HAPPY NEW YEAR! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Guest Post by Susan L. Roth

Many Americans welcome the new year with parties, fireworks, feasts and champagne at midnight. And what do we do the morning after? We make lists of New Year’s resolutions. Do we keep them? Well, we try.

New Year’s Day is our once-a-year-day for a clean slate, yet another chance to do better and be better. On New Year’s Day everyone is full of good intentions.

New Year's Eve in NYC, Illustration Susan L. Roth

Diets and exercise usually top the list, but really, lists can go on and on and on: Read more good books, work harder, work longer, be more polite, stop being impatient. No more bad words, go to sleep earlier, get up earlier, hang up clothes instead of dropping them on the floor! Be better! Be nicer! Be more generous! Be more appreciative! Be a better friend! Be a better neighbor! Be tolerant, be understanding, be kind, be GOOD!

Chinese New Year, Illustration Susan L. Roth

Once the list is begun, it can quickly fill the page, and usually the list is adhered to, at the beginning, anyway. But what if we were given a plethora of second chances for celebrations as well as for second chances to improve ourselves?

Every Month is a New Year, (Lee and Low, 2017) a book of poems by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by me, is a book full of Happy New Year celebrations from all over the world. I learned so much from making the pictures for this book:  there are no two even similar looking. And as for resolutions, every page turn affords a fresh start.

Muslim New Year, Illustration Susan L. Roth

Herewith I am presenting you with another big list full of related activities for students, at least enough for an entire happy new year.

1-Ask students to write a short piece about the new year celebrations that they enjoy in their own families. 

2-Suggest that they create an accompanying illustration. My favorite medium is collage, but they should choose their own favorite.

3-For the most energized, curious and adventurous students: let them try to find other new year celebrations not mentioned in Every Month Is A New Year that they can write about and illustrate.

4- Invite your group to make a joint project calendar of happy new year illustrations which could certainly begin in February or March. Pictures would not have to correspond with unusual-to-us month-specific celebrations, but rather, personal ones. If there are more than a calendar year's worth of students in your group, continue the calendar for as many months as there are students. The finished product could be presented as a big wall of illustrations as well as a calendar, designed to fill a bulletin board, and/or it could be a consecutive band of illustrations designed to go around the walls of a classroom.

5-Encourage each student to start his/her own list of resolutions. Designate one day every month for looking back to see how they did. Invite anyone who managed to keep his/her resolution for that month to give a 30 second speech telling about it. Was it easy? hard? worth the effort? Does the student feel proud and victorious? Take time for applause! 

Do the same for anyone who wishes to tell about failing in the attempt, with applause for the courage it takes to speak about the failure. (This should be handled with humor).

6-Encourage a designated time, probably monthly, to look into each of the cultures explored in Every Month Is A New Year. The back matter in the book includes great explanations and resources for each holiday.  For example: make a dragon; watch wheat grass grow fast daily, right before everyone's very eyes, in a little dish in the classroom; make a kite and fly it; eat green grapes. With permission and supervision, break pots. (Do skip fireworks and firecrackers).

7-Maybe you could even create a brand new holiday: Happy New Month! Let it include a short monthly LITTLE party, and don't forget the Happy New Month's resolutions.

8-Finally, here are some heavier thoughts to think about, write about, to illustrate. 

Encourage everyone, including teachers and librarians, to think about the concept and idea of starting new, starting over. Why is the possibility of one more chance to BE better and to DO better so important? Does hope REALLY spring eternal? And why do we have celebrations anyway? for incentives? for rewards? just because they are fun?

I hope this food for thought gives you something to ponder all year long.

http://susanlroth.com/

It’s All in the Details

by Karen Leggett Abouraya

I remember my high school biology teacher years ago assigning each of us a square yard of ground near the football field. We were to record every bit of life we could find.  We expected the assignment to take no time at all since most of our patches were little more than scruffy dirt. Or were they? Look at that blade of grass. And is that an almost microscopic bug climbing up the dandelion?  There was life in that square if we looked closely. 

It’s all in the details.

Details are key to colorful, descriptive writing and illustrating, as in the picture book Prairie Dog Song by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore (Lee and Low, 2016).  Prairie dog tunnels “connect to a maze of rooms. Some rooms are for listening for predators, enemies that eat prairie dogs. Other rooms are used for sleeping, storing food, and raising playful prairie dog pups. Another room is a toilet area.”

The story of the prairie dog ecosystem is also told in verse, written to the tune of the old folk song, “The Green Grass Grows All Around.”

“And down those holes

Lived prairie dogs,

With the friskiest pups

That you ever did see.

Yes, the prairie dogs built

Their homes in the ground.

And the grasses waved

All around, all around,

And the grasses waved all around.”

Spring is a perfect time of year to take advantage of writing prompts suggested by nature.  Susan Roth and Cindy Trumbore traveled to New Mexico because, said Susan, “we both HAD to see the real prairie dogs and the grasses and the skies in the west.” Take children outside so they can see the real animals and grasses and skies - and provide several optional writing or drawing prompts.

·       We think grass is green – just like the folk song.  But look at the blades of grass in Prairie Dog Song. Illustrator Susan L. Roth thinks she may have cut fifty billion blades of grass for her collages! And they are brown, yellow, reddish and many shades of green. Look at real grass or real leaves: draw and color all the different shades and shapes you see. 

·       Write a paragraph about a patch of grass or woodland. Describe everything you see in detail so that a reader can truly imagine its colors, shapes and movement.

·       Imagine and write a story about a shape in the clouds.

·       Take a photograph or draw a bug or a flower. Try to identify it through good Internet or library research and write a paragraph about your find.  Add colorful details to your photo or drawing.  Speaking of details, did you know Susan Roth glued freshly ground coffee on the buffalo to make its rich brown fur look matted? 

·       In Prairie Dog Song, ferrets are predators and prairie dogs are prey.  What are some predators and prey you can see where you are sitting or walking outside?  Write a paragraph from the point of view of the prey. What could you do to escape or hide?

·       Write lyrics about what you see outdoors using the rhyming pattern and rhythm of a simple, favorite song. This could be a good project for a whole class, with everyone offering details for the lyrics and then singing together at the end. “And the grasses waved/All around, all around/And the grasses waved all around.” 

https://childrensbookguild.org/karen-leggett-abouraya

SUSAN L. ROTH: A SPECIAL COLLABORATION IN MISSOURI

Susan L. Roth, the award winning author and illustrator of 45 books including Hands Around the Library, Parrots Over Puerto Rico, and The Mangrove Tree was recently a part of an amazing writing program in Blue Springs, Missouri. In a guest blog, she shares her experiences at Pencil Tips Writing Workshop.  

A summer school writing program involving 900 students was created and initiated by the Deputy Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction, for the entire Blue Springs R-IV School District (Dr. Annette Seago), later working together with Liz Nealon, co-creator and publisher of StarWalk Kids Media, the E-publisher of many of my books.

The participating children, from grades K-8, were required to write a non-fiction work for an all-program competition. Separate winners were to be chosen respectively, one from each of these three separate age groups: kindergarten-2^nd grade, 3rd-5th, and 6th-8th.

All children were then exposed extensively to age-appropriate non-fiction books, and especially, after I had agreed to participate, to ones I had written and/or illustrated. My part in this project was to help to choose the final winner in the 3^rd-5^th category, and then to illustrate the winner’s book for eventual e-publication.

The writing teachers amazingly sifted through every single one of the 900 entries. They selected five first cut winners for me (and my publisher) to read. Our job was to choose the one that would be best for me to illustrate and for the publisher to publish. 

The plan: to make a REAL BOOK happen.

All five selections were surprisingly excellent, each diverse in subject and style, and each interesting. With difficulty, we finally chose PLANTS AND ANIMALS, written by a 9-year-old named Violetta. This one, we agreed, was perfect for the project. The publisher notified the program coordinators and they, our winner, Violetta, who was ecstatic.

Warning: This is not, everyone admits, a project designed for equal opportunities for each of the 900 children. But it was so successful with its one-to-one design, that I, as well as the others, feel we need to take advantage of the happening and work to find a way to broaden the wonderful experience.

In the attractive library at Daniel Young Elementary School in Blue Springs, Missouri, Violetta and I sat at one of the several library tables for about four hours without getting up! Two writing teachers were also in attendance. Together Violetta and I explored the way to illustrate a non-fiction text, one step at a time.

Together we:

1-read and re-read the text;

2-we divided the text into pages;

3-we made a quick storyboard;

4-we corrected the storyboard;

5-we made a tiny dummy to make sure that our pagination was correct (it wasn’t, we corrected it);

6-we made a small, but precisely proportional-to-the-book-size dummy, and numbered its pages. We cut the text into pieces, and taped each piece to its proper page;

7-we discussed possible images and sketched several possibilities on separate papers;

8-we sketched our ideas directly into the real dummy. Sometimes we disagreed. We talked out our different approaches until we reached agreement. Each of us did this without feeling that one of us was ever dominating the project.

And at that point this amazing 9-year-old child, who had been sitting still for almost four straight hours with a stranger she just met, jumped up and confessed that she HAD to run a little. And she flew from one end of the library to the other again and again until she was out of breath. Then she flopped back down in her chair, renewed.

We went back to work for a bit after that, refining the drawings, but mostly just admiring what we had accomplished together, and then school was dismissed and Violetta was out the door.

And I was swept away to my hotel where I was to create the first page of art to present at the ceremonies on Wednesday.

I must admit that before I went to work with Violetta my feelings about this project were a little mixed. Certainly it is not revolutionary to feel that the children themselves should have created their own illustrations for their own books. Actually, I raised my concerns as soon as I arrived at Daniel Young School. But, I was told, this was not our project this time, even though it might be, another time. THIS summer program in Blue Springs R-14 School District was for WRITING.

And all the children DID write. Their writing efforts were taken very seriously by the official mentors. The participants were individually named and each was individually awarded with a special writing medal and a special certificate at the ceremony on Wednesday. All their writings were exhibited on tables set out in the hallways of the school. Most of the parents came to the ceremony so that there was a good audience for all.

I thought all of this was wonderful. But none of this was my takeaway.

The extraordinary thing that happened was the adult to adult collaboration, one to one, between Violetta and myself as we were sitting together quietly for all those adult hours in the library. It was a genuine collaboration, and our 62 year age difference (who’s counting and none of your business, besides) did not enter into the equation.

Could the other 899 kids ever have a similar experience? Would I, ever in a million years, be capable of repeating this lovely interval another 899 times? NO! is the quick and true answer.

But, the two dedicated and gifted writing teachers who silently witnessed this amazing, lovely teaching event, and I, are all determined to figure out a way to do this (or maybe at least something LIKE this) for more children, more often.

We are starting with a proposed Skype session, scheduled for July, to coincide with an annual writing teachers symposium also to be held in Blue Springs, Missouri.

My most important job is going to be to try to analyze the magic that took place. I hope to be able to transmit the taste of the moment. Our collective goal is to figure out a way that eventually the children themselves will be able to reproduce the one on one exchange, with each participant wearing his own hat: that would be the writer, writing, and the illustrator, illustrating, but with each, LISTENING, and each THINKING, and each COLLABORATING, each, working towards their mutual common goal, TOGETHER.

I suppose this is what is happening, internally, when one is both the writer and the illustrator as I usually am, but somehow, with the two individuals working together the process becomes all the more exciting.

The amazing, happy alliance, the give and take, the discussion and the execution by the two different people, TOGETHER, was all so very special. I hope that this report can convey a little of our shared excitement, and that perhaps it can inspire future experiments, with intense involvement, one on one, but completely together.

As for our own experiment, I’m sure that our day was one that Violetta will hold dear forever. Surely I will as well.

 Susan L. Roth

P. S. I am presently working on completing the rest of the art for Violetta’s book. It will be published as soon as I finish, by StarWalk Kids Media. Please look for it! Fan mail cheerfully accepted.