WRITER RADAR WITH JACK GANTOS

by Jacqueline Jules

In a new book, Writing Radar: Using Your Journal To Snoop Out and Craft Great Stories, Jack Gantos shares more than classic tips for writing a great beginning, middle, and end. He shares his own passion to become a published author. Do you have students who dream about seeing their own books on library shelves? If so, give them Writing Radar. Give them the opportunity to hear Gantos describe in emotional detail the moment he placed his hand in the exact spot where a fiction book written by an author named “Gantos” would be shelved.  

Fans of the Joey Pigza books will enjoy the story of how Gantos met the student who inspired the character of Joey at an author visit. Gantos has lectured in dozens of schools about the craft of writing. He shares those lessons in Writing Radar along with many short writing examples teachers could use as models in the classroom. Gantos uses anecdotes from his childhood to demonstrate how everyday experiences make excellent writing material. “The Cool-Air Chair” is a brief story of how Gantos liked to read with the refrigerator door open because it was the coolest place in his Florida home without air-conditioning. Examining how Gantos makes a fairly mundane activity into a very amusing story should help your students discover the stories in their own lives. The book is peppered with such stories and many chapters can stand alone as a read aloud, making Writing Radar a great text to use periodically throughout the year.

In a chapter called, “Breaking It Down,” Gantos provides a step-by-step guide to the elements of storytelling. Writing and reading teachers could use this as a model for studying character, setting, problem, action, etc.  

Finally, Gantos nudges the young writer to simply get moving—to write. In his most important writing tip, he says: “Don’t be that writer who waits all day for the perfect first sentence, or you will grow old while learning to hate yourself and writing.” Gantos cautions young writers not to expect creative thoughts to line up neatly “like a long string of dominoes standing on end and all the writer has to do is push the first one over.” He accurately describes the messy process of creating story while brimming with excitement for the craft. Writer Radar is an excellent resource for the classroom and all those who love writing.

www.jacquelinejules.com

The Essence of Everyday Life

by Jacqueline Jules

I have recommended Gary Soto before in a Pencil Tips post about his short story collection, Baseball in April. But when I recently came upon his collection of poems for young adults, A Fire in My Hands, I knew I had to write about Soto’s work again. A Fire in My Hands was re-issued in an expanded edition.  All middle school and high school English teachers need a copy of this book.

Soto is one of my favorite authors.  His words beautifully capture the essence of everyday life. Every poem in A Fire in My Hands is a wonderful example of how to create poetry from one’s life experiences. Soto shows us how to notice every detail of a visit to a drugstore with someone you care about. How to see a blimp float across the sky on a hot August day, “quietly as a cloud, /Its shadow dark enough to sleep/ Or dream in.” Soto elevates the everyday to palpable moments of epiphany.

In the introduction, Soto advises young writers to look into their own experiences for inspiration. This is not new advice for middle school and high school students. But Soto knows how to convince them. He says, “Some of you may argue that your life is boring, that nothing has happened, that everything interesting happens far away. Not so.” Soto’s poems demonstrate that every moment is worthy of being captured in a poem. Every feeling is important.

Each poem is accompanied by an anecdote, sharing the memory that inspired it. Soto is honest about changing the facts to capture emotional truth in his poems. This layout is a wonderful model, showing how a poem develops from its original inspiration.  

The interview at the end of the book “Chatting with Gary Soto” is a must-read for anyone interested in teaching poetry. Soto discusses his process and motivation. He explains the difference between a lyric poem and a narrative poem. But most of all, he reveals how writing poetry feeds his soul.

A Fire in My Hands models everything we want our students to emulate in their writing. Get it for yourself. Share it with your students.

www.jacquelinejules.com

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.

Sprinkling on the Grammar

by Jane Harrington

November is here—leaves are blowing in circles around us, the first logs of the season are being tossed in fireplaces, and we’re thinking about comfort foods: hearty soups, turkey dinners, plates of spaghetti. So, let’s go with this today and liken a good story to swirling leaves (dynamic, moving), a cozy fire (touching, heartwarming), and a fine meal (nourishing to the body and soul).

Lingering on the food metaphor, I like to think about how the smallest ingredients make all the difference in those things we love to eat: the rosemary leaves on the roasted vegetables, the garam masala stirred into the Ethiopian dish, the pinch of cinnamon in the tomato sauce. (Note to self: Must cook as soon as I finish this post!) This, to me, is what good grammar is to writing. The perfect punctuation mark, the right word—these can turn an ordinary story into something special, something memorable. And raising this sort of awareness can be fun for writers of all ages. REALLY.

Here’s an adjective/adverb activity that can work with a story that is already written. (If you need ideas for creative prompts, I recommend a blog by a high school teacher at writingprompts.tumblr.com. This writing instructor ties his prompts to Common Core Anchor Standards, and most are suitable for writers across the age spectrum.) After instruction on adjectives and adverbs, have the student writers identify these parts of speech in the stories they’ve written. Is their creation under spiced? Have them sprinkle more in! Have they over spiced? Have them reduce the ingredient!

You can also approach this as a challenge in the original piece of writing, by limiting the part of the speech (No adverbs at all in your story!) or over saturating (Every sentence must contain an adjective!). Mix it up for your young writers’ personal palates. The extra attention to craft is sure to result in some tasteful tales.

Some Common Core K-5 connections:

CCSS L.2.1.e: Use adjectives and adverbs, and choose between them depending on what is to be modified.

CCSS L.3.1.a: Explain the function of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in general and their functions in particular sentences.

Anchor Standards for Writing #5: Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

www.janeharrington.com