Over at our iAnthology network, where teachers write every week, the prompt this week is to create a “literary recipe” as creative writing. I was mulling over what to write about when I noticed my young son completely immersed in the Dav Pilkey’s Ricky Ricotta series. So, here is my recipe for the books:
Take one tiny mouse and add a dose of smarts and courage.
Introduce giant robot who loves the mouse. Add “protector” to robot personality.
Toss in some villains from distant planets.
Jurassic Jackrabbits
Stupid Stinkbugs
Mutant Mosquitoes
Voodoo Vultures
Mecha-Monkeys
Be sure to dose liberally with alliteration spices. Shake thoroughly. Shake ’em hard.
Add a bit of mayhem to the plot. It helps if the world is about to be taken over by villains and Ricky is the only one who can thwart the aliens.
Place mouse in danger. Maybe, have his held captive. Let robot know mouse is in danger. Watch robot act.
Sprinkle witty dialogue here and there. If you can add a pun, do so. In fact, be generous with puns.
Make sure the illustrations move the story along. For extra taste, add a few flip-o-rama pages for the battle scenes.
Flip the flip-o-rama. Flip – Flip – Flip.
Bake entire book .. eh, I mean read … for about ten minutes from start to finish. (Five minutes, if you are an adult).
Savor the goofy aftertaste of a fun Dav Pilkey yarn, and then move on to the next book.
I’m a sucker for collections of essays, and Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan fit the bill. I’ve come across him as a writer here and there in magazines, and I should have been paying more attention. His writing is lively, his viewpoint is slightly off-kilter, and his topics are unusual in a way that draws you in. From examining the town where Axl Rose grew up to mulling over how his house was used as the setting for a television show (One Tree Hill) to a fabricated essay about a fake professor who believes that animals on the planet are in revolt against mankind, Sullivan lays the storytelling on thick with insight and humor.
I appreciated the focus around music for a lot of the essays, too. Along with the piece of erratic Rose (the GnR singer), the book includes insightful essays about the originators of Deep South Blues who have been mostly forgotten by time, insights into the impact of Michael Jackson on pop culture, an interview with Jamaican reggae pioneer Bunny Wailer, and the opening piece in this collection in which he travels to a Christian Rock festival. Sullivan immerses himself and the reader into this these stories, using rich language, anecdotes and personal stories.
John Jeremiah Sullivan is one of those writers who sees the essay form in a creative way. You won’t be disappointed in the stories he weaves here in Pulphead.
One of the all-time classic read-alouds for elementary students has to be Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM, and you know, it stands up to the test of time. I remember hearing it and I still read it (to my own children, anyway, and all three have loved it). The sequel — Racso and the Rats of NIHM — is by the original author’s daughter (Jane Leslie Conly), and she picks up the energy and interest of the original without missing much of a beat.
In this novel, Timothy the mouse meets a new rat, Racso, as he is heading to school in Thorn Valley, where the rats relocated their colony in the first book. Racso is a city mouse, with a connection to the rats that only comes out later. The book circles around the ways that humans impact the environment — in this case, through the construction of a large dam that will flood the entire valley for a recreational area (and toss in some political corruption, too). Racso is determined to become a “hero,” and joins a group of rats who come up with ingenious plan to destroy the dam on its opening day.
How? They learn how to program computers and become rodent hackers. Really.
These super-smart rats teach themselves computer programming and then hack into the dam’s main computer, sabotage the dam on the opening day and hope that the damage will be so severe that the humans will give up and leave the valley alone. In the book, that does happen. In real life, that would never happen. (reader sarcasm alert)
The story moves along at a good pace, and the smart rats are always interesting to view. Casting humans as the antagonists makes a lot of sense (even my son asked why people would want to harm animals and added “I don’t really like humans right now.”) Racso is an interesting character (with a backstory about his name, which is not Rasco but Racso, which took me about a third of the book to correct, and then my son demanded that the character be called Rasco … until we learn more about his name) who evolves from being being a selfish, self-centered rat to a creature willing to sacrifice for the greater good of others.
And now, we are on to the third and last in the series: RT, Margaret and the Rats of NIHM. This is one (also by the author’s daughter) that I have never read before, so I am not sure what to expect when little kids are rescued by the rat colony and come to live with them in Thorn Valley. It seems like that might be pushing the narrative a bit too much but you never know.
It’s no secret that the Common Core curriculum is going to be influencing states, whether or not they come to adopt it as the framework for curriculum development. My state is part of that initial push around the Common Core, and so I am constantly on the lookout for resources that will help inform the ways I can make some shifts, particularly around the idea of content-area reading skills. Subjects Matter: Every Teacher’s Guide to Content-Area Reading is another one of those valuable books that provides some scaffolding on teaching reading with an emphasis on science, social studies and math.
While authors Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman highlight strategies that can work with any kind of reading, their showcasing of about two dozen strategies and lesson plans around encouraging young readers in the maze of pulling apart of facts and data and non-fiction information from dense texts and textbooks provides a strong focus for teachers who may be used to teaching mostly fiction (ELA teachers) or not teaching specific reading skills at all (content-area teachers).
Chapters on how to read a textbook (something we teachers often take for granted in our students but our students often flounder with), expanding a class library beyond the traditional textbook, understanding the emerging critical thinking skills of middle and high school students, and building a community of learners are all ways in which Subjects Matter approaches the topic of reading. I also enjoyed the long list of book recommendations for middle and high school students that are grouped according to content areas, and there is a wide variety on the list — from novels to non-fiction books to graphic novels.
The book also includes two interesting sections at the very end: a list of the research around reading that has informed the book’s premises and testimonials from students about their reading lives. These “voices” from students are worth the read, as they talk about the frustrations they often feel in most classrooms around reading content area texts, and how some doors were finally opened.
The authors also provide plenty of charts, including this one that spells out some strategies that teachers should consider around the kinds of reading that students should be doing.
MORE-LESS CHART
More:
real books
teaching of reading
student choice of reading
in-class reading
workshops and book clubs
reading as a community activity
reading lots of books
reading for enjoyment
reading as a life activity
Less:
textbooks
assigned reading
reading only “the classics”
take-home assignments
whole-class discussions
reading as individual activity
many weeks on a single book
struggling through hard books
reading as a school activity
I have a lot to think about when it comes to my own approaches to reading, even in my ELA classroom. But books like Subjects Matter have me making more connections with my content-area colleagues. Our conversations are really just beginning to take shape. How about yours?
Yesterday, I reviewed The Hunger Games and I was exploring the Scholastic book site where writer Suzanne Collins has plenty of interesting videos about the books and her inspiration as a writer. I also noticed a link for some Hunger Game-inspired games, so I figured: I might as well check it out. There are two games on the site, both of which are really just advertising for the book.
The first, Trial by Fire, is a Choose Your Own Adventure game, which is kind of interesting since I was just re-exploring that genre last week as part of our blogging series around Mentor Texts for the Digital Writing Workshop. Here, you choose a name and you are the character in the Hunger Games, making decisions as the clock ticks down on you. The music made my heart beat faster, pointing once again to the power of all the multimedia elements for website design. The quick pace and the connections to the story were well-done, and I bookmarked it as a good example of an adventure story with multiple paths.
The second, Tribute Trials, is a quiz-style game, in which you are asked a series of questions on survival, and you are awarded characteristics — such as strength, courage, charisma — that are then tallied up at the end of the game. If you have enough of what you need (I never quite figured that out), you stay alive. I didn’t. I died.
The two games were nicely constructed, with direct ties to the novels. I imagine some of my students would enjoy them. It made me think a bit about how publishers are marketing to young people now, using game theory to spark an interest in the book. I wonder, too, if the games here would have been as interesting if I had not read the book. Would I care? It seemed like the content of the games were designed to tap into what I already knew about The Hunger Games series, but with the movie coming out soon, I suppose eyeballs will be searching the Web for Hunger Games content.
Also, I was thinking: how could I get my students to create companion games for the stories they are writing? What would that look like? Hmmmm.
I know I am late to this party, but I finally (finally!) read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins the other day. I am not sure why it has taken me this long. Goodness knows I have had plenty of students reading the series, and I have almost been part of any number of teacher discussions about the book. My son had the book, my wife brought the book home from her school library … getting my hands on the book has not been a problem.
I guess it comes down to this: I am not a huge fan of Young Adult dystopian fiction. I tried The Maze Runner a few years ago, and lost interest after the first few chapters. And you would think that given my high interest in science fiction that I would buy into the dystopian setup with no problem and dive right in. But The Hunger Games were still out there, waiting.
Now, I understand the fuss.
I won’t need to rehash the plot, I suspect, but I do want to point out what I consider the strength of this novel: character. It’s the voice of the main character, Katniss, that stuck with me and kept drawing me back into the novel. Her development and her experiences, and her reaction to the experiences, were powerfully drawn. I cared about her early in the book (when she volunteers for her little sister, she had me) and Collins gives her flaws and strengths, and courage and doubts. Having such a strong, intelligent girl as the protagonist made for a thrilling reading.
And there is the whole media element. It’s hard not to think, as the reader, that we are really just another viewer of the mayhem and death unfolding on the Hunger Games field, and that if we could send a “tribute” gift to Katniss to allow her to survive, we probably would. Collins has a nice touch as writer, to keep that audience both invisible and make us feel like we are one of them. You can almost hear the calls for more death in your head as you read — an unsettling experience that says a lot about the ways in which media infiltrates our lives.
Which brings me to the violence. I hate to sound like a prude, and I would never advocate keeping the book out of the hands of readers, but our school has a book club for sixth graders that has been reading this series (and is organizing a trip to see the movie when it comes out this year). I kept having trouble balancing the violence and gore with our school’s theme of being Peacebuilders. In other words, I would never teach this book as a class novel. (My wife reminded me that Lord of the Flies is violent, too). Of course, I suspect the violent element is what is keeping many of the boys involved in the book, so who am I took complain?
The other day, I was reading The Hunger Games in class during quite reading time, and a lot of students were quite interested that I was finally reading it. And then, I saw a student from a few years ago in our school (he is part of a multi-grade ski club) and he was one of the biggest fans of the series (except for the third book … he didn’t like it), and kept at me all year to read The Hunger Games. When I told him that I finally was into the book, he gave me this huge smile and shouted out: “Way to go, Mr. H! It’s about time!”
Yeah.
Peace (in the games),
Kevin
PS — I have been watching some of the small videos of Collins, talking of the book series, and this one seemed interesting. She talks about the classical inspirations for the novels.
This is one of those stocking stuffer books that gets passed around the family for laughs. For us, with two English teacher parents who have traveled to other countries and poked fun at English translations, I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar is a riot of misspellings, errors in punctuation and odd meanings and word choices that will have you scratching your head. The book evolved from a Facebook group in which users sent in photographs of signs using bad grammar and spelling, and the editor — Sharon Eliza Nichols — uses sarcasm to showcase the very-public errors.
In here, you will see signs for things like “no pakring” and “personnel watermelons” and there is even an entire section on how learning institutions, on their own signs, have more than their share of errors. Talk about publishing to the world! Most of the errors are due to that old friend, the apostrophe, which seems to float all over the place, making mischief with phrases (“Put Trash In It’s Place” and “Please Tuck You’re Laces In!”.
Listen, I made plenty of my own errors in my writing, so I understand the signmaker’s dilemma well enough. But it reminds us that proofreader’s work is never done.
It’s not quite baseball season, but a few months from now, our home will be all about the ballfields as all three boys play baseball. My youngest son and I just finished up Summerland by Michael Chabon. I’ve read this long book about baseball and magic and mythology with all three boys now, and while there are times when I think Chabon has set off on a direction he never resolves, I love the ideas and the writing and the way baseball’s wondrous qualities form the center of this story.
“A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day” (p.332)
The plot is complicated: a boy, Ethan Feld, must set off on a journey into parallel worlds not only to save his father from Coyote, that trickster who seems to pop in all sorts of forms in all cultural mythologies, and to save the entire Worlds (there are four, each of them attached to the other through thin bonds of connections that some beings can “scamper” into from one world to the next) from Coyote’s plan to destroy everything, and start all over again. Baseball is the underpinning narrative device, as Ethan and his friends (some human, most not) must travel through the Summerlands, playing ball against teams of odd creatures (including giants, ferishers and more), and trying to make their way to the Murmury Well, where the tree of life is found and on the verge of destruction.
Chabon skillfully captures the lazy magic of baseball, with all of its slow-moving plays and the sense that anything can happen at any moment when you are standing at bat or in the field. The characters are rich (even Coyote seems likeable at times), and the settings are so oddly created by Chabon, that it does make for a nice read-aloud, particularly to an audience that enjoys baseball (ie, my sons). And one of the underlying themes of loss, and the unexplainable pain that comes with living a life (Ethan’s mother has died and he hopes the magic of the journey will bring her back. It doesn’t.)
Since this is my third time reading this book out loud at home (plus another time I read it to my class), you might think I would be bored with the story and the characters and the many varied looks at the game of baseball as a metaphor for life. But I wasn’t. Chabon has created a rich story, although its complicated elements might make it difficult reading for some readers not versed in baseball and mythology and Tall Tales (oh yeah, Paul Bunyan and Annie Christmas and others play an important role in the story). This is not a book you can put into just anyone’s hands, and sometimes Chabon goes off a little far into his narrative tangents.
Still, consider this passage, which sums up so much about the book:
“Mr. Feld was right: life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which champions lost almost as much as they won, and even the best hitters were put out seventy percent of the time.” (p. 444)
I feel a bit sad now that Summerland is done. Luckily, the boys’ baseball season is coming around the bend. Our own version of Summerlands — that place of beautiful skies, green grass and endless possibilities just before the first pitch and the swing of the first bat — is something we should never give up. There’s something in that moment of pause that Chabon captures here that is worth considering, no matter the season.
What a beautiful little book.A Nest for Celeste: A Story about Art, Inspiration and the Meaning of Home by Henry Cole reminds me in some ways of The Rats of NIHM for its main mousy main character whose survival instincts and sheer luck and pluck shine through and of The Invention of Hugo Cabret for the lovely illustrations by Cole that become part of the story (although not quite in the same fashion as Brian Selznick, whose pictures are the story itself, not just a companion piece).
Most of all, A Nest for Celeste stands tall as its own story about a little mouse who survives, just barely, through the help of friends. The outside narrative arc of naturalist James John Audubon, and his work to document birds of America in illustrations, provides the reader with a little window into the world of the animals that Audubon and his assistant, Joseph, find and capture in order to draw them.
Celeste, a timid little thing, is drawn so perfectly by Cole, whose own illustration work peppers a lot of other books, that you can’t help but lose your heart to her, and wish her well on her journey of survival. Her encounters with other animals, including a pair of mean rats who get tehir due and some daring birds, provides just enough action and momentum that the story flows nicely forward. Her friendship with the boy, Joseph, is quite touching, as he finally finds a small friend he can confide in and Celeste finds a human protector she can rely upon and care for.
This is a wonderful little book that is certainly worth a read. Slip it into the hands of one of your more thoughtful readers. They won’t be disappointed.
I won’t even try to be unbiased here. Bruce Penniman, the author ofBuilding the English Classroom: Foundations, Support, Success, is not only a colleague (and past director) in the Western Massachusetts Writing Project but he is also a former college instructor of mine, a writing partner for a National Writing Project resource, and a friend. But those connections won’t stop me from saying that Bruce’s book (which I notice is currently sold out on Amazon, which says something about the book’s appeal) about constructing a rich, diverse and challenging English classroom is a wonderful resource worth reading.
Early on in the book, Bruce, a former Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, among other accolades, explains the rationale for the book:
“Teaching English is challenging in part because it is many subjects in one — traditionally, writing, literature, public speaking, and grammar, but now all of those plus media literacy, computer technology, social justice, and much more … The job of organizing those demands can be overwhelming, especially to a teacher still developing a repertoire of management strategies.” (p. x1)
In engaging prose peppered with personal anecdotes from the classroom, Bruce distills his 40 years in the classroom into practice advice around curriculum development and assessment in the era of standardized testing while keeping his focus on for main themes that all of us teachers would do well to heed as a sort of professional motto:
Collaborate
Plan
Reflect
Believe
Building the English Classroom is structured around how to plan, teach and assess a wide range of writing and reading activities, using the Backwards Design model, and he puts a strong push later on in the book around opening the door to multicultural voices and authentic writing for students. Along with the traditional essay, Bruce has always been ready to provide a range of writing assignments that can demonstrate student knowledge beyond the five-paragraph model. While Bruce’s experience is in the high school (and now at the university level), the book can be of use to middle school teachers, too.
Of great value in here for anyone, however, are the many charts and graphs and samples that Bruce provides to the reader.
When I was a first year teacher, I took a graduate course through the Western Massachusetts Writing Project with Bruce as one of the co-instructors, and to this day, I keep his concept of “stakes writing” handy in my mind, and in my desk. Bruce thoughtfully lays out the ways that some writing is personal for the student (low stakes), some of the teacher and the classroom community (mid stakes), and some for the world itself (high stakes). In each of those tiers, there are a variety of expectations of the writer. This kind of thinking opened a lot of possibilities for me, which I continue to use to this day.
