Writing Connections with Adam Gidwitz

by Mary Quattlebaum

Adam Gidwitz’s new novel The Inquisitor’s Tale is proving as popular as his well-known “Grimm” novels, including A Tale Dark and Grimm.  In an interview with the KidsPost section of the Washington Post , Gidwitz talks about his research process for this novel, which is set in the Middle Ages.  As he traveled in Europe with his wife, a professor of medieval history, Gidwitz read about knights, saints and even a sacred dog.  All these things became part of his fictional tale, but he added many of his own intriguing details.  For example, the young peasant girl Jeanne is loosely based on St. Joan of Arc, of whom little is known of her childhood.  And a farting dragon makes an appearance!

Below are writing lessons for the classroom or for individual writers ages 8 and up.  Gidwitz’s website includes a teacher’s guide. 

EXPLORING HISTORY:  Classroom Discussion:  Gidwitz makes the past come alive by centering historic events in the lives of three young people and a dog on a dangerous quest for sacred objects.  You might apply his process to the classroom study of any historic time period—or even to the study of current events.

Classroom Writing:  Depending on what issue or historical time period you may be studying, you might help kids to connect to it on a more interactive, dramatic level.  Have each student make up a character who is involved in a historic event.  For example, a girl or boy involved in a suffrage march or Civil Rights Era eat-in.  Or a young neighbor helping the Wright brothers to fly the first airplane.  Or a youngster trying to grow food in a weedy Victory Garden during WWII.  What makes Gidwitz’s novel particularly compelling, though, is that the child characters must deal with uncertainty and danger, which creates suspense.  Sinister knights try to kidnap Jeanne; quicksand creates problems for travelers.

Ask students to put their characters in a moment of realistic danger or in the midst of a big problem that they must figure out how to solve/deal with.  Have them brainstorm some possible dangers/problems, alone and as a class.  What does the main character do?  Have students close their eyes and imagine this scene in their heads, focusing on what their kid character might see, hear, smell, taste, and touch as part of this experience.  What do their clothes look and feel like?  What’s their mode of transportation?  Do they have a pet?  Are they scared? Angry? Confused?

Students might do some internet or library or classroom book research.  For example, looking at historic photographs might give them ideas of details of clothing or historic items to include in their Historic Moments pieces.

Ask students to read their pieces aloud.  As a group, discuss what they learned by researching/writing these pieces—and by listening to others’ pieces.

www.maryquattlebaum.com

  

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

guest post by Katherine Marsh

Just after midnight, Mary Hayes crept into the kitchen of the Buffalo Asylum for Young Ladies and opened a small door on the side of the enormous cast-iron stove. Then she took a deep breath and shoved herself inside.

These are the first few sentences of my new book, The Door By The Staircase. Want to know what happens next?  If you do, then I’ve done my job as a writer.

“What happens next?” is one of the most important questions to make a reader ask. We have a lot of fancy ways of talking about this: suspense, mystery, conflict, foreshadowing, cliffhanger. But these terms all really mean the same thing: Show your reader that something interesting and unusual, something dangerous or scary or magical or problematic, is about to happen. Make them wonder about it enough to turn the page.

The Door by the Staircase is about magic. Magic works best when you show but also conceal at the same time. That’s a lot like writing. Great writing shows just enough to hook the reader and make them read on but doesn’t rush to give away the whole story.

The first lines of a book are a key place to make your reader wonder what happens next. Here are a few I love:

“’Where’s Papa going with that axe?’ asked Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.” (Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White).

“Kouun is good luck in Japanese, and one year my family had none of it.” (The Thing About Luck, Cynthia Kadohata)

“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” (The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman)

Note that even though only one of these lines starts with an actual question, they all raise intriguing and troubling questions that compel the reader to keep on going: What bad thing could be happening with that axe? And why is Fern’s father marching out with it just before breakfast? What happened to the narrator’s family during the year of bad luck? How bad could it have been? Whose hand was in the darkness? And what were they doing with that knife?

Writing Exercises:

1) Ask students to think of a family story. It could be funny, sad, scary, or exciting. Ask them to come up with a first line or couple lines that would make a reader want to know “what happens next?” Let students read their lines aloud and note the lines that pulled them in most. Afterwards, lead a discussion about the most popular ones: What about them pulled you in? What did they show? What did they conceal or not tell you? How did they make you feel? How did they set up a sense of conflict, tone, or character?

2) There’s more than one way to start a story. Working off another book students have read in your class, ask them to come up with an alternate first line or couple lines that would also draw readers in.

3) Have students come up with a first line or lines for a fictional story. Collect and anonymously read them aloud. Have the students vote on their favorite. 

Katherine Marsh is the Edgar-Award-winning author of The Night Tourist, The Twilight Prisoner and Jepp, Who Defied the Stars. Her middle-grade fantasy, The Door By The Staircase, comes out January. In a starred review, School Library Journal called it, “A sparkling tale full of adventure, magic, and folklore.” A onetime high school English teacher and journalist, Katherine lives in Brussels, Belgium with her husband, two children and cat, Egg. You can visit her at www.katherinemarsh.com