Writing Up a Tantrum!

Guest Post by Artie Bennett

I’m probably better known for my rhyming nonfiction picture books (The Butt Book, Poopendous!, and Belches, Burps, and Farts—Oh My!), for better or, ahem, verse, but today I’d like to shine a spotlight on my storybook, Peter Panda Melts Down!, and its protagonist, the most meltdownable panda we know. Peter is only three and he’s filled with frustration. In the story, we spend the day with Peter and his mama—and oh, what a day! We witness Peter blow a gasket in the car, in the supermarket, in the park, in the library, in the . . . everywhere! As Peter’s fits of fury flow forth, indelibly captured by the terrific illustrator John Nez, we observe Mama Panda’s growing exasperation and we wonder: Will Mama Panda melt down, too? I’m afraid you’ll need to read Peter Panda Melts Down! to find out. No spoilers here.

      Now, I love to write in verse, though the challenges can sometimes be great. Because I’m burdened with a perfectionist streak, I agonize over every single syllable. I tweak and revise endlessly until I get things just right. And then I tweak and revise some more. I’m blessed to be writing in English, which has far more words than any other language (well over a million in total!). This gives me a world of possibilities for rhyming. And it really is a world because English has absorbed words from across the globe and adopted them as its own.

     Peter Panda Melts Down! has a fun, catchy refrain running through it:

“Uh-oh. Here it comes. Here comes that frown.

Peter Panda melts dowwwnnn!”

And there a few twists on the refrain for added enjoyment and surprise. It also has a large dollop of my trademark wordplay and humor.

     Ask your students to write about a time when they, or someone they know, experienced monumental anger, like a volcano about to blow its top. They can work in small groups or individually. Young writers can address how the situation was calmed down (if, in fact, it was), and what role they themselves may have played. Was there an adult involved—and if so, how did the adult react? Did it take place in a public or private setting?

     People have a variety of strategies for quelling their anger. Some count to ten. Some concentrate on slowing down their breath. Some may meditate. Some listen to their favorite music. How do you calm yourself when you find yourself getting angry? Write a few sentences about this.

     Make a list of the things that make you angry. Are there any items on your list that you think may be unique to you? Write a bit about why these things upset you.

     Tots will regularly toss tantrums. Students can write about what they feel is the most effective approach for dealing with such outbursts.

     To add a fun wrinkle, students can even attempt to write a few lines of the exercise in verse if they wish. And if they enjoy that challenge, who knows: They could be the next . . . Artie Bennett!

BIO: Artie Bennett is the executive copy editor for a children’s book publisher and he writes a little on the side (but not the backside!). He would be hailed as “the Dr. Seuss of your caboose” for his much-acclaimed The Butt Book, his first “mature” work, which published in 2010. His “number two” picture book, fittingly, was entitled Poopendous! followed by Peter Panda Melts Down! and Belches, Burps, and Farts—Oh My! in 2014. Artie lives deep in the bowels of Brooklyn, New York, where he spends his spare time moving his car to satisfy the rigorous demands of alternate-side-of-the-street parking and shaking his fist at his neighbors. He loves sharing his books with a wider audience at school visits. Visit ArtieBennett.com . . . before someone else does!

SHOP AT THE MONSTORE FOR HALLOWEEN

guest post by Tara Lazar

How would your students like to visit a store where they can buy any monster they please?

Crawl right this way, into The Monstore. (But you must know the secret knock and hand over a bag of squirmy worms, the monsters’ favorite treat.)

When I visit schools and book fairs, I hand out a coloring sheet, where the children can draw a monster of their imagination, one that performs snazzy tricks, like gobbling up a child’s gross uneaten dinner, or as one girl wrote, “shooting cupcakes from his feet.” You never know what the kids will come up with!

One of the most frequently asked questions at my book readings is, “When is The Monstore 2 coming out?” Yep, the book ends with a cliffhanger, and I’m not telling what happens next…

But that cliffhanger also creates a stepping stone to a fabulous writing prompt for young writers.

Read The Monstore and then ask the students:

·       What happens at The Monstore 2?

·       What kind of monsters can you buy?

·       What special talents do they have?

·       Who is the new Monstore Manager?

·       Is there a return policy?

·       Which monster gets sold first?

·       Who buys the first monster? And why?

·       Are the monsters happy or sad to be bought?

·       Do any adults find out about The Monstore 2?

Your class can even brainstorm questions to write about, plus students can use the sheet above to draw the monster they’d like to purchase.

I like to think that anything goes with this prompt—the monsters can do anything, the store can make any policy it chooses, and anyone can make a purchase, even with just a few pennies.

BIO: Street magic performer. Hog-calling champion. Award-winning ice sculptor. These are all things Tara Lazar has never been. Instead, she writes quirky, humorous picture books featuring magical places that adults never find. Her debut The Monstore was released in June 2013, with I Thought This Was a Bear Book and Little Red Gliding Hood to follow in 2015. Tara is also the founder of PiBoIdMo, Picture Book Idea Month, an annual online writing event for picture book authors and illustrators. There are writing tips, giveaways and book reviews galore at taralazar.com.

SETTING THE WRITING RABBLE ON FIRE

by Jane Harrington

There may be a swath of summer still ahead, but if you’re a teacher, right about now you probably can’t get fall off your mind. I know I can’t. Each day when I watch the sun pop over the mountains and set the morning mist ablaze, I think about how I want to be that sun to my students. Not bake them and send them indoors to watch streaming video, but infuse them with artistic energy!

Laura Krauss Melmed’s nifty “endeavor to involve other people” in her literary life (see her July 9 post) got me thinking about how young writers, too, like to write in a crowd. And that got me thinking about NANOWRIMO.

If you’ve never heard of this, it’s “National Novel Writing Month,” run by the nonprofit Office of Letters and Light, a bunch of very clever writing zaniacs. (Neologisms like that are just the kind of word-fun encouraged by the Nanowrimoids.) It is probably best known as a collective of aspiring novel writers who binge-write for the month of November each year. I actually wrote a first draft of one of my teen novels during one of their writing sprees, and it was then that I discovered their ridiculously fun resources for educators and students.

Their “Young Writers Program” is chockfull of totally free and well-designed stuff: pep talks from popular authors; downloadable workbooks to help kids of all ages write stories with strong characters, settings and plots; and gizmos like the “Dare Machine”—today’s dare was to “make one of your characters speak pig Latin or another made-up language.” Students LOVE this, and the intense camaraderie of a writing month sparks some incredible scribblings.

If you want to see how the Office of Letters and Light can help you create in your students a burning desire to write, check out:  NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program.

http://www.janeharrington.com/

PENCIL TIPS: THE WRITING GARDEN

by Mary Quattlebaum

As the weather warms and eyes turn from page or screen to the greening world, a field trip can help enhance students’ writing skills and pleasure.

And you need not travel far.  Many schools today have created small gardens or grounds that can be used as outdoor classrooms.  Alive with plants, pollinators, and regional wildlife, these green spots offer hands-on and real-life lessons in math, science, natural history, geography, literature, and the arts.  You can also take a beyond-school writing trip to a public garden.

1.  In the classroom, prepare students by sharing poems or descriptions of plants, insects, and birds.  What details make the writing vivid?  Did the writer like or dislike this thing?  (See below for some of my favorite poems/descriptions.) 

2.  As a class, have them list things they think they will find in the garden.

3.  Have them bring their writer’s journals and pencils outdoors and challenge them to (1) look for the things they thought they would find, (2) add details (such as color, name, smell, texture, sound, and so on to “flower,” “butterfly,” or “bird,” for example), and (3) write down things/details they hadn’t expected.

4.  In the classroom, discuss their findings.  What were some surprises?  What one natural thing did they find most interesting?  Why?

5.  Ask them to write a short description or poem that includes specific details and three of the five senses.  For younger kids, you might also have them draw/color a picture and post their writings/drawings in the classroom for an “indoor garden.”

For more information on creating or teaching with a school garden, check online resources offered by the National Wildlife Federation www.nwf.org/schoolyard and National Gardening Association www.kidsgardening.org.

Some favorite garden poems/descriptions:

“Orchids,” “Weed Puller,” “Old Florist,” and “Moss-Gathering,” by Theodore Roethke in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.

“Petaling” and “Me Boy. You Plant.” by Heidi Mordhorst in Pumpkin Butterfly.

 “You Never Hear the Garden Grow,” “The Nest,” “Cricket” in The 20^th Century Children’s Poetry Treasury, edited by Jack Prelutsky.

http://www.maryquattlebaum.com/

WHAT IF? and WHAT ELSE?: Helping Young Writers Expand Their Stories

by Jacqueline Jules

What if your character was pursued by a wolf? How could she save herself?

What else could you add to make the reader feel your main character’s fear?

“What if?” and “What else?” These two short questions can help young writers get into the habit of expanding and resolving their fiction stories. Post them with a cute graphic and remind your budding writers to brainstorm throughout the creation of their stories, particularly when they find themselves stuck in the middle. Young writers are often unable to end their stories because their main character doesn’t have a problem to solve. Asking WHAT IF—the character wanted something, the character was afraid of something, the character was in danger, etc.—naturally leads to a problem in need of resolution.

The question WHAT ELSE? opens the conversation about adding details.

A great picture book for modeling this process is The Plot Chickens by Mary Jane and Herm Auch. In this book, Henrietta, a book-loving chicken, writes a story with the help of her three chicken aunts. Together, they brainstorm an adventure entitled, “The Perils of Maxine,” about a hen who ventures into the woods and is pursued by a wolf. Henrietta follows a set of “Writing Rules” which includes the very wise advice of developing your plot by asking the question, “What if?”

After reading The Plot Chickens with several groups of students, I’ve had a humorous frame of reference for asking the question “What if?” during writing conferences. Brainstorming should never be restricted to pre-writing. It is an essential part of plot and character development and the best way to move a stalled story forward. Questions fuel stories like gasoline powers cars. Help your students keep their pencils moving by asking “What if?” and “What else?”  

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

Revision Advice from My Summer Reading

by Jacqueline Jules

"Ultimately, the quality of a good piece of writing is determined by the amount of revision a writer is willing to do." —Marcia S. Freeman, Teaching the Youngest Writers: A Practical Guide.

Personally, I enjoy revision. It’s writing the first draft that feels like cutting the lawn, one blade at a time. Lots of authors agree with me on this. However, many students find revision extremely painful. How can we help?  In my last post, I shared two famous revision stories and one of my own in the hopes of encouraging young writers that revision is well worth the effort. Now, at the beginning of the school year, I’d like to share some advice about revision from my summer reading. I read three books: Reflections by Ralph Fletcher from the Richard C. Owen Author at Work series, Drop Everything and Write: An Easy Breezy Guide for Kids Who Want to Write a Story by Linda Leopold Strauss, and Teaching the Youngest Writers: A Practical Guide by Marcia S. Freeman.

Ralph Fletcher in Reflections readily admits that sometimes he gets defensive when editors suggest revisions to his work. He wants to shout like a four year old, “I’m not going to change a single comma!” But after he settles down, he tries to find a way to “own the advice” as he works on the suggested changes. Fletcher says that more often than not, “seeing my story through another person’s eyes has helped me untangle a tricky plot or story structure.” Calling his editors “co-creators” of his published work, Fletcher says that his editors have strengthened his writing and taught him many things. Page 44 of Reflections has a nice example of an edited page from Fletcher’s memoir, Marshfield Dreams, complete with crossed out lines, suggestions, and sticky note that would be great to show to students.

Drop Everything and Write by Linda Leopold Strauss has a number of exercises that can help young writers add sensory details to their writing. One activity is a “Listening Walk,” in which the writer records all the sounds heard on the street such as shoes on the sidewalk or a car driving over a manhole. Her example of her own “Listening Walk” would be a great read aloud model in the classroom. With entertaining anecdotes, Strauss warns against letting subplots or minor characters overrun a story and distracting the reader’s attention. She defines many important writer’s terms such as flashback, transitions, black moment, and voice. In a chapter entitled, “Show, Don’t Tell,” Strauss explains the advantages of including details rather than summarizing the action. She encourages young writers to spice up their writing by describing an angry character’s actions rather than simply saying he was angry or setting a scene with images from all five senses. Finally, she says that stories benefit from “drawer time” and gives a checklist for polishing a draft that teachers and students should find very useful.

Marcia Freeman’s Teaching the Youngest Writers addresses the kind of revisions done on the primary level. She provides concrete advice on what teachers can reasonably expect from kindergarteners and first graders, accepting that emergent writers are more capable of adding material than reorganizing a narrative told out of chronological order. Young students are encouraged by the opportunity to share their work. This in turns leads to a consideration of the reader and incentive to revise. “A writer’s first responsibility is to his reader,” says Freeman. Teachers can word compliments with this in mind. For example, “Your readers will like the way you told about your sister.” Reinforcing the reader’s needs can also be used in suggested revisions, such as telling young students that the repetition of a word “puts the reader to sleep.” Freeman defines the important distinction between revision and editing. Revision helps the writer make sure his message is “clear and interesting” while editing is focused on conventions like grammar and spelling.  But the reader is still important in the editing process, since punctuation helps the reader understand the text. Finally, while Freeman advises teaching the youngest writers to avoid seeing their work as something that can be finished in one sitting, she cautions against expecting perfection.

All three of these summer reading books enriched my own approach to teaching and writing. I hope they will be useful to you as well.

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

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Stop To Cross The Street: Tips For Young Writers

by Jacqueline Jules

               As a teacher who regularly conferences with students during writing workshop, I find myself asking many of the same questions repeatedly:  

            Are you sure you want two lines of exclamation marks? Let’s count how many times you’ve used the word “then.” Do you think you could cut a few of them out?

            Having the same discussion over and over again has prompted me to make a list of tips for young writers, modeled after the esteemed Jane Yolen. Last winter, at the New York conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, I heard her engage an audience of over a thousand with a clever list of guidelines. She began with “Eschew the exclamation point” and “Go easy on adverbs,” ending with a charge to all in attendance to go home and WRITE. In this spirit, I offer my own list for my students and young writers everywhere. 

• Tip Number One: Use Your Inside Voice. Limit your use of exclamation points and capitals. Ten exclamation points in a row and capital letters are like shouting at your reader.

• Tip Number Two: Stop To Cross The Street. Watch out for the conjunction “and.” More than three “ands” in the same sentence can be a signal to stop and use a period. 

• Tip Number Three: Dare to be Different. Beginning every sentence with “then” or “the” can be dull for the reader. Rearrange your words to vary the sentence structure.

   

• Tip Number Four: Play With Words, Not Fonts. Spend your writing time choosing the perfect descriptive word, not the prettiest font type or size.

• Tip Number Five: Be Active. Use action words to describe what happened and avoid using “was” unless it is necessary to your meaning. For example, say Rapunzel “walked” across the street instead of Rapunzel “was walking” across the street. Repeated use of the word “was” weakens the action. 

• Tip Number Six: Break it Up. Divide your stories into paragraphs. Indent or skip a line at the beginning of each new topic. It can also be easier for a reader to follow dialogue when you begin a new paragraph for each speaker. 

• Tip Number Seven: Switch Places. Check to make sure your sentences are in the best order. Switching sentences or words around can make writing flow in a more logical manner.

• Tip Number Eight: Remember the Reader. Too many parenthetical asides and distracting details can confuse your reader. Make things as clear for your reader as possible.

• Tip Number Nine: Be Smooth. Use transitions such as “After we went to the mall, we went home,” rather than Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 to indicate a change of time or scene. Chapters divisions are for novels, not short stories.  

• Tip Number Ten: Make a Pretty Picture. Your job as a writer is to make a picture in your reader’s mind. Make sure you have included enough color and detail for your reader to see the same story you see in your mind.

        

Jacqueline Jules

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

DON'T LEAVE RED RIDING HOOD IN THE WOODS: Helping Young Writers Find Endings

by Jacqueline Jules

While looking over student writing in six different classrooms on the fourth and fifth grade level, I noticed that quite a few ended with TBC or To Be Continued. This troubled me. Were all the students writing sweeping sagas? In conferences, students complained, “The story is too big . . . I can’t finish it.” Looking over the stories together, we saw that they rambled in beginning mode, setting the scene and introducing characters without presenting a problem or conflict. More often than not, “To Be Continued” was another way of saying, “Too Tired to Continue.” Students may dream of creating a 400-page novel, but the classroom is not the right venue for it. I understand that teachers are reluctant to discourage creativity. However, as an author myself, I believe that a teacher can do more damage to an aspiring writer’s future by not demanding a beginning, middle, and end. Many successful writers begin with short stories. A budding novelist should learn how to create a satisfying story arc on a small scale before trying it across a multi-chapter format. 

A classic fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood, is perfect for a quick mini-lesson on beginning, middle, and end. Classes will readily identify the beginning of the story as the part when Red Riding Hood takes the basket off to grandmother’s house. The middle of the story occurs when Red Riding Hood meets the wolf in the woods, and the dramatic end comes when Red Riding Hood is eaten by the wolf, then saved by the woodcutter.

Ask your class: “What if we left Red Riding Hood in the woods?” You will likely get a response on the order of:  “That wouldn’t be too impressive.”

Most students realize they are giving up when they write “To Be Continued.” Don’t accept it. Help your students guide Red Riding Hood out of the woods to a happy ending with grandmother. Show them that all stories must have a problem (ie: big bad wolf) and when you conquer the wolf, your ending appears.

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

PENCIL TIPS WRITING WORKSHOP: SALT IN THE SOUP OR HOW I LEARNED TO WRITE

by Jacqueline Jules

The more I work with student writers, the more I think about how I developed my own writing skills. When did I become careful about punctuation and spelling? When did I start making a conscious effort to add sensory details or to build a story arc with a satisfying conclusion? Looking back, I see that I learned to write the same way I learned to cook—by testing recipes and listening to advice.

As a young bride, I remember my mother-in-law tasting my soup and pronouncing it too salty to eat. You can bet that I followed the recipe more carefully the next time. I also remember a professor, my first year of college, who wrote in red ink, “Don’t bother passing in a paper with this many typos again.” My embarrassment over both incidents has changed to gratitude. Now I measure how much salt I put into my soup and I proofread my manuscripts carefully. Editors at publishing houses frequently admit that stories submitted with grammatical errors are tossed without reading. If I had never listened to that professor, I wouldn’t be the author of twenty-two children’s books today.

The first book in my Zapato Power series, Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Takes Off, is dedicated to my writing group. Dedications like this are not uncommon. Authors frequently pay homage to the critique groups who made the suggestions that transformed a mediocre story into a publishable one. Editors are often thanked as well. Every time I read my Thanksgiving picture book, Duck for Turkey Day, I am grateful to my creative Albert Whitman editor, who gently but firmly guided me into writing an important new scene for the book.

      

Contemporary writing curriculums all urge educators to teach the writer, not the writing. While I understand that this advice is to discourage teachers from overwhelming young writers with too many suggestions at once, I still find the distinction puzzling. In my own experience as a writer, I know I have learned a great deal from the revision process of a particular piece, often guided by others who pointed out places in my story that didn’t make sense or fell flat. And I have seen my students come up with absolutely brilliant ideas for revision when I have questioned a sentence that confused me. I trust that my students will find that the lessons learned from fixing one story will carry over to the next. It is the recipe that guided me and most of the authors I know to publication.

Jacqueline Jules

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

PENCIL TIPS: Remember the Reader

posted by Jacqueline Jules

After years of participating in critique writing groups, I have learned to spot problem areas my critique friends would question. “That part is confusing.” “This part is too wordy.” “The story doesn’t peak my interest until the fourth paragraph.” And when I miss something, I am grateful when my critique friends point it out. As an author who hopes to impress editors, I want mistakes corrected before I submit.

But students just learning the joy of putting a story down on paper can be reluctant to make changes. Many students think editing should be limited to the correction of spelling and grammar mistakes. Asking a student to re-write a story that does not make sense can be a painful experience. How does a teacher encourage a student to fix confusing or nonsensical passages without squashing creativity?

In my work with young writers, I encourage them to think of their readers. We compare writing to playing an instrument or performing in a play or dance concert. Students readily agree that they want audiences to have a good time when they perform. Using this logic, it is easier to accept why a paragraph should be changed to make a story more enjoyable. Some details distract the reader from what an author is really trying to say. Run-on sentences can be confusing. Cryptic asides can puzzle readers. And sometimes all the little things we explain at the beginning are not needed. Ask your students if they know someone who takes too long to get to the point. For instance, a woman who talks for ten minutes about what she ate for breakfast, when she is trying to tell you how she cut her finger. Most students will smile, remembering such a person in their lives, and understand why they don’t want to keep their readers from the most interesting part of a story. Thinking about the reader helps all writers do their best work.

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/