a teenage girl tries to endure her next year of high school while keeping a secret.

3. Now, think about something you’ve written or want to write, and create a log line for it. I’ve done this for two of my books here.

•   In letters to her best friend back home, a thirteen-year-old girl describes her progress at accomplishing a list of things she has been dared to do while on a Mediterranean cruise (Four Things My Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do in Europe).

•   A ten-year-old girl describes her angsts and adventures in a journal she starts to keep after her memory-impaired grandmother moves in with her family (Lucy’s Completely Cool and Totally True E-Journal).

Some writers might find that brainstorming log lines is a good way to get a handle on a story idea before starting to write. Other writers might find it a useful exercise to guide the revision process, particularly after some free writing. (See Jacqueline Jules’ “Transforming a Free Write” for more ideas along thoselines.)

If used in the classroom, this exercise should help meet the requirements of the following Common Core standards:

CCSS.ELA—LITERACY.RL.1.2 thru 11-12.2

www.janeharrington.com

Inhabiting Your Character or Historic Subject

by Mary Quattlebaum

How might we bring a greater awareness of our characters or historic subjects (George Washington, Harriet Tubman) to the page?

This is one of my favorite exercises as a writer—and one my students of all ages seem to relish and learn from. It’s playful and illuminating.

*Be your character or historic subject for a day (or at least a few consecutive hours).   Try to bring all your senses to it.

*Put on the clothes (or at least some) she would wear.  Eat the breakfast she would.  Do chores of the time (wash dishes, for example, or find a stable and pat the horses).  Play a game or read a book in the way your character would.

*Move like your character.  Let yourself inhabit that excited child or hungry dog or frightened slave. Skip down the street or sniff your dinner deeply or hide in a shed at night and peek out.  Walk as your character walks.  (For my picture book Underground Train, I rode the Metro in Washington, DC numerous times while inhabiting my child narrator, trying to experience the sounds and sights as she would.)

*Enact certain scenes, especially if they have intense action or emotion (within reason, of course).  For example, for an escape scene, have someone truss you up and feel yourself first bound and then trying to figure out how to escape.

*What does your character really like to do?  Do that!  What does your character hate to do?  Try that too, always being your character.

*Take on the physical proportions and usual posture of your character.  If your character is short, get down on your knees and see/experience as she would.  If your historic figure is tall, stand on a chair.  Is a character aggressive?  Puff out the chest.  Sad?  Let yourself slump.

*Jot down your reactions, thoughts, feelings, etc.  Weave into the writing or be conscious of as you revise.

*This can be done at any time during the writing process (prewriting, drafting, revising) to deepen a sense of character/historic subject and their world, provide more telling details, and heighten kinesthetic awareness.

www.maryquattlebaum.com

SPOOKY MOMENTS--HALLOWEEN WRITING

by Jacqueline Jules

A number of years ago, an editor challenged me to write a story about goblins. I wasn't sure I could. First of all, I didn't know too much about goblins. After a little research, I decided it would be fun to do a story set in pre-World War Eastern Europe where many people were fearful of goblins. So I had a setting, just not a plot. I was stumped until I remembered something that had happened in my past—a true spooky experience perfect for a fictional story about goblins. Here’s what happened.

In 1989, I moved to Nashville to a sprawling one-story house. Shortly after we moved in, we began hearing moaning sounds, particularly near the master bedroom. I would comb my hair at the mirror listening to “AWOOO.” The house had no real basement, just a crawl space you could see from inside the garage.  If you wanted to find out where the sound was coming from, you had to wiggle on your belly across the dirt in the darkness. Definitely not for me. My husband was not interested, either. But on and off, we kept hearing this “AWOO” floating up from under the house. We joked we had a moaning ghost in the house.

Armed with the memory of this incident, I wrote “The Goblin In The Synagogue Cellar,” which was published in the October 2005 issue of Spider Magazine. This story is about a town of fearful people in Eastern Europe with overactive imaginations. They hear a strange noise in the cellar and imagine an enormous green monster with red eyes and claws as long as knives. After much teeth gnashing and hand wringing, they learn that the moaning culprit is a little cat trapped in the basement.

Which is more or less what happened at my new house in Nashville. We figured out it was a kitty and lured it out of the darkness with a bowl of milk. However, unlike the characters in my story, we did not name the cat, “Goblin,” and keep it as a pet. Our trapped cat darted through the open garage door for his own home.

I am sure you have experienced a spooky moment or two in your life. An unexplained knock on a door. A strange noise coming out of the vent. An object mysteriously moved. A flash of light followed by the thump of feet on the stairs. But there is no one else in the house. What was it?

Share these experiences with your students and ask them to share spooky moments with you. You might hear a funny story about a little boy who hid under the bed when he heard a thumping sound in the closet, only to learn later that it was the dog. I’ve heard stories about moaning sounds coming from vents, toilets that flushed by themselves, and wall panels that mysteriously moved. All of these spooky moments are great ideas for personal narratives or fiction writing.

While not all schools or families recognize Halloween, children still see decorations everywhere and television episodes on this holiday. Writing about a spooky moment can give everyone an opportunity to share in October excitement. Most of us can remember a time when we were scared of an unexplained noise that turned out to be nothing.

Make pencils to fly across the page like a broomstick in the sky. Ask your students to write about their own spooky moment!

www.jacquelinejules.com