Andrea Davis Pinkney writes in her
author’s
note that The Red Pencil follows “one child’s journey through grief and possibility” during
the scourge of civil war in Darfur, Sudan, in 2004. Through Pinkney’s vivid use of
poetry, metaphor, and descriptive language Amira comes alive. We are touched by
the simple beauty of her life before the war and the often frightening
challenges she struggles to overcome when her broken family must flee to a
refugee camp.
Many older students will find the
entire book compelling, but it is possible to share a few poems or even phrases
as powerful writing prompts. Ask students to choose a writing activity based on
The Red Pencil:
1)
Describe a friend
or relative with the kind of vivid language Pinkney uses.
Amira writes of the mother of her
good friend:
“Words
flap from her
like giddy chickens escaping their
pen.
She is so squawky, that woman.”
Or the impish boy Gamal, who could
use an old soup can for a soccer ball.
“Gamal:
wide-open eyes,
smiling,
seeing possibilities
in ‘icken oodle’
and broken bottles.
Gapped teeth,
ready to take a bite
out of anything that
tastes like sticky
mischief.”
2) Describe something simple that you very much
want or need - and imagine what happens when you get it. For Amira, it’s a rare bottle of
Fanta Orange soda, shared with her younger sister Leila and Gamal.
“They
pass the pop-treat back and forth,
licking their lips,
tasting the sweet on their teeth,
savoring.
Then Gamal and Leila grant another
surprise.
They leave the final guzzle for
me,
letting me hug my bottle,
not a broken dolly,
but a sugar-bright memory
of shared joy.”
There are people as “closed-minded as
donkeys/who will not turn their eyes to see anything/beyond what is right in
front of them.”
When
a sandstorm twists through the air, “the sky is spinning a rope.”
There are nights when the moon, “a glowing lady, will
not cooperate./That milk-bellied lady/refuses to reveal herself.”
Pinkney wants her poetry to “encourage young
readers to express their own emotions and troubles, and to find comfort in the
most upsetting circumstances.” It doesn’t matter if students
write in verse or prose. The goal is to use words that are vivid and
memorable, making the people or events they describe so real they might be
right in your own town.
The Red Pencil, by Andrea Davis
Pinkney and illustrated by Shane W. Evans, is the winner of the 2015 Children’s Africana Book Award, given to the best children’s and young adult books about Africa. More information
at africaaccessreview.org including the Read Africa Challenge.
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