All Dogs Must Go!

by Karen Leggett  Abouraya

All the dogs at the shelter must be adopted before closing day. Will that include Spanky the pup with three legs?

This short story will pull at your heartstrings and provide many opportunities to get young children or teens talking, thinking and writing.

Spanky the Pup was written by Abreona Curtis, Darrin Gladman, Rochelle Jones and Temil Whipple, illustrated by Evey Cahall. That’s right – a team of writers. All teenagers themselves, all working with Shout Mouse Press, a nonprofit writing program and publishing house. As it says in each published book, “Shout Mouse Press empowers writers from marginalized communities to tell their own stories in their own voices and act as agents of change.”

Photo credit: Reach Incorporated

Shout Mouse Press partnered with another nonprofit, Reach Incorporated,  to help teens in Washington, D.C., write their own stories for young children. The teens were challenged to write original, inclusive stories that would reflect the realities of their own communities. 

Four new titles were published in November 2016: 

Time for Change: The Lionand Hyena Story   

Drip Drip: The Story of the Angry Sherbet 

Out of Breath: Kendra’s Big Secret 

Spanky the Pup 

The books may be shared with older students as a project they could replicate. Students of any age can use the books to spark discussion and writing.  

Let’s take Spanky, the pup with three legs who fears he will be left out on the final day of adoptions.  Spanky’s story may help children talk or write about a sensitive topic.

·       What did the dog named Dorothy do to help Spanky (defended him, built up his confidence)?

·       Write about an experience when you felt left out. What do you wish someone had done to help? How could you help make sure someone else doesn’t feel left out?

·       What can you say when you see someone being unkind or hurting someone else with their words?

·       What are ways to act with kindness at home or at school?

As a writing style, it is also possible to talk about the ending of this story which is shown entirely in pictures without a single word.  No spoiler alert here…

Shout Mouse Press would like to know how you use the books written by these teen authors with students. Please share your projects with kathyATshoutmousepress.org.

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

You Just Wait: A Poetry Friday Power Book

Guest Post by Janet Wong

Have you noticed an explosion of activity books in bookstores and box stores? Elaborate coloring books, clever creative journals, and books similar to those in the Wreck This Journal series? These books allow tweens and teens to interact in ways beyond reading—drawing in them, writing in them, and exploring their thoughts and feelings. Why do kids love them? Because they’re fun—and writing in them is an act of ownership.

For those of us who teach language arts: how can we take a middle school student’s excitement for activity books—and bring it into the classroom?

Sylvia Vardell and I are trying to do just that with our newest collaboration, You Just Wait: A Poetry Friday Power Book, published this month by our imprint Pomelo Books. It’s part activity book for tweens and teens; part verse novella; and part writing coach, combined in a way designed to gain the approval of both the school board and your favorite skeptical tween.

Here are the steps that we followed in creating You Just Wait. My part of the book came first.

—I took a dozen “outside poems” (“already-published poems” by eleven different poets, all found in The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School).

—I imagined how these outside poems could be woven together and wrote two dozen new poems that form a story featuring Paz, an Asian-Latina soccer player, her movie-loving cousin Lucesita, and Joe, Paz’s older brother, who dreams of playing basketball in the NBA. These new poems became “Response Poems” and “Mentor Text” poems as the book evolved.

Sylvia Vardell then added her magic touch. She:

—created twelve quick, creativity-spurring, PowerPlay activities;

—paired twelve Power2You writing prompts with my Mentor Text poems; and

—assembled twelve Resource Lists for writers (and readers) for the back matter of the book.

Here’s a look at PowerPack 5, one of the twelve PowerPacks in You Just Wait. You can find downloadable files at www.pomelobooks.com

We think we accomplished what we set out to do, but we’ll only know if we start seeing ragged, well-loved class sets of You Just Wait filled with scribbles. Send us your photos at infoATpomelobooks.com—we’d love to see them!

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Janet Wong is the author of 30 books including You Have to Write. She is the co-creator (with Sylvia Vardell) of The Poetry Friday Anthology series (www.pomelobooks.com).

Note: Some vendors such as QEPBooks.com are offering healthy discounts this month as part of the book’s promotional launch; please consider ordering some copies for your school.