Pencil Tips Writing Workshop

Midwinter landscapes in my part of the world yield mostly subdued tones of browns and dusty greens sometimes enlivened by a dazzle of cardinal swooping toward the bird feeder. Skies can be a steely gray and the light still fades early (although less so every day – yay!). But this year my winter world pulsed with vivid hues when my first grandchild was born on January 27.

It made me think of color as a good subject for winter poetry writing. Start by exploring two books of color poetry with your students. Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O’Neill is a classic, first published in 1961, in which she explores the colors of the spectrum in ways still read fresh and original today. “Like acrobats on a high trapeze/ Colors pose and bend their knees/ Twist and turn and leap and blend/ into shapes and feelings without end…”

Red Sings From Treetops: A Year in Colors by Joyce Sidman uses color to explore each of the four seasons. In evocative, playful language, with much use of personification and rich sensory references, Sidman brings color alive. “Red sings / from treetops . . . / each note dropping / like a cherry / into my ear.” Green trills from trees” and “purple pours into summer evenings one shadow at a time.” Eloquent, quirky illustrations by Pamela Zagarenski perfectly capture the mood of wonder.

You could also show and discuss some famous paintings like Van Gogh’s Starry Nights (blue) or Sunflowers (yellow), or Monet’s Water Lilies (green) to further explore the feelings color can evoke.

Now students should select their chosen color. Have them write the color in the center of a blank page and surround it with 6 radiating circles. In circle 1, they should put emotions their chosen color evokes. In circle 2, random parts of the body. In circle 3, actions those body parts can perform. In circle 4, plants and flowers, trees, insects, animals, and other parts of nature associated with their chosen color. In circle 5, foods associated with their chosen color. In circle 6, a list of as many of the furniture and architectural features (doors, windows) of the classroom as possible.

Now, choosing a word or words from each of the circles, have students write a six-line poem starting with their selected color. Stress that by combining words from the various circles; they can come up with unique and interesting combinations of words to make a tribute to the color of their choice. Hang a large paper rainbow across one wall and tack the finished colors poems to it to brighten the grayest winter day!

Monday, December 24, 2012

SOLSTICE LULLABIES

As I write this exactly one week after the horrific Newtown shootings, in the midst of the frenetic holiday season, and during the darkest day of the year, it occurred to me that this is a time in which we might all be in need of some soothing. What better to fit the bill than a lullaby? Lullabies are meant to put children to sleep and for that reason, both words and music must have a calming effect. Lullaby songs have appeared across cultures and languages and have been sung down the ages. Lullabies are also a popular theme for bedtime books.

In my first published book, The First Song Ever Sung, illustrated by Ed Young (and sadly out of print but available from third party sellers on Amazon) a little boy questions all the members of his family as well as the fish in the brook, the birds in the sky, and his pet dog to find out the answer to his question, “What was the first song ever sung?” Each human or animal provides an answer in terms of something very important to him or her. In the last verse, the boy’s mother tells him that the first song ever sung was, “a mother’s song, a hush song, a sleep song, a love song”… in other words, a lullaby. In writing this text, I utilized repetition, which has a lulling effect, and slant rhymes, or words that almost rhyme, to keep it from getting too sing-song-y. (As a side note, I actually wrote this first as a lullaby to my own son Jonathan.)

In another of my titles, I Love You As Much, illustrated by Henri Sorensen, various mother animals express their love for their little ones, again each one in her unique way:

Said the mother horse to her child,

I love you as much as a warm summer breeze

Said the mother bear to her child,

I love you as much as the forest had trees.

Here the text is in simple couplets, again using repetition and rhyme for a lulling effect. The last spread pairs a human mother and child with a couplet that reads,

Now sleep child of mine as the stars shine above

I love you as much as a mother can love.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti has created a unique lullaby book called Naamah And The Ark At Night, with fabulous collage illustrations by Holly Meade. Bartoletti show us Naamah, the wife of Noah, singing gently throughout the night to soothe the human and animal pairs that inhabit the ark. The form of the book was inspired by an old Arabic poetic structure galled a ghazal. It requires each couplet to end in the same word, preceded by a rhyming word. In Bartoletti’s hands this form creates a tender, hypnotic bedtime song.

For a collection of more traditional lullabies, see Kay Chorao’s The Baby’s Bedtime Book. It contains songs in the folk tradition, such as "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" and "All the Pretty Horses," as well lullabies written by poets such as William Blake, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

For a writing exercise, try identifying the elements of a lullaby and then writing one from the point of view of a human parent, an animal, a fairy tale character, or even an alien on another planet. After all, everyone needs a little soothing now and then.

Monday, November 12, 2012

IF YOU ELECT ME

Last week I worked with a sixth grade class of about twenty students in a single session poetry workshop. When I introduced our topic, Hurricane Sandy, some of the boys said they wanted to write about the election instead, since after all, it was the morning of November 6. The students even started calling out some spontaneous, funny rhyming lines on the subject. But feeling rather tense about the possible outcome of the election and also wanting to stick to my lesson plan, I had them stay with the topic of the storm.

Once the election was over, I began playing with the question of how it could have become the focal point of a lesson in creative writing. What if the students were presented with a set of election rivals, but instead of real politicians like President Obama and Mitt Romney, they were funny combinations of rivals such as Cat and Dog vying for Best Pet, or Moon and Sun competing for Best Celestial Body, or Broccoli and Candy Bar facing off for Best Food. Students could break into two teams, each tasked with preparing materials for one of the candidates. It would be each team’s job to convince the “voters” that their candidate should win by producing materials such as a campaign slogan, a stump speech, a poster and maybe even a (non-negative!) TV ad. To accomplish this, students would have to combine creative thinking with humor and the art of persuasive writing. To conclude, each team might present their materials to another class to be followed by a mock election.

But getting back to last week’s workshop on the storm, here is the poem my group produced together:

Loosen the twisting, powerful drops that splash

Loosen the monstrous gale of the wolf

Loosen the sound of the drums

Let the shredding winds go free!

Monday, October 1, 2012

THE WORD ON WORDLESS BOOKS

Picking up on the picture book literacy theme running recently through Pencil Tips, I have been thinking about wordless picture books. I’m a fan of these and like to collect them. This fascination might seem a little odd on the part of a picture book author who is not herself an illustrator, but in the hands of an amazing artist, pictures can sometimes tell it all. (I also love graphic novels, and I’m sure these two interests are related.)

One category of wordless book takes a “what if” concept and catapults it into a world of fantasy. My favorite book of this type is Flotsam, by David Wiesner, a mind-bending tale in which a boy finds an old camera on the beach. The camera leads him and the reader on a fantastical visual journey beneath the sea and back in time. Two other books in this vein are The Red Book, by Barbara Lehman, and Zoom by Istvan Banyai. For some reason, all of these books have vivid red covers. They are just plain fun to share with children, and in the case of Flotsam and The Red Book, could lead to an exercise in writing a fantasy story (wordless or not) about a found object.

Other wordless books that are more plot driven. These include A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog by Mercer Mayer, Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie dePaola, Wave by Suzie Lee, and Train Stop, also by Barbara Lehman. These books can be used for exploring the five essential elements of a story. Here are some questions to move this process along:

Characters: Who is the main character? Are there other characters in the story? What part do they play? What are some of the challenges an artist or writer faces in carrying the same characters through a story from beginning to end?

Setting: Where does the story take place? How important is the setting to that particular story? What are some devices the artist used to bring the setting to life?

Plot: A story has a beginning, middle and end. In the wordless story, which illustrations make up the beginning of the story? The middle? The end?

Conflict:

A story without conflict would be a big yawn. Usually, the conflict comes about because the main character has a problem to solve. What is the main character’s problem? How does he or she try to solve it? If the problem were solved immediately, there wouldn’t be much of a story. How do the illustrations build up the suspense leading to the climax of the story? Identify the climax, the place where the action becomes most exciting.

Resolution: After the climax comes the part of the story where the problem is solved. How does this happen in the story at hand? Do you think the ending was a good one? What is another way you could think of to end the story?

Creating a wordless picture book from scratch could be a great follow-on project.

Monday, August 27, 2012

GOODBYE TO SUMMER/HELLO FALL POEM

Summer has always been my favorite season. I’ve never quite overcome that feeling of slight melancholy that for me accompanies the final countdown to Labor Day. One way I’ve learned to console myself, though, is to conjure some pleasures of fall: striding briskly through crackling leaves, curling up with a cozy throw and a good book, watching steam curl from a bubbling pot of vegetable soup, savoring the cinnamon scent of a browning apple crisp. Fall brings Halloween and Thanksgiving, my two best-loved holidays, plus my wedding anniversary and this year, my daughter’s wedding. Lots of beloved rituals and new delights to savor!

These thoughts lead easily to the development of a template for a poetry workshop. The goal is to have students write a seasonal Goodbye-Hello poem. It will follow the list poem format mentioned by Jacqueline Jules in her most recent post. The students will craft their poems as a send-off to summer and a welcome to fall. This exercise is equally applicable to other changes of season.

As a preparatory activity, you could share the seasonal poems in Douglas Florian’s charming little collections, Somersaults and Autumblings. Florian’s simple rhyme scheme presents puns and fun invented words such as "autumnatically" and “owlphabet." Many of his poems are list poems. Along with his simple watercolor and pencil illustrations, the poems present a delightful childs-eye view of the seasons.

Now each student should be ready to create a 12-line Goodbye, Hello poem. Encourage the students to use richly descriptive verbs and nouns and even to invent their own words following Florian’s examples. Lastly, although Florian’s poems do rhyme, I would advise having the students stay away from forcing these poems into a rhyming scheme.

Goodbye, Hello

Goodbye to (a place), (a place), and (a place) associated with summer

Hello to (a place), a (place) and (a place) associated with fall

Goodbye to (an activity), (an activity) and (an activity) associated with summer

Hello to (an activity), (an activity) and (an activity) associated with fall

Goodbye to (a summer food), (a summer food), and (a summer food)

Hello to (a fall food), a (fall food), and a (fall food)

Goodbye to (a summer scent), (a summer scent), (a summer scent).

Hello to (a fall aroma), (a fall aroma), a (fall aroma)

Goodbye to (a summer sound), (a summer sound), and (a summer sound).

Hello to (a fall sound), (a fall sound), and (a fall sound)

The students can be given carte blanche to devise the last two lines on their own.

Monday, July 9, 2012

SUMMER WRITING RESOLUTIONS

Six months into 2012, our New Year’s resolutions may have lost some of their luster. Mine haven’t but that’s only because I never make any! As I’m not a very good long term planner, resolving to do anything for a whole year only seems like setting myself up for failure. But summer is a nice manageable chunk of time in which I might actually be able to keep the promises I make to myself.

When it comes to writing, I always find winter the easiest season for keeping focused. In the lazier pace of summer (my favorite season, despite having lost our power in Friday’s massive storm) I tend to lose my resolve. So here is a list of the five summer resolutions I have made to guide me through the next couple of months, and maybe beyond:

1) I resolve to write for two hours a day, five days a week, without interruption.

2) In order to accomplish the above, I will turn off my computer during the writing period. For me, this will mean writing in a room other than my office where the big monitor of my desktop calls seductively. It also means abandoning my laptop; ergo, I will be writing by hand. Woo-hoo! I get to take a preparatory field trip to Office Depot where I will select some crisp yellow legal pads and a package of new pens with exactly the right hand feel as well as flow and thickness of ink. My current fave is the Pilot B2P gel pen, medium point.

3) I will start a poem exchange. That means finding a partner who will pledge with me to write a poem a day (I’m hoping this will be my daughter). The idea is to check in at the end of the day and say the poem has been written. It is not necessary to send your poem to your partner, although it’s fine to do so. No critiquing unless the other person asks for it. Success lies in just writing the poem so that you can confirm completion with your partner at the end of the day.

4) Writing can be isolating, so I’ll start a new, energizing endeavor involving other people. In my case, this will be forming a book club or play-reading club, both of which I have been talking about wanting to do for years.

5) I plan to read several autobiographies or biographies of creative people in fields other than writing, to learn more about the endlessly interesting creative process. The first is Yes, Chef, by Marcus Samuelsson. I would welcome other suggestions!

Monday, May 21, 2012

WRITING TRIBUTES TO MAURICE SENDAK

Maurice Sendak, one of the true giants of children’s literature, died on May 8 at the age of 83. This post is dedicated to him.

In 1964, Mr. Sendak, in spare words and exuberantly scary pictures, launched a defiant child named Max on a journey that took him sailing

…off through night and day

And in and out of weeks

and almost over a year

to where the wild things are.

With the publication of that book, Where the Wild Things Are, Mr. Sendak sent the field of children’s literature into uncharted waters as well. This classic work is so familiar to all of us now that it is hard to imagine how different it was from what preceded it. For the first time, the darker side of childhood was examined in a book for young children. In Where the Wild Things Are and other titles, Sendak uses dreamlike settings and powerful imagery to depict difficult emotions like anger, fear and rebelliousness. In each instance, his characters confront and cope with these feelings in ways that ring true for children and adults alike.

As a remembrance of Maurice Sendak, here are some writing prompts to spur students in creating a picture book based on his work:

Where the Wild Things Are. In this book, a jungle grew in Max’s room after he was sent to bed without any supper. If you were mad at your parent, what type of fantastical setting would your room transform into? How would you journey through it? What would be scary about your destination? What would be funny about it? How would you meet the challenges you found there and make your way home? What would be waiting for you there?

Outside Over There. Your best friend has been stolen away by magical beings. It is your job to find your friend and perform a rescue. Describe where you go and what you do.

Higglety Pigglety Pop. Your pet just ran away from home. Why? Where will it go? What adventures will it have (the wilder, the better)? Will your pet learn anything or change in any way? Will it come home? (If you don’t have a pet, make one up or write about an animal leaving the zoo.)

The Nutshell Library. The Nutshell Library consists of four tiny books in a boxed collection: One Was Johnny, a counting story; Alligators All Around, an alphabet story, Chicken Soup With Rice (my absolute personal favorite), a story about the months of the year, and Pierre, a cautionary tale about an unpleasant little boy. Students could make small books on one or more of those themes. To house a library of four books, a tea box can be cut up and stapled together into a smaller box, then decoupaged to make a home for the collection.

Monday, April 16, 2012

SPRING TWEETS

The ancient art of poetry and the much, much newer art of composing the Tweet both aspire to pack lots of punch into few words. Sometimes these forms of communication intersect. This was illustrated recently in an NPR story by Steve Inskeep about Nigerian writer Teju Cole. Mr. Cole, who lives in New York City tweets at his Twitter account @tejucole. His subject matter of late is (very) short stories based on small news items, those unattributed little articles found in metro sections which describe freak accidents and odd happenings. Mr. Cole calls these stories “Small Fates.” His first Small Fates project used items culled from researching a novel about Lagos. Currently, his Tweets are based on items in New York newspapers of exactly 100 years ago.

Mr. Cole’s tweets are often tragic or poignant and are obviously meant for an adult audience. But at this time of year, having young students Tweet about how the world is springing back to life around them could provide a perfect structure for writing a poem.

The goal is for students to write a series of “Tweets” based on observations of springtime changes. They will then put the Tweets together to form a 6-line poem. These observations could take place either independently or following a short daily class walk or garden visit. Show the students how to count the 140 characters allowable for each “Tweet.” Stress that they will be using a different sense each day of the week to make their observations. Make sure they know not to try to make these poems rhyme.

Assign a sense to be explored for each of the five days of the school week. Students should then write a tweet a day for five days. Each should evoke a vivid picture, scent, sound, etc. through the use of such poetic devices as metaphor, simile, and personification. Daily Tweets can be written on index cards and displayed on a magnetic board for review and discussion. “Tweet” number six should summarize the student’s feelings about springtime.

The students could illustrate their poems for a Spring Tweet display.

Here is my own Spring Tweet poem:

Agreeable tulips nod heads together

ACHOO! A sneeze flies from an open window.

The scent of lilacs floats over me like a purple chiffon scarf

The breeze that tickles my bare arms also lifts a kite

If spring had a taste it might be asparagus

Somehow the world feels new.

Monday, February 27, 2012

TELLING WHO'S TELLING: POINT OF VIEW

By the time we reach adulthood, most of us know (although it’s not always easy to keep it in mind) that the way in which one interprets the world depends on one’s point of view. In teaching young students about point of view as a literary device, the goal is to help them understand the various perspectives from which a story can be conveyed by the author to the reader.

There are three main categories of point of view:

The objective point of view presents the action and the characters' speech without comment or emotion. Fairy tales and most picture books for young children are told in this straightforward manner, as if reporting a news story. As Sgt. Joe Friday used to say, for those of us old enough to remember, “Just the facts, Ma’am.”

First person narration tells the story from a character’s own vantage point including his or her thoughts and emotions. This point of view appeals to children once they have reached the age of introspection, so we find it quite often in middle grade fiction. A few examples are Island of the Blue Dolphins, Jacob Have I Loved, So B. It, and When You Reach Me.

The omniscient narrator knows about and shares with us the thoughts, motivations, and feelings of all the characters. It’s not used very often in middle grade fiction, but is employed skillfully by Jean Birdsall in The Penderwicks series, in which the story is told variously from the points of view of each of the four sisters, though in the third person.

For teaching first person point of view, see Mary Quattlebaum’s recent Pencil Tips post on writing a two-person poem. Use her suggestions for crafting a lesson based on her own beautiful poem told from the perspective of both a child and a firefly. Or, following the format of The Popularity Papers series for middle graders, ask the children to keep an illustrated journal of happenings in the classroom for one week, then compare the journals to get their different points of view.

A lesson on the omniscient narrator could begin with giving students a passage from a well-known folk or fairy tale. Have them read it, and then ask them to pretend to be mind readers, rewriting the passage to let the reader in on the thoughts and feelings of the various characters in the passage.

I’ve used a scene from “The Gingerbread Man” as an example. Here is the traditional telling, done from an objective point of view:

An old woman was baking one day, and she made some gingerbread. She had some dough left over and so she made the shape of a little man. She made eyes for him, a nose and a smiling mouth all of currants, and placed more currants down his front to look like buttons. Then she laid him on a baking tray and put him into the oven to bake.

After a little while, she heard something rattling at the oven door. She opened it and to her surprise out jumped the little gingerbread man she had made. She tried to catch him as he ran across the kitchen, but he slipped past her, calling as he ran:

"Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!"

And my retelling with an omniscient narrator:

An old woman was baking gingerbread one day and had some dough left over. My husband is working hard in the garden, she thought. I will make him his favorite special treat, a gingerbread man. She made the shape of a little man. She made eyes for him, a nose and a smiling mouth of currants. Deciding to dress him as her husband was dressed, she made a row of currant buttons down the the gingerbread man’s chest.

After a while she heard something rattling the oven door, and a little concerned, opened it up, then jumped back, startled, as out leaped the gingerbread man. He immediately took off across the kitchen floor. Resolving not to let her husband’s treat get away, the woman trotted after it in hot pursuit. But the gingerbread man, bent on freedom, felt sure he could easily give the old woman the slip:

“Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” he sang out over his shoulder, his currant mouth wearing a confident smirk.

To continue the story, the narrator could give us the thoughts of the various animals that take up the chase. And though we all know what befell the gingerbread man, here is a chance to describe his final thoughts, as well as those of the wily fox happily licking his chops after swallowing that tasty morsel.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Personification: Making a Poem Breathe

A few months ago, I had the good fortune to attend an amazing production of the play, Warhorse, on Broadway. The horses, main characters in the story, were portrayed by life-size puppets, each made of a wire armature with three people, clearly visible, operating it. The way the puppeteers moved the horses, including making them breathe, brought them absolutely, convincingly to life. In poetry, the device of personification performs a similar function by breathing life into inanimate objects or forces of nature through the use of words, usually including evocative verbs.

A lesson on personification should begin with reading some poems that utilize this device. In the following poem excerpts, three poets have used personification to describe “night,” each in a fresh, original way.

from Taking Turns

by Norma Farber

When sun goes home

Behind the trees

and locks her shutters tight –

Read the lines and ask the students questions such as the following: What occurrence is Norma Farber writing about? What images did her words created in the mind’s eye? How does she manage to describe something that happens every day all over the world in such a unique and vivid way? Which specific words or phrases give the excerpt its strong imagery? The poem is called "Taking Turns" because once the sun has gone home, other things begin to show up in the sky. Can you guess what they are? What do you think Norma Farber has to say about them

The next two poem excerpts can be similarly read and discussed, and all three compared:

from Night Creature

by Lillian Moore

I like

the quiet breathing

of the night,

The tree talk

the wind-swish

the star light.

from The Night

by Myra Cohen Livingston

The night

creeps in

around my head

and snuggles down

upon the bed . . .

Once the students have caught on to the concept, let them have a try at writing their own poems utilizing personification. First write three headings on the board or on three pieces of chart paper: Action Words, Places and Nouns. For Action Words prompt the students to come up with a large variety of verbs by asking them what actions different parts of the body can do, what actions various animals might perform, what sounds different animals make, etc.) For Places, have students throw out a bunch of settings, such as city, forest, beach, meadow, swamp, mountain. For Nouns, elicit various inanimate objects and phenomena that might be found in those places. Now have the students chose a season and a place for the title of their poem. They can then choose from the nouns and verbs to write a four line poem, as in the following example (although in the quoted examples the poets used rhyme, you should not require this of your students). Here is an example I wrote:

Summer in the City

The sun glares angrily

At the sweating sidewalks,

As they lie there dreaming

Of a day at the beach.

Your students will have fun making their poems breathe!

P.S. You can find the poems from which these excerpts were taken in Talking Like the Rain, A First Book of Poems, selected by X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy M. Kennedy, Little, Brown, 1992 ("Taking Turns" and "The Night"), and Sing a Song of Popcorn, Every Child's Book of Poems, selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, Eva Moore, Mary Michaels White, and Jan Carr, Scholastic, 1988 ("Night Creature").

Monday, November 28, 2011

AMAZING ALLITERATION

by Laura Krauss Melmed

This is the first in a series of planned posts on poetic devices. I’ll start with alliteration, the repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables. Of the various poetic devices, or purposeful ways of using sounds and words, alliteration is probably the easiest and most fun for children to understand and experiment with.

It’s easy to find examples of alliteration that kids will relate to. A Wikipedia article on alliteration points out that the names of many book characters are alliterative. In the Harry Potter books, for example, the four wizards that founded Hogwarts were Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin. Among the professors are Severus Snape, Minerva McGonnagall, and Filius Flitwick, while the students include Luna Lovegood, Cho Chang and Moaning Myrtle. Other literary examples abound: how about Willy Wonka, Peter Pan, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and Tiny Tim? Cartoon characters across different studios include Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald, Daisy and Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and SpongeBob Squarepants. Sports teams often “sport” alliterative names such as the Buffalo Bills and the Pittsburgh Pirates. And authors sometimes use alliteration for book titles, the way I did in Moishe’s Miracle; Hurry! Hurry! Have You Heard? and The Marvelous Market on Mermaid. Start by offering examples such as these to your students and then have them come up with others.

Why is the use of alliteration so common? Alliteration is fun. It trips off the tongue, or sometimes trips it up, as in “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” Poets use alliteration to enhance the sound and sense of what they’re saying. In the opening lines of my picture book, Jumbo’s Lullaby, I used repetitive, soft, “sh” “f” and “l” sounds to express Mama Elephant’s tone as she tries to lull her restless baby to sleep:

Susha, susha, Mama’s darling,

Stars are twinkling up high,

flickering like little fishes

in the river of the sky.

In their midst the moon is floating

Glowing with a gentle light,

like a pearly water lily

that has blossomed in the night.

Susha, susha, little Jumbo,

Mama’s love will hold you tight.

In Valerie Worth’s poem “Snake” from Animal Poems, the poet summons her subject’s sinuous slither with sibilant sounds:

Spilled to

A liquid

Silt, a

Slurry of scales..

while in Monday’s Troll, Jack Prelutsky bloviating, bragging blowhard of an ogre describes himself as follows: I’m Bellow the ogre/I bluster and boast…

Prelutsky also uses alliteration to conjure up a week’s worth of truculent trolls:

…Friday’s troll is great and grimy

Saturday’s is short and slimy—

But Sunday’s troll is crabby, cross

And full of sour applesauce.

Other examples abound for the quoting. After students get the hang of it, ask them to come up with a zany or funny alliterative sentences of their own, the more outrageous the better, which they can then write out and illustrate on large sheets of paper. Astute students are assured of finding this an amusing avenue for activating alliteration!

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Monday, October 10, 2011

WRITERS AS READERS AND VICE VERSA

by Laura Krauss Melmed

From Reader to Writer, Teaching Writing Through Classic Children’s Books by Sarah Ellis provides a fascinating glimpse into the childhood experiences and reading choices of seventeen well known children’s writers past and present. Ellis describes a childhood incident from each author’s life and then shows how that author might have been influenced by the books he or she loved as a child. She suggests short writing exercises and longer-term projects for children to tackle after reading one of the author’s books. For further reading, she also gives annotated reading lists of books by other authors in the same spirit or genre.

In the first chapter we learn that Robert Louis Stevenson’s fragile health as a child often confined him to the house or even to bed, while his fertile imagination carried him far afield. “He could make a whole world out of anything—a toy theater, lead soldiers, Bible stories, tales his nanny told him, his own terrifying nightmares.” With his cousin Bob, Stevenson constructed imaginary kingdoms called Nosingtonia and Encylopedia. Not surprisingly, his favorite book was The Coral Island, a castaway story inspired by Robinson Crusoe.

Years later and all grown up, Stevenson was vacationing in a small cottage with his wife and stepchildren. When bad weather confined everyone to the house, nerves began to fray. Stevenson produced some watercolor paints and suggested that his stepson draw a map of an island. To keep the child company, Stevenson made a map, too. This exercise so kindled his imagination that it became the springboard for a fifteen-day writing marathon producing the first fifteen chapters of Treasure Island.

Ellis gives detailed suggestions for having students envision and describe their own imagined island. For children not ready to tackle Treasure Island, or for additional reading, there is a list of other books set on an island, including Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Goats, Jacob Have I Loved, The Secret of Roan Inish, and Baby.

Chapters follow on other writers such as P.L. Travers, C.S. Lewis, Katherine Paterson, Susan Cooper, Louisa May Alcott, and L.M. Montgomery. Many of these were authors I was drawn to as a child and who clearly influenced my own work. My love of writing in verse was nurtured by a well thumbed copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses illustrated by the Provensens, a favorite from which my mom often read to me at bedtime. The mystery and magic of (the pre-Disney) Mary Poppins helped nurture a love of fairy tales that led me to write The Rainbabies, Moishe’s Miracle, Little Oh and Prince Nautilus. Jo March and Anne Shirley, Louisa May Alcott and L. M. Montgomery respectively gave me two imaginative, high spirited, resourceful girls I could admire, identify with, and draw inspiration from.

Sarah Ellis writes in the introduction to From Reader to Writer, “(This) group of classic children’s writers that I have come to know through their essays, journals, letters, memoirs and autobiographies…are excellent company, and they can provide for children a pageant of variety—variety of motivations, method and personality.” Good jumping off points for any developing writer!

Monday, September 5, 2011

Hiking Through the Writing Process