Written Anything Good Lately?
Great Books to Read to Writers
Barbara Auerbach, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 5/15/2008
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If springtime alone doesn’t inspire your students to wax poetic, try using some great picture books to get their creative juices flowing.
Start with Susan Allen and Jane Lindaman’s Written Anything Good Lately? (Millbrook, 2006; Gr 1-4), an alphabet of writing suggestions from “Autobiography” to “Invitations” to “Zigzags and zeros until the next idea comes along….” Sandwiched between these recommendations, the authors propose trying book reports, directions, fables, haiku, journals, letters, outlines, plays, and speeches as ways to express or communicate ideas.
The autobiography page is divided into four parts, each documenting a momentous occasion in a young writer’s life. Vicky Enright’s humorous, pen-and-ink illustrations depict the boy seated at the computer perusing the family photo album for inspiration. Each page of the book features another format or genre with an example created by one of the students in his class. Place this overview in the writing center and give children the option of choosing a different form to explore during their visits until they have their own A to Z writing portfolio.
Hanoch Piven’s My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks: And Other Funny Family Portraits (Random, 2007; Gr K-4) is an amusing way to get children to write about themselves and their families using simile. The book begins with a picture of a family portrait drawn on a page torn from a spiral notebook. Though her teacher exclaims, “How great is that!” the young artist is less than satisfied and proceeds to explain how each likeness falls short. Through vivid language and irresistible collage, the child describes each family member with a page of similes followed by a new, improved portrait in gouache on watercolor “adorned with glued-on objects.”
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My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks (Piven) © 2007 by Hanoch Piven |
Roni Schotter’s The Boy Who Loved Words (Random, 2006; Gr 1-4) encourages youngsters to cultivate their writing skills by finding “…words they love the sound, the taste, and the meaning of.” Selig is a collector of words: “Whenever…[he] heard a word he liked, he’d shout it loud, jot it down on a slip of paper, then stuff it into his pocket to save.” An oddball and outcast at school, he is aptly dubbed, “Wordsworth” and portrayed in Giselle Potter’s signature quirky pencil, ink, gesso, gouache, watercolor, and collage illustrations—with words coming out of his pockets, hat, collar—and even his socks.
After a dream in which a genie with a foreign accent pronounces…“Vhat you need…is a poipose, a mission,” Wordsworth packs his rucksack and embarks on a journey of self-discovery, collecting words along the way. Finally, weighted down by his ever-growing bundle, he stops at a “large and lovely tree,” removes his jacket, “stuffed, like his mama’s strudel, with words,” and “Tenderly, he hung each word on its own separate branch, as if putting it to bed for the night.” A passing poet, finding himself at a loss for words, catches several floating in the breeze, and composes a poem.
The boy then realizes that his mission is to share his words with others. At the bakers’, he sprinkles “crispy, crunchy,” and “scrumptious”; he stills his bickering neighbors’ “hubbub” and “jibber-jabber”with a harmonious “hush.”
A glossary gives meaning to such wondrous gems as “lickety-split,” “lozenge,” “gusto,” and “swagger,” and an author’s note suggests that, “Who can tell? Maybe you’ll start your own collection of wonderful words,” which is just what the young protagonist does in Max’s Words ( Farrar, 2006; K-Gr 3) by Kate Banks, illustrated by Boris Kulikov.
Max’s brother Benjamin collects stamps; his other brother, Karl, collects coins. When Max asks for a stamp or coin of his own, the answer is a resounding, “No!” To his siblings’ amusement, he decides to collect words—snipping them from magazines or newspapers or jotting them down on slips of paper, much as Wordsworth does, but takes this hobby one step further. He begins with small words like “a,” and “to” and moves to bigger terms “that make him feel good” like “baseball” or “dogs,” and curious words from the dictionary.
As his collection grows, he piles his words into pyramids on the floor and begins to arrange them. “When Benjamin and Karl arranged their collections in different orders, it didn’t make much difference.” But “when Max put his words together, he had a thought,” and eventually, a story, such as the one about a little brown worm that wanted to be a big green snake.
The brothers join the fun, making worm’s adventures more and more fantastic, and begging for more words. Max drives a hard bargain, agreeing to another story for the price of “a stamp and a coin.” By the end of the book, students will eagerly cut and type their favorite terms; small groups can sort piles and create sentences and stories of their own. Teachers may want to conduct mini-lessons on sentence structure or concrete poetry after sharing this clever collaboration.
Speaking of new words, how many elementary students know the meaning of “Previously?” After listening to or reading Allan Ahlberg’s hilarious book of that title (Candlewick, 2007; K- Gr 3) they’ll understand the meaning, and want to use it in their own retellings.
This original tale borrows characters and segments of plot from favorite fairy tales. Goldilocks arrives home in a state. “Previously,” she was running through the woods, climbing out of somebody’s window, and sleeping in somebody else’s bed. Previously, she bumped into a boy named Jack, mumbling something about a beanstalk. Previously he stumbled down a hill with sister, Jill; previously, while eating their breakfast and arguing over the free gift in the cereal box, a small green frog—who had once been a prince and fallen for Cinderella—said hello, and so on. Of course, previously, they had all been tiny babies or bear cubs or tadpoles. Bruce Ingman’s vibrant, childlike acrylic illustrations capture the whimsical nature of the tale—an infant farmer on a toy tractor, a baby fairy godmother with a wand. Kids will want to predict what happens—next. Teachers can introduce the word, “subsequently,” and encourage students to tell their favorite stories in either direction.
Another way to retell a story is from a different character’s point of view. In Nick Bruel’s Who is Melvin
Bubble? (Roaring Brook, 2006; K-Gr 4), each spread features someone else in the boy’s life. Melvin’s dad, mom, best friend, teddy bear—even Santa Claus—each have their own answer to this burning question. Is he “the messiest boy in the world,” “a real chip off the old block,” “the coolest kid I know!” or all of the above?
The humorous cartoons in primary colors reveal a raven-haired, six-and-a-half year old with round eyeglasses, red sneakers, and blue jeans. Reading about Melvin is entertaining; writing about oneself from different perspectives should be both fun and challenging. Students can pen brief descriptions from several viewpoints or one longer description to share. Classmates can try to guess the speaker’s identity.
Anthony Browne’s Voices in the Park (DK Ink, 1998; K-Gr 5) takes another approach to point of view. Rather than describe a person, a day in the park is recounted in four voices—that of a snooty, overprotective mother; her son; an unemployed father; and his spunky daughter. Each character is depicted as one of the author’s signature anthropomorphic apes, brightly dressed, in a lush park set against a white background.
Each voice has its own chapter and distinctive font. The mother reports, “…I saw him talking to a very rough-looking child. ‘Charles, come here. At once!’…we walked home in silence.” When Charles first notices Smudge, he remarks, “…it was a girl, unfortunately.” The girl in question first perceives him to be “kind of a wimp,” but in the end, they are quite chummy. “Charlie picked a flower and gave it to me. Then his mom called him and he had to go. He looked sad.”
In contrast to the mother-son silent walk home, the dad—depressed and preoccupied with the want ads—admits that, “Smudge cheered me up. She chatted happily to me all the way home.” Students can recount an actual event in their lives from another’s viewpoint or retell a familiar story, just as Jon Scieszka did in his groundbreaking, True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Viking, 1989; K-Gr 5), illustrated by Lane Smith.
Coupled with mini-lessons on grammar, wordplay, vocabulary, sequencing, or point of view, these titles will spark some original student writing.
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