Literacy Now

Imagine how they would’ve reacted if one of our teachers had decided to have us participate in National Novel Writing Month (otherwise known to its veterans as NaNoWriMo, NaNo, or “Holy heck, it’s not already November again, it can’t be!”). NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org) is exactly what it sounds like—a program that challenges you to write an entire novel (or at least fifty thousand words of one) in a month. In November, to be exact.

Fifty. Thousand. Words.

But really… Why not? What better way to show students that a word count is nothing to dread than by proving to them just how much more they’re capable of?

NaNoWriMo is a terrific program. I graduated years before it existed, but as an adult I participated from 2003 through 2010. The only year I didn’t complete my 50K was 2010; appendicitis is such a bother when you’re trying to keep to a writing schedule. I’ll be NaNoing again as soon as my November schedule allows for it.

NaNo has done some great things for me. I had already written a few novel-length manuscripts, but finishing an entire draft in a month gave me a different sort of focus, a new grasp of the craft of writing. It showed me how to let my rough drafts roam wild and free, to let my characters do what they wanted, even if it took them far off-course.

Sure, that approach led me into some real messes, but hey, that’s what revision is for.

It also smacked me upside the head with the reality that, if I put in the time each day, I can accomplish something pretty nifty in a relatively short period.

Best of all, NaNo gave me the drive to write the first draft of Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator, my YA paranormal fantasy novel that came out earlier this month. In the summer of 2007, while I was driving from Orlando down to my home on Marco Island, Florida, a character named Violet popped into my head. She was a sort-of-goth girl, although she’d resist labels and insist she’s not goth or emo or scene or punk. She could talk to ghosts, but unlike the countless stories in which characters view this ability as a gift, she’d just be bored and annoyed by the whole thing. She’d have a dorky goth-wannabe friend and a pet poltergeist, and she’d live in a funeral home.

For the next few months, that idea simmered in my head, twisting and turning its way into something resembling a plot. What if this girl came from a family of ghost hunters? What if her mother had died mysteriously during an investigation and her mother’s ghost was the only one Violet couldn’t seem to find? And what if Violet had plenty of other spooky school shenanigans to deal with along the way? What if she had to embrace her ability whether she wanted to or not?

Then came November. NaNo time was upon me, and it was the push I needed to drag the story out of my head and get it down. Without that thirty-day deadline looming, I might have worked my considerable procrastination skills indefinitely, and I wouldn’t be staring at a hardcover copy of my first published book right now.

(Okay, I just have to bask in that for a moment. My first published book. I am now able to walk into bookstores and see SPOOKYGIRL on the shelf. I can’t tell you how many epic squeals and ridiculous dances of joy this has inspired. I unwrapped that advance copy right in the post office parking lot. Oh, you need me to move so you can park? You can wait a minute! This is important!)

That’s the sort of crazy magic NaNoWriMo can create.

Of course, a lot more than just that NaNo draft went into getting Spookygirl published. It also took several rewrites and revisions, dozens of queries to literary agents, a major award (the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Young Adult Fiction), and a metric ton of luck and fate and serendipity along the way. But none of that would’ve been possible if I hadn’t sat down and written the rough draft in the first place, and NaNo helped me do that.

Students whose teachers introduce NaNoWriMo as part of a curriculum can experience some of that NaNo magic. Writing a novel will show them just how much they can accomplish; NaNo encourages the development of skills like time management that are integral in and beyond a student’s academic career. It’s great college prep, too—no student who wrote a novel in high school is going to cower in the face of a ten-thousand-word term paper in college.

The idea of having students tackle novel-length writing projects is undoubtedly daunting to most teachers. No worries, educators—NaNo has you covered with its Young Writers Program. The site includes a variety of resources for students and teachers; it offers everything from introductory information to in-depth lesson plans and assessment suggestions for how to tailor the NaNo concept and its word count goal to your individual classroom (and how to assess your students’ efforts without having to wade through all those manuscripts in full).

Oh, and the best part? There’s also some great information about helping students publish their finished books through services like CreateSpace, which usually offers NaNo winners free paperback copies of their finished novels. Seeing one’s work in print like that inspires a lot of pride.

If it sounds like I’m selling NaNoWriMo, I totally am. I love the concept, and I love the organization that has grown up around it. It’s done a lot for me. Anything that encourages freewheeling creativity on this level is pretty brilliant, and that seems like a fantastic gift to share with your students.

And who knows? You might even be inspired to join in yourself. As Spookygirl's Violet would say, “Everyone has a story, and that includes you, so just freakin’ tell it.”

Jill Baguchinsky was the only kid in town who used to dress up as a Ghostbuster for Halloween. Jill lives in Florida, where she spends too much time on the Internet, sneaks off to Disney World whenever possible, and serves as secretary to her grumpy muses. The winner of the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Young Adult Fiction, Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator is her first book.

Imagine, if you will, a world where not everyone's brain is the same.

In this world, not every brain processes inputs in the same way. A sunbeam, for instance, makes one person smile, one person write a corny song, one person squint, and another one sneeze.

In this imaginary world, some people take to music, some to art, some to sports, some to Farmville.

But all must learn to read, of course, because reading is the golden ticket, magic key, philosopher's stone, and a federally mandated part of state standards testing.

But could it be possible that not everyone will like to read the same thing?

I'm not referring to the different flavors of reading: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, vampires, et cetera...

I'm referring to the formats: graphic novels, hybrid mid-grades, endless gray walls of text, et cetera...

In this loony, upside-down-world, some people actually prefer books with pictures to the books with the endless gray walls of text. Yes, even when those gray walls of text are full of lyrical description, enchanting rhythms, pitch-perfect portraits, cunning observation, charming similes, and other combinations of words that their English teachers love.

In fact—and remember this is only an imaginary fact—these readers with a different sort of brain dislike some books precisely BECAUSE of all that stuff.

You see, in this world, a 230-word paragraph describing, say, the physical appearance of the main character's second-best friend, Jojo, does not actually produce in some brains a picture of that character. It produces instead an urgent desire to close the book and play video games.

Other people with other sorts of brains do get the picture, but really don't care what Jojo looks like. They just wish Jojo would do something instead of standing around all day being sun-dappled.

Yes, only on an alien plant could this be possible—that the book one person loves so much for the gorgeous, lyrical writing, might be completely impenetrable to somebody else BECAUSE of the gorgeous, lyrical writing.

There might simply be someone out there who gets nothing at all from description no matter how luscious the language. And, surprisingly, no amount of testing them about the hair color of the second-best friend can fix their brain for them.

We, as aliens to this strange world, might call such a person a reluctant reader. But really it's just a kid who is reluctant to read about what Jojo's hair looks like or what shade the sky in Taco Town was that fateful day. The same kid may be very very non-reluctant to read about what Jojo DID in Taco Town on that fateful day. They just never get there.

But imagine there was a type of book that gave that kid what she wanted. What if it showed a picture of Jojo and Jojo's hair and you could see Taco Town in the background and the reader could see all this in a glance and jump straight to the fateful part of the fateful day?

And then there is another type of book called a hybrid, that does have some blocks of text—maybe so we could find out what Jojo wrote in his diary about that day—but replaced most of the description with pictures.

Now comes the hardest part to imagine. Stay with me, folks…

Imagine that the people on this planet see nothing wrong with this.

The kid’s parents and teachers AREN'T trying to make him/her move on from comics and hybrids to "real" books.

Incredibly, these people fail to harass their younglings over the format of book they choose!

Shockingly, the quality of a story actually trumps its format on this bizarro world!

Scandalously, the prize for the "most distinguished contribution to children's literature" could go to a book that shows a picture of moldy cheese or a girl's messed up smile instead of describing them with words!

Now, before we return to the sanity of our own world, imagine one last thing:

Imagine that a book is a book, and that it's not instantly better because someone spelled out their vision in words rather than pictures.

Tom Angleberger is the bestselling author of the Origami Yoda series, which includes THE STRANGE CASE OF ORIGAMI YODA and DARTH PAPER STRIKES BACK. The latest installment, THE SECRET OF THE FORTUNE WOOKIE, was released earlier this month. Tom is also the author of HORTON HALFPOTT and FAKE MUSTACHE. He lives in Christiansburg, Virginia, with his wife, the author-illustrator Cece Bell. Visit him online at www.OrigamiYoda.com.



Back to School Book Reviews

IRA 58th Annual Convention in San Antonio

INVISIBLE INKLING: DANGEROUS PUMPKINS was wicked fun to write—and I want to say that particularly because INVISIBLE INKLING (the first book in the series) was a nightmare.

I got that first novel back from my wonderful, insightful, delightful editor (Donna Bray) with only one positive comment: she loved the setting.

Well, the setting for the adventures of Hank Wolowitz and his invisible friend Inkling is my Brooklyn neighborhood. It's full of fictionalized versions of local landmarks. And guess what? Donna lives there, too. At the time of writing, our kids went to the same school. Of course she liked the setting! She walked through it every day. But everything else was a mess, she told me (in the nicest possible way)—and I could see that she was right.

I did a fair amount of crying and a really transcendental bit of cursing. I had had a fit of the vapors, a sick headache, and possibly a couple hangovers. Then I started over with a different tone of voice, a different family for Wolowitz, and eventually, a different emotional journey. Only a scene or two survived, plus the basic premise: Wolowitz rescues an invisible pumpkin-eating bandapat from a hungry French bulldog. The bandapat (Inkling) moves in with him, for better and worse—getting Wolowitz in considerable trouble but also helping him defeat a nasty, lunch-stealing bully.

A big part of my life as a writer of books for young, middle-grade readers is going on school visits, but talking about the Inkling stories is still fairly new for me. The Toys trilogy (TOYS GO OUT, TOY DANCE PARTY, TOYS COME HOME) is more often what schools book me for, and my talk for those stories puts a lot of emphasis on creating stories with action and the way even magical stories have their basis in shared human emotions.

I've only begun to do the Inkling talk recently, as word gets around about the series —and it has taken me a bit of time to realize what I most want to communicate to kids about writing when discussing these stories. My now-refined talk is about character-building and revision. I talk about how I put together this kid, Hank Wolowitz, from elements I knew appealed to me. He lives in a multi-racial, multi-cultural Brooklyn brownstone neighborhood. His family runs an idealistic locavore ice cream shop called Big Round Pumpkin: Ice Cream for a Happy World. He's into venomous reptiles and Lego airports—things most kids find intriguing. And there's this all-important fantasy element of having a secret, invisible, talking pet/best friend.

Okay, fine. But that's a set of elements, not a full character. A starting point, but not a person. Yet.

So, I tell the kids how it was only after I wrote the first draft, rewrote it five times, showed it to my editor, and THREW IT IN THE TRASH BECAUSE SHE HATED IT SO MUCH AND IT TURNED OUT SHE WAS RIGHT TO DO SO (this is where I jump up and down and wave my arms a lot), then started over and rewrote it five more times—it was only then that I figured out Wolowitz' problem. And know what? The problems and the needs are what really make a character come to life, much more than a setting or a group of likes and dislikes.

Wolowitz's problem is that he's alone in a crowd. Alone at school and alone in the middle of a crowded ice-cream shop. This was true of me as a kid. I grew up in ’70s communal living situations from age 6 to 10, an only child living with my mother and rotating set of strangers; we moved to a new house each fall. It is true of me as an adult, too. Alone in a crowd. I am never fully part of a group but always on the edge, observing, letting my mind wander, going home alone. Wolowitz has an over-busy imagination that alienates most of the people around him, especially the other kids at school—so when Invisible Inkling arrives, Hank really needs him.

In other words, the core of my story—the way in which Hank Wolowitz is me and in which I share and understand his emotional problems—was not clear to me until many, many drafts in. Then once I got the new draft written and rewritten five times, I showed it to Donna and she liked it. Then I rewrote it twice more for her, making more minor changes, and once for the copyeditor.

The kids always seem a little shell-shocked at the idea of ten or more drafts—drafts that aren't correcting spelling but which fundamentally alter the structure of a book, the ending, the beginning and the things that happen in the middle. But I emphasize that this is what it takes to make a story as strong as it can be, and that reimagining is half the fun. (I don't mention the cursing. Or the hangovers. But I do mention the crying.)

DANGEROUS PUMPKINS was comparatively fun and easy. I adore Halloween and love writing about costumes and the way they transform people's identities. I was interested in the emotional challenges of the holiday for an isolated and sometimes fearful kid, and in the possibilities for the trouble a pumpkin-loving bandapat might get into as the neighborhood jack-o-lanterns get set out on the street.

I had the great good fun of knowing how Harry Bliss would draw Wolowitz and Inkling, so I tried to give Bliss big, action set-pieces to illustrate. Inkling pulling down Hank's pants by accident in the middle of a school Halloween Party, a horde of neighbor girls dressed as dead ballerinas trapped in an elevator, Hank and Inkling battling in a pile of smashed jack-o-lanterns.

Now that I knew my world and the tone of the series—and most importantly, now that I knew what Wolowitz's internal struggles were—the sequel allowed me the fun of setting my characters loose.

Visit Emily’s website for teacher resources to accompany her books.

Emily Jenkins is the author of INVISIBLE INKLING, the first book featuring Hank and Inkling. She has also written the chapter books TOYS GO OUT, TOY DANCE PARTY, and TOYS GO HOME, plus a lot of picture books, including THE LITTLE BIT SCARY PEOPLE, THAT NEW ANIMAL, and FIVE CREATURES. She has worn the same butterfly costume for the past nine Halloweens, and if she has an invisible friend—she's not telling.



A Setting in Search of a Plot (Or, Writing is Really Hard Work)

In Other Words: It Was Written by Somebody

by Michael Henry, IRA Teacher Advisory Panel Member

Open the book. Read. Close the book. Open the book. Read. Close the book. Open the book. Read. Slam the book to the ground. No, this is not you studying for trigonometry. It is a situation I witnessed while attending a soothing classical concert with my wife and children two summers ago at a venue near Chicago.

The young man I described, however, was far from experiencing feelings of catharsis. The reason for act of frustration: his summer reading assignment, a practice deeply entrenched in the pedagogy of Chicago south suburban high schools. The book he slammed with gritted teeth: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, that most ubiquitous of American high school titles.

This young man’s apparent frustration immediately registered with me. As a reading specialist who works with struggling readers, I had seen this behavior before. Watching this young man struggle, eyes glossed over, I started to wonder why he was trying so hard to read a book that was clearly not a good match for him. In my work, my number one goal is to find ways to motivate adolescents to be lifelong readers. One way in which I have been successful in doing so is through finding the right matches for readers. With this in mind, I approached the young man and asked, “Would you mind me asking why you are trying to read that book?"

Shoulders slumped, head down, he mumbled, “Because I have to.” More interested now, I probed a little deeper, perhaps overstepping my boundaries but too curious to stop. 

“Why do you have to?” I asked with concern. 

“Because we have to do summer reading, and if I don’t finish this book, I won’t be able to do the assignment; I’ll start the year in huge hole.” 

“Did you pick this book or did the school?” I prodded a bit deeper. 

“No, everyone has to read this book. I don’t know why. I can’t even get through the first ten pages. It just doesn't make any sense.” 

To this I replied, “I’d like to ask just one more question if you don’t mind?” 

“Sure,” he replied as he seemed to me to be a bit more relieved, perhaps sensing I was on his side. 

“Do you like to read?” 

“I do like to read,” he said, “I read all the time, just not things like this.”

I couldn't help but wonder, was his behavior and response more of an exception or part of a larger trend?

At My School

Although I felt bad for this young man, I was comforted by the fact that in my school, the summer reading assignments had changed. The move from reading one assigned book with a reading guide and a teacher test, to reading two books of choice, providing a copy of the book or receipt, a parent signature, and completing a small project for credit was welcomed warmly by students and parents.

My school, however, I would come to learn, was in the minority in the surrounding area. That said, survey data showed success with 65% of our population reporting reading 100% or more of the summer requirement, up from 47% the previous year when titles were assigned. You can imagine my surprise this year when the English department voted to go back to the old program: assigned book, study guide, project, and test, all designed to raise the rigor of expectations. The reasoning: we need the same expectations of the other schools.

When I heard this, thoughts of that young man’s frustration that night came rushing back to me. But while I was able to negotiate a hybrid model (one assigned text, one choice text) for this year’s summer reading at my school, the comment about other schools has compelled me to explore summer reading assignments in my area greater depth.

Research on Summer Reading

To do so, first I turned to the literature. Using my access as an IRA member to Reading Research Quarterly, The Reading Teacher, and the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, I was able to locate several articles regarding reading in the summer. One, however, stood out as focusing specifically on high school students and school-sanctioned summer reading assignments, McGaha and Iago’s (2012) “Assessing High School Students’ Reading Motivation in a Voluntary Summer Reading Program” in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy.

Not surprisingly, McGaha and Iago discovered a wealth of knowledge about students’ perspectives on summer reading. However, I narrowed their findings to following four critical components of summer reading assignments: (1) access to high interest books, (2) encouragement to read, (3) time to read, and (4) choice. With these findings, I began searching summer reading programs in my area.

The Region's Lists

I began by searching the websites of five surrounding high school districts for summer reading documents. In the nine programs I reviewed, four were geared toward honors students only, three were for upperclassmen only, and two had assignments for all students at all levels. The purposes, like intended audience, was varied. All nine programs, however, did have some trends: many titles were highly academic; all reading requirements were accompanied by in-depth written requirements; and almost all books were assigned by the school.

The titles listed here is a sampling of what I found: Lord of the Flies, The Pearl, The Scarlet Letter, Sophie’s World, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, The Book Thief, The Things They Carried, The Crucible, Bless Me, Altima, Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, King Lear, Tom Sawyer, Dracula, The Hobbit, The Jungle, Beowulf, Grendel, Frankenstein, Les Miserables, The Awakening, Slaughterhouse Five, and Things Fall Apart.

High Interest?

Let’s look at the first of McGaha and Iago’s findings: access to high interest books. While I appreciate the merits of all the aforementioned literature, I wonder if these titles reflect the “high interest” to which McGaha and Iago were referring. Or are these titles more of an extension of the classroom? I also question the accessibility of the titles without teacher support. I say this because the titles are only familiar to me because of having read them in the 400 level as an English major. Furthermore, when I scour the tables of young adult literature or summer reading suggestions at the bookstore, I see none of these. As I glance over at my copy of Divergent and my Chicago Tribune, difficult enough reads with all the distractions of a Chicago summer, I can’t help but wonder how and why these titles are chosen.

Encouragement and Time

The next two findings of McGaha and Iago that I will deal with together: encouragement and time. This is what I found: all assignments were rather in-depth, most with several sections and a multitude of directions to follow with reminders of punitive consequences highlighted, bolded, and underlined, outlining, as I read on one sites document, the “severe consequences of not completing summer reading”. Assignments consisted of prompts to flag, annotate, question, connect, summarize, and infer, along with worksheets, graphic organizers, journal prompts, comprehension questions, multi-media projects, and study guides for tests.

Assignments all seemed to be in-depth and appeared to take a great deal of time to complete, time perhaps taken away from reading. This makes me wonder how different stakeholders perceive these assignments.

The Value of Choice 

This takes me to my last focus of McGaha and Iago’s findings: choice. Choice only appeared in two of the nine schools, and was only a portion of the requirement or intended for only a portion of the population in each. If students have reported, as they have in the McGaha and Iago study, that choice of reading material is a highly influential component of summer reading, then perhaps these schools could benefit from including some choice.

One uniquely human characteristic is our ability to make choices, and our inability to choose when emotions don’t move us. It is this idea of the connection between emotion, thought, and task completion that defines humanness, a point developed by Jonah Lehrer in his 2009 book How We Decide, and separates us from all other species. Would perspectives change if students were allowed to choose their summer reading books?

Open the book. Read. Close the book. Open the book. Read. Close the book, frustration. What I witnessed that beautiful summer day was a frustrated student moving one step further from reading. To find out if he is an exception or the norm, I need to gain a better perspective of summer reading assignments. To do so, this summer I will begin by interviewing principals and reviewing summer reading documents in more depth. I will share my findings in the fall. Enjoy your summer reading.

References

Lehrer, J. (2009). How we decide. New York: Harcourt.

McGaha, J.M., & Iago, L.B. (2012). Assessing high school students’ reading motivation in a voluntary summer reading program. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(5), 417-427. doi:10.10002/JAAL.00050

 

Michael Henry is a high school reading teacher and literacy coach at Reavis High School in Burbank, IL. He is a member of the International Reading Association Teacher Advisory Panel.

 

 

*COMMON CORE ALIGNED!
*MEETS THE REQUIREMENTS OF COMMON CORE!
*UNCOMMONLY MEETS THE COMMON NEEDS OF COMMON CORE WITHOUT BEING COMMON!

Have we commoners in education ever been so collectively deluged with propaganda like this before? Am I the only one who’s already sick of the empty proclamations about so many of these “new and innovative literacy products” which are hitting the market or about to hit the market? Anyone else out there starting to get the sense that educational publishers have collectively lost their common (core) mind?

Okay, so maybe it’s a stretch to presume that many of them had a mind once upon a time in the first place (i.e. see the textbook industry for more information on that subject). But still, ENOUGH ALREADY! Claiming that you are “Common Core aligned” doesn’t mean diddley squat. How about some mention of why you are awesome, great, unique, effective, critical, beneficial, or so on? I mean, nobody markets tomatoes by proclaiming “And we’re FDA approved as edible!”

Time to get off the large fonts in bold face type declaring on your covers like a treasure hunter who’s just found King Tutankhamen’s hidden achievement tomb that “We are Common Core aligned.” If you do a Google search, you’ll discover that “Big whoop, so’s my Aunt Sally’s lesson plan which she just posted free on her blog.”

I guess the only thing driving me more crazy than the publishers perpetually insisting “We’re Common Core aligned” are the people in the world of education who are constantly scrutinizing materials, asking, with pensive, wrinkled foreheads, “Hmm, so is this Common Core aligned?”

Um, hello… we need inquisitions about quality! We need investigations into efficacy! We need people to stand up and demand educational excellence in the materials being offered to our nation’s students and teachers. If the only gatekeeper to curricular adoption is the criminally low bar of “We’re Common Core aligned,” then folks, turn out the lights and break out the moonshine, ’cause we’re all cooked.

Now, I understand that our politicians are simple people who need simple terms to express their simpleton-like ideas. However, where the rubber meets the road of schooling, I also know that there are a lot of folks who have some very keen bowls of grey matter resting on their shoulders. This means we need to elevate the dialogue and demand more. Remember, one of the great fears about Common Core by many was that as a result of its adoption American education would be reduced to a “lowest common denominator, make all the kids into standardized widgets” type of experience for our children.

Personally, I am a fan of the Common Core standards—I’ve said so many times—but people, please. The way most publishers are peddling their goods these days has me fearful that school is going to devolve into something that resembles the high standards maintained by network television in the late 1980s.

In a “grab as many customers as you can” gold rush, I really do wish we’d see someone step to the plate, recognizing that what we all really want is a thoughtful concerto of sophisticated, superior, intelligent, and exceptional academic opportunities spread at our intellectual banquet table. Not Common Core army chow .

[The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the International Reading Association or its Board of Directors.]

Alan Sitomer was named California's 2007 Teacher of the Year. In addition to being an inner-city high school English teacher and former professor in the Graduate School of Education at Loyola Marymount University, Alan is a nationally renowned speaker specializing in engaging reluctant readers who received the 2004 award for Classroom Excellence from the Southern California Teachers of English, the 2003 Teacher of the Year honor from California Literacy, the 2007 Educator of the Year award by Loyola Marymount University and the 2008 Innovative Educator of the Year from The Insight Education Group. He’s the author of six young adult novels, three children's picture books, two teacher methodology books, and a classroom curriculum series for secondary English Language Arts instruction called THE ALAN SITOMER BOOK JAM. A Fun Look at Our Serious Work appears quarterly on the Engage/Teacher to Teacher blog.