The Writer's Wing

Illustration Contest!

2010-02-09T07:43:00.000-08:00

Budding Artists Alert!

Illustrate your favorite recent story or poem on www.kidswrite4kids.com and email it to storymaker@aol.com!

Your illustration could be picked to be in the third issue of Brainiac's TreeHouse!

Include your first and last name, your age, and where you live. If your illustration is chosen for publication, you will recieve notice by the end of summer.

Second Issue of Brainiac's TreeHouse

2010-01-13T13:11:00.000-08:00

My good friend Whimsey is working on the illustrations for the next (only the second)issue of Brainiac's TreeHouse. We have some great new stories and poems on offer from contributors to www.kidswrite4kids.com. I think you'll like the writing.

In the meantime, Whimsey struggles, poor fellow.

Our head editor, Pierre, is working to make this issue useful for classroom teachers. His vision is that teachers can download the issue as a PDF and project it in front of the class for discussion. It can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed out, of course, for quiet reading in a corner. Hard copy as a book mailed to your home or classroom will also be avaiable once that old slowpoke Whimsey finishes his work.

Yes, It's Been Ages!

2009-12-22T08:40:00.000-08:00

It does seem like forever since I've posted anything here, though I have promised myself more than once that I would keep a steady stream of thoughts coming. Well, it just doesn't strike me that every thought I have is worthy of being shared with the world!

On the other hand, I have continued to ride herd on www.kidswrite4kids.com and am working on the second edition of Brainiac's TreeHouse, our showcase journal. A shout-out to teachers: Send your ideas for how to make Brainiac's TreeHouse useful for your classrooms.

Check out "The Alphabet," "No More Photos!" "The Rubber Duck Escape," "Into the Corn," and "The Mysteries on the Fourth Floor" on www.kidswrite4kids.com.

A special hello to Ms. Metz and her students in Alberta!

Check Out Garrett!

2009-11-18T09:17:00.000-08:00

Eight-year-old Garrett from Waconia, Minnesota, is on fire to write! Check out his recent poems on www.kidswrite4kids.com: "The Sea," "Flowers," and "The Moon."

We want to encourage him to continue exercising his imagination with rhymed poetry.

Download the TreeHouse Today!

2009-10-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

Well, okay. Finally Brainiac's TreeHouse is now available as a POD (print-on-demand). We are off to a slow start, but the important thing is that we are indeed started. I'll be looking for a better POD company as I get the next issue together. That's good news. Other good news is that we have many very good stories and poems from kids in the pipeline from Kids Write 4 Kids.

Teaching Storywriting to Kids: What’s In It for Me?

2009-09-25T05:21:00.000-07:00

Well, first of all, I’m a sucker for making a difference in people’s lives. I figure that if I turn a kid on to reading and writing I’ve made a difference. Certainly the teacher who got me going, Mrs. Helen Brandt back at New Hope-Solebury Elementary School, made a huge difference in my life. She saved me and I’ll never forget her.

Another reason I enjoy doing this work so much is that it’s actually fun. Sure, going over the stories and trying to write something reasonably coherent and helpful on each one is drudgery—or can be drudgery, anyway. After a few weeks, it does get to be a grind, but I work through it. I find ways to make it stimulating.

Putting my comments in a speech bubble for a cartoon figure has been a huge help in two ways. One, it’s meant that I’ve had to develop cartooning skills, opening up a whole new creative world. Two, the kids love the cartoons and are much more motivated to work hard after having received them. Forget stickers and simple happy faces! Give them something hand made and unique and they will respond!

Long before I began cartooning, though, I turned myself into a storyteller. Like the drawing, storytelling came about as a way of meeting the kids where they were. It’s magic, pure and simple. Now each time I’m doing a character’s voice or making the sound effects of a fishing line flying out, plopping into the water, and then being pulled in on a squeaky reel, I marvel that they actually pay me to have so much fun!

Oh, not incidentally, storytelling jacks the kids up to write with real energy. Take my word, and 25 years experience, it works. That’s an awful lot of anecdotal evidence.

Then there’s this thing about working with kids. Think of all that kids have to have rattling around in their heads to write a story: Fine motor skills to actually make the words on the page, attention to spelling, punctuation, sequencing, dialogue, scene, setting, cause and effect, problem solving, description, etc., etc. For some kids, this is totally overwhelming.

Forgive me if I get a bit misty-eyed. The world is a tough place. It beats us up and often starts early. To be sensitive to this as we work with kids on a complex task like writing is an opportunity for our own growth. When I’ve got 25 kids to lead, with maybe ten of them struggling painfully under the natural pressure of the task, I’m looking at an optimal time to become desperate and grouchy myself. Maybe I’ve not gotten enough sleep the night before or maybe I’ve over caffeinated myself.

Frustration builds.

What a great time to choose kindness and humor. It’s good for the kids and it’s good for me.

More on the Spirit of Play

2009-09-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

It’s all well and good, you say, to want to “inspire” young writers. To “play.” Blah, blah, blah.

But we have standards to meet. Tests to prepare for. Parents, politicians, experts to answer to. We have to create lesson plans and then we have to show them to, have them approved by our bosses. And teachers have lots and lots of bosses. Did I mention parents, politicians, and experts?

These objections are of course well taken. I have no comfortable response to them. But doesn’t it seem that educational
“accountability” has become a tad like the quarterly reports corporations put out and seem to live by? They, the corporations, have stockholders to answer to, and stockholders are impatient. They get nervous if the stock is not “earning.”

Schools have “stakeholders,” a not coincidental choice of terms in our present environment. These stakeholders are an impatient lot. They are caught up in the competition-in-the-world-marketplace obsession that seems to hold the whole country in its grip. They get nervous if students are not “learning.”

And how do we measure that learning? Empirically, of course. By the metrics. By matching the rubrics. By looking at the bottom line numbers delivered by the tests. This looks more and more like a quarterly report of earnings.

It would be silly to argue against measuring student learning, but most thoughtful classroom teachers would tell you that we have gone overboard. Given the present testing environment, it is less and less possible for teachers to teach their passions, the areas where they are most likely to inspire their students.

If we were less hysterical, less concerned with stepping from high school to college to high paying job to comfortable life in a safe neighborhood—all perfectly fine steps—but if we were less hysterical, we might begin making a habit of having dinner together and talking. We might take our time. Read a book together. Talk. Not zone out in front of the new plasma screen as often or as long. Talk. We might then know how our kids were doing without the intensity of testing they now endure and that, frankly, is warping the system.

We are obsessed with having more and have taken the traditional, valid idea that education is the path to a better life and conflated it with business and the false idol of physical and financial security. For some time now, chasing this illusion, our universities have become trade schools for managers, accountants, and marketers, crowding out the liberal arts in prestige and resources. This is a profound mistake.

What we need as a culture and as a polity are fewer expert test takers and many, many more lifelong learners, people who can think creatively and independently. People who will push back—and push us all forward.

A 2006 report by the National Governors Association found that readers of literature—poetry, plays, short stories, and novels—were more engaged in social and civic activities and enhanced community life significantly. This is just one of many studies coming to the same conclusion.

So, yes, let’s inspire kids to love reading and writing. We've long ago proven that going about this with a long face doesn't work. Being joyful, playing, does not equal lazy, so let's keep that spirit of play alive through and then long after elementary school.

The Spirit of Play—Continuing My Unscientific, Anecdotal Exploration of Making Kids Lovers of the Written Word

2009-09-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

I ended my last entry like this: “. . . why do we make reading and writing such work for kids? How can we infuse the teaching of these skills with more spirit of play?”

What do I mean by “play”? Should kids act out the stories they read? Should we all just laugh and sing and clown around in classes? Should teachers set kids loose and grant, as if by royal decree, “freedom”?

The longer you look at it like this, of course, the sillier the idea gets. My granddaughters came up with the restaurant idea on their own, but we can’t expect and depend on students in our classes coming up with educational play ideas all on their own consistently enough to justify it as a strategy. That isn’t realistic.

But I’m not thinking of play is quite these terms anyway. I’m thinking of play in terms of “delight.” To delight means to give pleasure and joy.

Allow me to digress.

Many years ago I lived in State College, Pennsylvania. My young son lived a hundred miles away with my ex-wife. Every other weekend I drove down a long, beautiful valley, into another, and then over the Allegheny Escarpment to pick him up for a visit.

I drove a VW Bug for some of those years, a ’55 Chevy pick-up for others. Both were baby blue, but that’s not the point. Neither had a working radio or tape deck. This is long before CDs. Our entertainment was to talk.

“Okay,” Christopher would say as soon as he had settled in and we were on the road. “Start talking.”

“What about?” came my standard rejoiner.

He might say “Abraham Lincoln” or “The Great Depression” or any other historical subject that interested him at the moment. Later, as he got older, he’d sometimes lead us into discussions of world religions.

Well, I’d start to talk, and he would ask questions, and that was how we passed the time driving through that beautiful countryside the four seasons of those years. Being with him and sharing those interests delighted me. It brought me pleasure. There is nothing so joyful as connecting deeply with someone you love.

I like to think that my delight infected Chris with a love of those matters that he asked me to talk about. He’s now a high school social studies teacher, and because he has a deep love for his subject I believe he lights up, delights, in his work.

To feel delight is to feel the spirit of play. Delight is by nature warm. Kids respond to warmth. They are drawn to it. They bond to it. Do a read aloud of Walk Two Moons or another book that you resonate to, lead an open ended discussion of it, and watch what happens if you simply treat it as something that has value to you—not as sacred text leading to salvation!

For a great example of a teacher who has done a beautiful job of this, check out “Ron’s Read Alongs” in the archives of this blog.

All the World’s a Stage! So Let’s Rehearse!

2009-09-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

On a recent visit to my son and his family, the granddaughters made me their customer as they played restaurant one afternoon.

I sat reading the paper in their dad’s favorite chair.

“Would you like to come have something to eat at out new restaurant?” I heard a tiny voice ask from behind the newsprint. “We’re almost ready for customers.”

Naturally I said yes.

“Okay, we’ll be ready soon,” Ally, the older of the two, said as she skipped away. “Just look for the sign on the door.”

I waited for a while, then went upstairs where I saw “Open” in crayon on a piece of tablet paper taped to Olivia’s door.

As I walked inside, Ally met me with a polite greeting, asked how many were in my party, and seated me. I was charmed as she handed me a hand-drawn menu.

She stood aside as I examined the menu. When she came back, I made my choices and she took my order to first grader Olivia, who had been busy the whole time in the dormer of her bedroom. This area had been sectioned off with the play kitchen her father had had as a young child. As in most restaurants, there was a little tension between the server and the chef about my order.

“One at a time! One at a time!” Chef Olivia demanded of her sister. “I can only do one at a time.”

She was definitely in charge in the kitchen.

Not long afterwards my server (Ally) delivered a plate of plastic pizza, fried eggs, and hamburger—my order. (I was playing, too, after all!)

I pretended to eat, asked for my bill, worked out a 15 % tip, and was on my way.

All this put me in mind of why and how we teach reading and writing in our schools.

In Readacide, Kelly Galleger references Kenneth Burke’s contention that reading fiction is an “imaginary rehearsal” for life. We read fiction to understand our lives and to imagine lives, worlds, beyond our own. James Wood writes in How Fiction Works that noticing in fiction makes us better noticers in life and noticing in life makes us better makers of fiction. It is a kind of training and rehearsal.

We have long said the same thing about play in children, as I recently saw in my grandchildren. I played a part in an imaginative rehearsal of what it might be like to be a chef in a restaurant, of how it might feel to greet diners as they came through the door. We were involved in play that integrated observed knowledge—How have we seen restaurants operate?—with an imaginative rehearsal of what that experience might be like.

Children, like the rest of us, are trying to figure out not only how things work, but also their place in how things work.

Reading stories and poems—and, I’d argue, writing stories and poems—is a rehearsal akin in spirit to playing restaurant. It’s a getting ready to understand and take part in our world, a kind of dramatic play.

If all of that is sensible, and it is, why do we make reading and writing such work for kids? How can we infuse the teaching of these skills with more spirit of play?

Reading Reasons, Continued

2009-09-02T14:16:00.000-07:00

Continuing with my reading of Kelly Gallagher’s work, I want to reflect on the next three of his building blocks for turning kids into readers.

His fourth building block is for teachers to stop grading everything they assign. This may seem like letting students off the hook, but not grading does not need to be the same thing as making them unaccountable. In my many (many, too many) years of teaching college writing, I came to dread each new pile of papers or exercises my assignments generated.

“If you assign it,” I used to say, “you have to grade it.”

How foolish I was. I eventually invented ways to make my adult students accountable for their work through, in addition to other means, classroom exercises. Students worked in pairs or small groups with material they had had to prepare before class. They were, in other words, accountable to one another and, as I floated from group to group, to me.

Gallagher only grades about ¼ of what he assigns. Check out Reading Reasons for the creative ways he holds students accountable for the work he does not grade. Not burning himself out grading everything allows him to give meaningful feedback on the work he does grade. This is essential whether you are teaching reading or writing.

His fifth building block is to provide structure to his reading program. He has his students keep a reading log and, frankly, as I read this I thanked heaven that I am not a high school teacher. Keeping track of four or five sections of teenage logs seems much more than daunting to me. I am not a regular classroom teacher. At the longest, I’m with students 90 minutes a day for a week or two. Reading this section and a recent visit to my son, who is a high school social studies teacher, reminded me of why teachers should be paid much more than they are.

The sixth building block leads into the guts of Reading Reasons: Kids have to understand what reading has to offer them. I'll be looking at some of those reasons as I go on trying to make this blog a bit more of a habit.

What Am I Reading Today?

2009-08-31T07:38:00.000-07:00

Quick note: Brainiac's TreeHouse will be ready for you next week. I'm waiting for the proofs from the publisher right now.

The short answer to the question in the title above is Kelly Gallagher's Reading Reasons: Motivating Mini-Lessons for Middle and High School. I read slowly, so I've not gotten too far as of this writing and would like to use this space to reflect a little on what I've covered.

Gallagher's first building block for creating enthusiastic readers is to surround them with lots and lots of high interest books. He uses Warwick Elley's term "book flood" to describe this. "Make your world a world of books," the president of my college told incoming freshmen. Sorry I don't remember his name because that sentence has stuck in my head for many, many years. It was wonderful advice.

I remembered it when my son was born. His room, like the living room in our house and like my bedside table, became a place of books. As he learned to walk, he used to like to pull the books off the shelf and pile them on the floor, then try to put them back up again. He loved to be read to, which we did just as much as he liked, and he loved to simply handle the books. Today? Yup. He's a reader at almost forty, having been raised swimming in a book flood.

Galagher's second building block is to give students a time and a place to read. I'd say this includes having a time and a place to read to them also. And let's not stop this when they are able to read on their own. We all enjoy the comforting sensation of being read to.

Gallagher is an advocate of "sustained silent reading"(SSR). I've been in schools where everything stops while everybody in the building reads silently for ten minutes--principal, teachers, office folks, kids, everybody. What a relaxing ten minutes! What a beautiful sound is that silence!

The third building block, and the last I've gotten to so far, is for teachers to model the value of reading. Parents, too, of course. If all we do is tell them THEY should read, without being readers ourselves, . . . well, you get the picture.

Hey, get yourself a copy of my popular book of drawings and poems, Kerfuffle!

Brainiac's Treehouse Almost Ready!

2009-07-29T13:11:00.001-07:00

The collection of selected writing from www.kidswrite4kids.com, Brainiac's Treehouse, is almost ready.

A link will be put on the home page of KidsWrite and another will be here in this space.

This will be a three-times-a-year publication, and as time goes on it will look more and more like a magazine. The cool thing about it will be that it will be all art and stories and poems by kids and for kids!

All classrooms and all media centers should have a copy so kids can see the wonderful work they can do.

In the meantime, check out my collection of rhymed poems and cartoonish drawings. Click on Kerfuffle! to get your own copy.

Kerfuffle! Is Ready For You!

2009-07-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

Finally! At last! Kerfuffle!, my collection of poems and somewhat goofy drawings, is ready for you to buy online. Just click on the title, and you will be taken to my Lulu.com storefront. You can order a downloaded copy or you can order a copy to be printed and mailed to you. Happy reading!

Yes, the collection of writing from www.kidswrite4kids.com is coming, too. This has taken much, much longer than I thought it would. Sorry for the delay, but it is coming.

News

2009-07-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

Work on the showcase, I have to report, is going slowly. I'll try to speed it up, but other projects have gotten in the way during this past month.

In the meantime, check out some of the new writing on www.kidswrite4kids.com. We have an especially strong new writer, McKinna Pope. Check out her mysterious mermaid tale and the wonderful images in her rhymed poems. We are hoping to see much much more from her in the future. We've discovered a real talent. Welcome, McKinna!!

Everybody, keep the work coming!

Update on the Showcase

2009-06-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

The first showcase of selected writing from KidsWrite4Kids will be a slim volume. Eight or nine writers will represent the variety of work that has appeared on the site since its launch. I expect this project to be complete early in July. Thanks in advance for your patience.

As I work on this and think about the future, my vision for the showcase has been changing. Instead of thinking of this as a stand-alone book, I have decided that it will be a periodical, a literary journal by and for kids. Send any ideas for a name for such a journal to me at storymaker@aol.com.

In the meantime, I have been seeing lots of good work coming in for the next edition of the showcaes, which will be published sometime in the fall.

PLEASE NOTE: From June 1, 2009, publishing work on Kids Write 4 Kids assumes permission for the work to be used in a showcase, unless we are contacted to the contrary.

Permissions for Showcase Book

2009-06-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder: If we sent you an email asking permission to publish selections of your work from KidsWrite4Kids, don't forget the deadline is June 25, 2009.

We will begin putting the book together very, very soon. Please don't delay if you want your work to appear in it.

The Showcase Book Is Coming!

2009-06-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

We have started putting together the best stories and poems from KidsWrite4Kids! Look for this showcase collection at the end of the month. If there are delays, we will let you know in this space.

In the meantime, keep all the good writing by kids coming to the site. Kids, do your best writing. Adults, continue to encourage and help your young writers!

All writing published on KidsWrite4Kids after June 1, 2009, will be considered for a second showcase collection to be published in the fall.

Both showcase collections will be published in downloadable and print-on-demand format.

But Thinking Is Good!

2009-05-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

Recently I visited a school to work with fifth graders. As usual, we were doing stories, and that's great. But each morning I was asked to do a short exercise with homeroom groups, a different one each day. The school said, "DO whatever you want. It doesn't have to be fiction."

That sounded great to me. I decided one morning to have the kids write rhymed poetry because I wanted to show them how I find rhymes and how that leads to new ideas in the lines.

I'm afraid it was hard going. "Do you like to think of rhymes?" I asked.

"Nooo!" came the chorus.

"Why not?" I asked.

One boy shot the truth right back. "Because you have to think too hard."

Well, yes. You do have to think hard. I sorta, kinda think that's a good thing, so I'm very, very happy to see some rhymed poems on KidsWrite4Kids. Check out Caitlyn's "Knit 'n from the Heart" and Sterling's "Max." These are fun, clever poems.

You can also go back through my blog entries to see how I find rhymes.

New Writing and New Writers

2009-04-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome Sterling and Caitlyn from Gordon Bailey Elementary School. Both of these new members have written great stories this week, but have given us the gift of poems today. Thank you.

I really love that Caitlyn has written some rhyming poetry. Writing in rhyme is a special thinking skill, so I am sooooo happy to see you doing it, Caitlyn.

Sterling is such an original person! I have enjoyed his wonderful imagination and sense of fun all week. Now I discover that he is a poet! Wow! Cool stuff!

I hope both of you keep contributing to www.kidswrite4kids.com.

Also, Bit continues to contribute. There is no end to Bit's imagination. Take a look at Bit's "The Lost Goddess." She continues to grow as a writer. I am very proud to have her work on kidswrite4kids.com.

Note to Adults: Read to Relax! Kids Will Notice

2009-04-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

If we want our kids to be readers, and we do, we need to model a love of reading.

We too often fool ourselves into thinking we are too busy to sit down and relax with a book. We instead zone out in front of the television, convincing ourselves that we need the mindlessness offered there. Okay, sometimes we DO need it! Just not as often as we think.

Let's face it. There is too much noise in our heads, and a good book is one way to silence some of it. Screaming commercials and inane happy talk won't do. I have an old friend who rereads Little Women every time she is sick in bed. The familiar story comforts her, silences some of the worry that comes with being ill.

Every couple of years I reread David Copperfield. It's like visiting an old friend who offers me more with each reunion. Dickens teaches me about life and about writing. At the moment, I'm reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre for the first time, and I'm pretty sure I've made another lifelong friend. I am sitting at Bronte's feet--just as I sit at Dickens'--and I am listening. All the other noise of my life fades into silence.

If we want our kids to be readers, and we do, we need to model a love of reading. If we want kids to grow up balanced and wise, and we do, we can begin by showing them the rewards of becoming lifelong friends with a few good books.

A Recent Victory for Writing in the Schools

2009-04-16T19:56:00.000-07:00

This happened in a fourth grade classroom a few weeks ago.

Monday I went into one of the classes and noticed right away a boy who seemed oppositional with his teacher. I filed that observation away and went on with my usual shtick—introduced myself, got the 5 senses out of them, drawing a cartoon character on the board as they gave me the info. This holds their attention, draws them in, and wows them all at once. Okay, then I told a funny story using the senses and simile, processed it with them in a high energy q and a. Now it’s time for them to write. I gave them a started, set down the rules, and launched them.

As I walked back by the teacher’s desk, she whispered to me that the kid I had noticed when I came in would not write anything. Well, excuse me, but the way I set things up it’s really hard to NOT write. The kid was writing. I looked over his shoulder and asked if it was okay to look at what he’d written. I think he didn’t know how to say no to me, so I looked at it and noticed the detail. He had a kid looking out a window to a new neighborhood. There were broken sidewalks and three burning garbage cans.

“Cool,” I told him. “Great detail.” Then I walked away.

I stopped by another time and encouraged him and let it go at that.

Tuesday, though, he got stuck, so I helped him get going again, then let him alone. That night I took the stories home, looked them over, put my comment/cartoon/speech bubble on each one, and gave them back to the kids on Wednesday. That’s always a big moment, so I give them a bit of time to walk around and show each other their cartoons.

The kids start a new story usually on Wednesday, but this little guy wanted to continue with the first story. I let him do that and I mentioned to him that I wanted him to be one of the readers at our reading in the library on Thursday. He got a tiny, tiny secret smile on his face and said, “Yeah, I guess so” like he didn’t REALLY want to do it.

His teacher told me he wouldn’t do it. Not a chance. The next day, when it looked like he might just do it, she told me his mother would have to sit right next to him and help him get through it. He couldn't, wouldn't read aloud. I said I’d do that instead if need be. His mother could watch.

Well, the time came, he read, I sat next to him as he read, his voice--I'm not kidding!--getting stronger as he went along. Then I watched the astonishment on his face when the audience applauded. The next day in class he could barely contain his smile.

Hey, folks! Storywriting touched another life!

Gotta Love Bit's Beginnings!

2009-04-07T12:08:00.000-07:00

Check out Bit's stories on Kids Write 4 Kids. She's only a fourth grader but already knows how to hook a reader. Bit has created interesting characters and situations.

We will be watching as she continues to develop these stories following the Story Bones we talked about at her school. She has an eye for detail in a scene and a good ear for dialogue. I hope we meet some wonderful antagonists--villains, taskgivers, tricksters, and maybe even some very, very bad choices her characters make to spice up the middles and ends of her stories!

Keep writing, Bit!

Showcase Coming In Late June

2009-04-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

We've collected a good bit of fine writing from kids in the last couple of months. This new material, combined with some excellent work from before, has given me ideas.

In the next couple of months I will be picking out the best work from Kids Write 4 Kids to showcase in a publication. It will be available as a print-on-demand book through a link on this site and on the home page of www.kidswrite4kids.com.

Look for this in late June.

My friend Rodney is so excited about this that he's running for his computer right now!

In the meantime, keep those stories, poems, and essays coming!

We Are Growing!

2009-03-30T07:14:00.000-07:00

Kids Write 4 Kids seems to be picking up a little speed. We are growing! Thanks to all the young writers who have contributed their creative energy to our reading pleasure!

Check out budding mystery writer Bit's latest postings. They are short, but so nicely written. We are looking at a real talent when we read her work. I can see her character racing out the door to solve a crime with her dog Goldie at her side.

Keep the work coming, Bit.

Of course, that goes for everybody else, too. I have many new friends in Mound, Minnesota, and hope to see even more stories coming from them. Thanks to Joe and Evan. I enjoyed working with both of you.

We are still waiting for a few essays about where some of our readers live, though. Kate gave us an excellent start. I'm sure she'd enjoy reading about life in the United States.

Thanks, Kate!

2009-03-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

Parents, teachers, and kids--check out Kate's essay about her life in New Zealand. Just click on the Word Castle and go to Essays.

We have readers all over the world, so wouldn't it fun to have essays about life where you live? Here's a list of some things you can tell us about where you live:

Do you wear a uniform to school?

What games do you and your friends like to play?

Where do you like to go for vacation? Kate likes to go to her dad's boat, which I'd love to hear more about.

What's really special about your country or city or state? Do you get huge rainstorms, snowstorms, or some other drama in the weather?

What do you do at your favorite holiday?

These are just a few ideas. Please add to them as you write about your home. Oh, and you don't have to be from outside the USA to write an essay about where you live. I'm sure Kate would like hearing about other places in the world!

By the way, here's a little about me: I love to dance tango. My sweetheart Sandra (that's her in the picture) and I take lots of lessons and go out dancing a couple times a week. It is sooooooo much fun!

New Good Fun on KidsWrite4Kids.com

2009-03-19T04:44:00.000-07:00

Check out the new writing from kids on KidsWrite4Kids.com. Fourth grader Bit has been especially busy lately and has published not only poems, but also a series of stories about her character Katie Kirk. I look forward to reading more entries of her story about the teacher wanted by the FBI!

Check out the essays, too. Even if you don't agree with the writer's point of view, you will have to admit these are strong, strong voices. Colliegirl's comparison/contrast essay is a model of loaded language.

Parents and teachers, keep working with our young writer friends, and show them the way to KidsWrite4Kids.com. Don't be afraid to help them with editing, stressing the importance of clear, consistent, conventionally correct writing. Let's work together to help them become better and better writers.

Residency at Wadena-Deer Creek Elementary School

2009-03-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

This was a good bit of fun. The school got a grant a few years ago to develop a reading program, I am told, and as a result their reading scores have shot up dramatically, and—surprise!—The reading shows up improving the writing. I was impressed by much of what I saw. The kids were wonderful to work with, as were the four teachers. Everybody was flexible and upbeat. On Thursday, they started making noises about having me back next year. I certainly hope that works out.

Tuesday they called school off because of the snow storm. Bummer. Then, double bummer, we had a two-hour late start on Wednesday. Okay, I said we were all flexible. This is when we bent. Wednesday we only had to double up one class, meaning we had two sections in one room for one of my contact hours. I taught on Wednesday what I would have done on Tuesday, Story Bones/Dramatic Structure. Oh, and I handed back the stories they had started on Monday with my comments in speech bubbles coming out of the mouths of my hand-drawn cartoon characters. This always pumps kids up. They fell right into the program and went on with those stories. Many of the kids took their stories home to work on over night. (One little girl stayed up until 2 working on hers.)

Thursday all four contact hours were double sections, meaning I saw all the kids twice that day. The morning's lesson was the Character on the Board exercise, where I lead the group through the creation of a character and get them started writing a second story. I encouraged them to change the character as much as they wanted, to think of what we did on the board as a starting off point. In the afternoon I introduced the idea of antagonists--troublemakers I call them--to rock the story along. Again, many kids took their stories home to work on. Friday was a normal day. The kids read stories and asked me questions. I gave them my usual parting sermon about how they can now continue growing as writers.

As always, the magic is in the stories I tell to illustrate the concepts I introduce.

Do We Turn Kids Off to Reading and Writing?

2009-02-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

I never finished my M.A. in English at Penn State.

Since finally learning to read in fifth grade, I had loved reading fiction and poetry and history. It was after a few years in the Air Force that I did my B.A. in American Studies on the G.I. Bill, took a year off to live in a primitive cabin in the Pennsylvania mountains, and then started work toward my M.A.

My vision of graduate school?

Well, looking back now, all these years later, my vision was a bit crazy. Somehow I imagined it would be somewhat like undergraduate school: We would read and write and discuss in an easygoing atmosphere. Smoke pipes. Wear corduroy sports jackets with patches on the elbows. It would be a kind of Heaven on Earth and, as teaching assistants with our own sections of freshman composition, we would infect our students with our love of the written word.

Indeed, the teaching inspired me and has sustained me. It changed my life.

But the lit seminars? To say that they were ALL shark tanks would be to exaggerate, but some of them in fact were like that. On the whole, the ten-week classes were forced marches through not only nearly everything a given author had written, but also through a great deal of the criticism written about some aspect of the author’s work. All this culminated in a twenty-page scholarly paper. Imagine reading all of Joyce—from the poems and stories through the novels (don’t leave out Finnegan’s Wake!)—then researching and writing about Molly Bloom’s soliloquy. In ten weeks, thank you very much.

A Ph. D candidate friend from India used to marvel at this absurd way of doing things. He had done his M. A. in a small elite college in Delhi. The method there had been to choose, say, four seminal poems by John Dunne and study them thoroughly as a way of entering into the rest of Dunne’s work—at the student’s leisure. Interestingly, this method looks a lot like my naïve vision of graduate school. My friend felt our method encouraged the mediocre to rise, the interesting to fall. I’m frankly not so sure he was right, as a number of brilliant friends thrived in that atmosphere.

I did not. The experience nearly put me off literature altogether. In my darkest moments I imagined a satanic conspiracy to drain the lifeblood out of literature and any love we had for it. More likely, the English department was justifying its existence (i.e. funding) to forestry or engineering by demonstrating how hard we worked, how we suffered.

I survived, of course. Eventually the bad taste the experience left in my mouth faded, and my love for reading and writing for its own sake returned. But I sometimes wonder how many students walk around with that bad taste in their mouths for the rest of their lives, how many kids we turn off to literacy. Which begs the question: How best can we turn kids on to reading and writing?

So here are a couple of questions. What good is reading fiction and poetry? What does it do for us? And—maybe most relevant for kidswrite4kids.com, what good does writing the stuff do? How can we turn reluctant readers and writers on and keep them that way? How do we motivate kids to love literature for its own sake?

If you send your thoughts to this blog, I will post the best. Let’s get a conversation going.

From the New, Expanded Kerfuffle!

2009-02-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

Coming soon on Lulu.com and maybe some other sites as well:

LEON MCLEONARD

Leon McLeonard will say it out loud:
“Don’t expect me to get lost in the crowd.
“My voice may crack and my face flush red,
“But I’ll spout out what I want from my head!”
Leon didn’t always act so, you know,
He was far too frightened to think he could show
That right under his skin he was full of surprise.
“I better leave the excitement to those other guys,
“They are smarter and taller and better looking, too.
“They’ll just stare me down like I belong in a zoo.”
No, not for a kingdom would he utter a word
And risk being trampled by the popular herd.
“I should have said that, and I should have said this!”
But all he could manage was a cowardly hiss.
He’d think and he’d think, and he’d walk away mad
Never ever giving voice to the thoughts only he had.
Then one day when he’d listened too long
An idea in his head went off like a gong!
He opened his mouth and he stammered it out.
“Good grief,” they sneered, “what’s old McLeonard on about?”
They snickered and giggled and generally jeered,
“That McLeonard dude sure does talk weird.”
But Leon kept speaking right on through their din,
And, sure enough, a few began digging his spin.
So he marched on from one idea to the next
As if he were reading from a prepared written text.
It was hard for Leon to believe, but it’s true.
They gathered around and asked questions, too.
Now, even on days when he’s filled full of fear,
Leon McLeonard speaks with good cheer.
No more Leon silent as a cloud.
No more Leon lost in the crowd.

I perform this for 4th and 5th graders. It's great fun if I REALLY, REALLY let myself go!

Why Read? Why Write? Mini-Assemblies

2009-02-13T09:42:00.000-08:00

Generate Excitement for Reading and Writing!

3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade-Level Mini-Assemblies

Goal and Tone—This is motivational speaking for kids on the subject of reading and writing, one grade level (3, 4, and 5) per assembly. Limiting the size of my audience to one grade at a time, as opposed to addressing a whole school, allows for better and more relevant audience interaction.
I’ve been exciting kids about reading and writing as a writer-in-residence for over 20 years. I show kids some of my publications, share my original stories and poems, and let them in on my own struggles learning to read and write, making them laugh and keeping them involved in the process. Over the years, I’ve observed others working with large groups of kids and frankly found them wanting. I’m high energy, in my element with children.

Elastic Time—This is up to you. I can do 50 minutes or 75. The best length for most schools is 60 minutes. My time with children seems to fly by way too quickly. I’m happiest with more time rather than less.

Logistics—I prefer to meet with each grade level in a commons area or in the media center. Gyms generally stink as places to motivate kids to read and write. I need a screen to project illustrations and poems from my laptop, and I need a small white board.

Simple Pricing—There are just two prices. One assembly for one grade level is $250.00. If you would like to have a second and third assembly (in other words, serving each of the three grades mentioned above) on the same day at the same location, the total price is $450.00, meaning the second one is at a discount and the third one is free. In the interest of keeping things simple for everybody, I do not charge for mileage.

Contact Me at storymaker@aol.com or call 612-723-8565

Empathy and Insight Follow

2009-02-05T15:50:00.000-08:00

Empathy and Insight follow. As writer/imaginer of stories, you have to step into the shoes of your characters. Character building programs in elementary schools ask this of children. Imagine how you would feel (a prerequisite for following the Golden Rule), and then—by extension—how the other person would feel in a particular situation. Kids know that not everyone does this. Much of the current emphasis on “character building skills” in schools is an attempt to train kids to think this way. Story writing can be yet another tool in teachers’ kits.

Problem Solving in Storywriting

2009-02-03T17:19:00.000-08:00

Then we have Problem solving. I set up dramatic structure in a problem/solution context. Conflict is a “character with a problem,” no matter how small that problem might be. What will the character do on a boring afternoon? How will the character make friends in the new neighborhood? How will the prisoner escape the dungeon? Many kids are tempted, of course, to jump ahead to a solution: Timmy moved into a new house where he didn’t know any of the other kids in the neighborhood. He felt sad. Then he went outside and met the kid next door and was happy. Such glib, and essentially boring, storylines are discouraged by the requirement to go through the Complication stage, the longest and most involved, of dramatic structure, related to sequencing. In this stage, the writer is encouraged to explore various ways of trying to solve the problem that do not work and/or to send the character on an adventure to solve the problem.

Reasonable Association

2009-01-30T11:05:00.000-08:00

Related to sequencing is what we might call “reasonable association.” I touched on this in my blog about the “character on the board.”

This is about creating a world that has its own internal logic. If a fifth grader is writing historical fiction about colonial America, it should go without saying that cell phones are out and building might be pretty drafty in winter time. Sadly, it often does need saying. This a matter of imagining a world different from the one the child lives in, and the pieces have to fit together.

You say your character is a rabbit who lives underground but catches the school bus each morning? Okay. Now you have to imagine that world. Is there a staircase to the warren? An elevator? Where does the rabbit do homework? You say the kids on the bus make fun of your rabbit? Interesting. Why? Because the rabbit lives in a hole in the ground? Because he or she is the only rabbit or because the rabbit has big ears?

The details of the story must make sense when set side by side with each other.

Sequencing

2009-01-28T07:14:00.000-08:00

What are the critical thinking skills that story writing demands of students? One is Sequencing. This is always the challenge with k-2. This happened, then this, then this, then that. Frequently, the episodes of a story at this level have nothing to do with one another. The dragon got a splinter in his toe. Then he lost his homework and went to school and found it and---we never hear about that splinter again. When I stoop by the child’s desk to ask what the dragon did about that splinter, I get a blank stare.

The answer? His mother took it out. Or he went to the hospital and the doctor fixed it. Or—just the blank stare. More frequently, though, the child can tell me what happened with the splinter, but somehow that part of the story never got written. Thinking it, dreaming it, was enough for the child, an episode of magical thinking. Or maybe the child is imagining the answer as I’m there asking the question. For the teacher, it doesn’t matter really. What does matter is that we guide the child toward understanding where the dragon’s splinter fix fits in the story and that it actually be written. With a little help most kids will find a good place for it.

Story Writing Is Critical Thinking

2008-11-25T08:55:00.000-08:00

One of the first exercises I learned to use in elementary school classes was what I called “The Character on the Board.” This is a class exercise in which we invent an original character together. I ask the class a series of questions, writing the answers on the marker board and then asking the kids to individually create (in writing) a story about the character we‘ve imagined.

Kids love the exercise. In fact, they get so excited that I have to set firm ground rules to prevent a riot. First, I only take answers from students who raise their hands. They can bounce in their seats as much as they like, and I do understand the desire to outshine each other in the imagination department. The blurting-out factor can get out of hand pretty quickly, though, so I put a lid on it right away. This also helps me to fend off the silly factor. Thousand-eyed, five-legged, purple-with-pink-striped elephant-mouse mixes may be fun to create, but they generally leave kids in tears when they realize there’s no place to go with a character who makes no sense. The second ground rule is that, once you start writing your story, you may change anything at all about the character. Anything and everything.

We have lots of fun and generally come out with decent stories. I use it to model what they each will do on their own the next day, create an original character and put that character in a dramatic situation. From the start, though, I ask that the character make sense. That doesn’t mean that he or she (or it!) must be realistic, but that the character’s conflict as well as its attributes need to relate to each other in a reasonable manner. I do not accept off-the-wall answers calculated to get a laugh from the class. The class has to be thinking as well as imagining.

After all, creativity isn’t purely about imagining. We can imagine all we want, but can we make something out of everything and anything we imagine? To create is to make, and making requires a certain level of discipline. To toss the magic of the unconscious out the window would be foolish, but--from coming up with a conflict that actually is related to the imagined character, to resolving that conflict--story writing is an opportunity for critical thinking. Given this, for third, fourth, and fifth graders in their concrete-operational cognitive stage, story writing is best approached through a staged, step-by-step process that allows for the free play of imagination balanced by conscious analysis of where the characters are in the story and where they will go next.

In the next couple of blogs, I’ll be looking more closely at this process. I hope these ideas will be helpful to classroom teachers.

Big Word Wednesday at Red Pine Elementary

2008-10-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

Well, okay, they aren’t really BIG words, like antidisestablishmentarianism. And you should know that the kids involved are fourth graders. By “big words” their teacher, Kari Johnson, means unusual words for fourth graders—and, let’s be honest—for far too many adults.

Every Wednesday, they play with new "big" word. Plethora. Iota. Fabrication. Whatever comes up. Visiting this classroom every year to do a writing residency, I’ve usually tried to bring a word they don’t know. So far I haven’t managed to stump them. That’s probably why I forgot to try this year. I think I stopped trying when they actually knew (and I don’t mean one or two of them. I mean the whole class) copacetic. How many fourth graders do you know who can use copacetic in a sentence?

Which brings me to my point. Kari claims she doesn’t do anything special. There’s no technique here. It’s just that she has a passion for language and it rubs off. No extra funding. No special workshops. One of the kids in her class this year, Kaitlyn, told me that, “It’s fun not to use the same boring old words.” Fun, then, and a love of language. A light touch. The last I saw, the kids were finishing their big word posters. I can’t recreate their pictures for you, but here are some of the captions:

“Ava took a gander at the dapper boy who ambled through the park.”

“Incorrigible Ivy has an immaculate room.”

“Bill boasted that he thought the Stallions would trounce the Hawks in football.”

“Patriotic Patty was punctual at the party.”

Do I have to point out that Kari has also taught them alliteration? Oh, and every time someone uses a simile, everybody in the room snaps his or her fingers. They do hand flutters if they hear one of the “big words.”

My sense is that these kids feel a little smarter—and a little more likely to take an intellectual risk—than otherwise. But that’s just my unscientific intuition. I believe in the magic of an adult who loves language infecting kids.

However this works, it sure beats long lists of vocab, huh?

The School Year Begins!

2008-09-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

After having taken off all of August, The Writer's Wing is back, looking forward to a full and fruitful school year.

We launched www.kidswrite4kids.com toward the end of the last school year and hope to see many new members as fall gets under way. Please check out our present featured writing by Zach. It's an ambitious, imaginative story he can be very, very proud of.

This fall www.kidswrite4kids.com is accepting block memberships from schools. This means that schools can sign up fifty or more of their students at a discount to help celebrate student writing. For more information about this, please email me (Steve Peters) at storymaker@aol.com.

In addition to co-teaching a course in storytelling at the University of Minnesota this semester, I will be visiting schools to do writing residencies.

Sept. 29-Oct. 3: Liberty Ridge Elementary School in Woodbury, MN
Oct. 6-10: Red Pine Elementary School in Eagan, MN
Oct. 20-24: Pearson Elementary School in Shakopee, MN
Nov. 3-7: Southview Elementary in Waconia, MN
Nov. 10-14: Oak Hill Elementary in St. Cloud, MN
Dec. 1-5: Southview in Waconia a second time

It is still possible to fit a couple more schools into the fall schedule, and winter/spring is now starting to fill up. The next couple of months are especially busy as I begin work on a book for young readers about Ford race cars and continue doing talks to parenting groups on making kids more enthusiastic readers and writers. For more information about these talks, please email me at storymaker@aol.com.

A Higher Level of Literacy

2008-07-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

Let’s explore a rhetorical question: What’s the big deal about literacy?

What’s it good for, anyway?

To read the directions of a swing set you are putting together for the kids? To read the sports page? To fill out a job application? To do well in school so you get into a first-rate college and land a really, really, really great job and never, ever have to worry about being down and out in life?

Obviously, the answer is “yes” to each of the first three of these questions. Literacy won’t guarantee the fourth, though. Sorry. Much as parents saving for their children’s educations and worrying about the future as they look out across the world might not want to hear it, we do not somehow live outside the events of history or personal tragedy. Wars are fought. Economies disintegrate. We are diagnosed with life-changing illnesses. Love fades. Being an excellent reader and writer doesn’t mean a happily-ever-after.

But it does mean something for how we live through those times. Thomas Jefferson wrote that a well-informed citizenry is essential for a democracy to work. I’d make the rather easy argument that we can’t have that well-informed public without widespread literacy—a literacy, mind you, that means far more than the ability to read swing set directions and fill out job applications. How we react as a body politic to those large historical traumas and how we navigate personal crisis is indeed influenced by what we read and how our thoughts evolve as we write.

But this means reading widely, stretching ourselves. And it means writing to reflect and/or to communicate information and ideas in a non-dumbed-down environment. Reading and writing at a higher and higher level is a means to life-long learning. Not only will reading biographies give the reader a greater sense of history, but a decent diet of novels or poetry (some maybe even “classics”) might ignite glimmers of personal insights. And a popular book on science, aside from casting new light on the physical environment, might help the reader see through a half truth in political debate.

What do we need as we weather personal tragedy and the ups and downs of history? Plenty, but let’s start with perspective. Living life fully, reading widely, reflecting and communicating in writing—each of these will help develop that perspective. For that we need a high level of literacy.

We can reclaim much that has been lost in this country.

Create for yourself and for your children a language-rich environment. Let the kids see you reading. Wander in book stores with them. Build a new bookshelf and line the books up like trophies. Put the computer out where everybody in the house can see it and write a blog, a letter to the editor, a story, a journal, a poem—whatever! Read to your kids. Talk to your kids about what you are reading and writing.

What’s a high level of literacy good for?

It can help us understand more of our world and steady us in hard times. It can make life richer for ourselves and for our children.

Ron's Read Alongs

2008-07-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

Teachers and parents who read to kids, and make the reading the basis of conversation, will have greater success turning them on to reading, writing, and general learning.

There is all kinds of research supporting this, but I learned it a couple years after I had started my career conducting writing workshops with kids. I was asked to come and work with the fifth graders in a small town in Northern Minnesota. They had four sections, so it was a sizable school. The kids were mostly white with a smattering of Native Americans. They ranged across the socio-economic spectrum

The first day, as a matter of course, I asked the kids what their favorite books were. In three of the classes I got the usual two or three hands volunteering the same couple of books, the ones the teacher had read to the class or assigned for silent reading. Most of the children didn’t show any special interest in the question.

In the fourth class, though, every single hand went up as they started yelling out titles of books. Most of them named their favorite as Where the Red Fern Grows, the book they were doing as a read along at that moment. But Island of the Blue Dolphins, Waiting for Anya, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Giver, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and on and on were named, too.

Their teacher, a wonderful man named Ron Sprafka, stood there grinning proudly. I found out from the children that they planned to do thirty-two books that school year. The class before them had done thirty-one, and they were out to do one better.

And, yes, Ron did teach other subjects—math, social studies, science, etc. “If you do well on this math game,” he would say, “I’ll read you a chapter of [name a book] before lunch.” He read to them with passion and imagination. He talked to them, and listened to them talk, about the content and background of the stories they read, relating it where possible to the other subjects they studied. Reading wasn’t just fun. It set learning in context, whether the conversation was the history of the Holocaust or a discussion of values set off by Tuck Everlasting.

As I stood listening to Ron’s students that first day, I looked around the room. The walls were covered with posters of book covers. Twenty-five or thirty copies of each book were stacked here and there around the room. Here was Avi. There Katherine Patterson. Three or four piles of Gary Paulsen chapter books filled a corner. I was thrilled.

When it came time for these kids to write, they dove into the whole messy process with energy rare even for an eleven-year-old. Year after year for about ten years I visited Ron’s class, and year after year the quality of their writing reflected the love of stories and language Ron infected them with.

This was not just Read Aloud, fantastic all by itself, but Read Along. In Read Along the child does not have to wait for the teacher or parent, but can read ahead, something Ron’s students loved to do. That way, when he read—doing voices and accents and jumping up and down the way he did when excited (which was most of the time), they read the sections a second time, taking even more from the experience.

True, many of the well-to-do and better educated families in town asked that their children be in Ron’s fifth grade class. These were kids who likely would have done well in any class, but there were lots of youngsters from poor families who blossomed under Ron’s special brand of sunshine. I doubt, also, that so many of the students in his classes would have fallen so passionately in love with reading—and finding out about the larger world—if it hadn’t been for his Ron’s Read Alongs.

A Word about the Language-Rich Environment

2008-07-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

Kids who experience a language-rich environment are generally better writers and readers. Period. They may not always be the best spellers. They may not always know the “rules” of grammar and punctuation. But they tend to express themselves with more clarity and originality than others. With enthusiasm and confidence, the rules follow.

What does it mean to come from a language-rich environment? What does such an environment look like?

First, this is a place where kids are both spoken to and listened to. It’s a place of conversation, where the television and the radio and the stereo are each turned off and time slows as people actually give each other their attention.

Adults in this place feel free to tell stories about their own childhoods. Oh, and importantly, they have fun reliving those times for their children. They get closer by making themselves known through stories.

Adults also listen to their children’s stories and fantasies. I’ll never forget listening to the private mythology my son Chris invented when he was five years old. Where his ideas came from I will never ever know, but there they were one quiet winter night in my cabin in the Pennsylvania mountains. He had named his mythological characters and spun a long story of how they all related to one another.

It was not important that I understood the story. I didn’t. And it was not important that I psychoanalyzed it. I simply honored it by listening. He had delighted in building a castle out of words, and that castle was as temporary as any castle built on the beach. It disappeared quickly in the waves of time.

If speaking and listening are essentials to the language-rich environment, reading to kids follows close behind. We read to Chris from the time he was born. Today he’s a high school social studies teacher and an avid reader and writer.

Check out one of my favorite books, The Read Aloud Handbook. Author Jim Trelease compiles research showing that reading with children helps develop vocabulary and a sense of grammar, improves attention span, improves school performance (and the likelihood that the child will stay in school), provides a reading role model (you), and—in addition to many other benefits—painlessly provides background information enlarging the child’s world.

A world of words and conversations and stories and books! A world of language for the home as well as the classroom! What could be a better and a more delightful preparation for our children?

Helping Kids Celebrate Their Writing

2008-06-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

There is lots and lots of scholarly research out there in the journals about the need for kids to celebrate their writing.

This is wonderfully affirming for attentive parents and teachers who have always known a simple fact: Kids are proud of tapping their imaginations—that, oh, so unique part of themselves—and then getting the ideas down on paper in WORDS. Anybody who has ever taught a group of elementary school kids to write a story or poem has heard that pride in the question, “Where can I publish it now?”

When we have created something, we naturally want to share it, and that sharing is a celebration. Your son or daughter writes a story or poem in school, brings it home, and wants right away to read it to you. Maybe then you stick it up on the fridge for all to see. Great!

You can go further, though. How about making a book? If you don’t know how to go about such a project, surf the web or visit a bookstore for simple instructions. What you do does not have to be elaborate.

You need a cover with the title and a picture and your child’s name on it. You need a few pages no matter how short the piece of writing is, so stretch it out if need be. Have your child illustrate it, and don’t forget the About the Author page! Remember, this is about being proud! You want that child to swell up with pride. You want that child to say what one author on www.kidswrite4kids.com said: “Hey, I’m a published author!”

Once a published author, your youngster will begin a new and deeper relationship with the written word, becoming a reader who thinks like a writer and a writer who thinks like a reader.

If this young reader/writer wants to join www.kidswrite4kids.com, great! We have readers from all over the world now.

Reminder: In addition to this blog, I look forward to coming to speak to parent groups and schools about reading and writing and storytelling at home and in the classroom. My fee is very reasonable. Just email me at storymaker@aol.com and put “speaking” in the message line so I don’t delete it.

Alert! A Little Change of Focus

2008-06-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

A while back I changed the wording on the kidswrite4kids.com link to this blog. I wrote that this is a blog for teachers and parents wanting to help kids become better writers.

Since then, however, I have not directly addressed parents and teachers. I still had some things I wanted to finish with kids. Also, I feel that what I’ve put on the blog so far could and probably should be used by adults with kids.

Today marks a turning point. From here on out, the audience for this blog is adults helping kids to become better and more enthusiastic readers and writers.

I am an evangelist for reading and writing. In my last blog I talked a little about how I learned to read late—in fifth grade. My teacher saved my life. In a real sense she gave me back my life. Over the years I have turned many children on to the joys of reading and writing. This blog is from now on an effort to join forces with you to continue this essential work.

In addition to the blog, I look forward to coming to speak to any parent group that will have me! My fee is very reasonable. Just email me at storymaker@aol.com and put “speaking” in the message line so I don’t delete it.

Summer Reading and Writing

2008-06-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

Summer time! No more grades and assignments for a while!

It’s a great time to enjoy free reading and writing. What you read is entirely up to you. What you write comes right out of what interests you.

Here are a few ideas to help you enjoy reading and writing this summer.

READING
Find your own special place to go and read. This is best a place where you will be alone. My summer between fifth and sixth grade I climbed a sycamore tree in our yard and sat high in the branches with a book each day.

I should tell you that that was the summer I fell in love with reading.

When I entered fifth grade (and should have been in sixth), I was only reading at about a first grade level. My teacher saved my life by taking me aside every day to work on sight words and sounding out letters. We worked up from there to sentences and then paragraphs and then. . . By the end of the school year, I was reading at an eighth or ninth grade level.

It was a miracle.

So find some unstructured time to really enjoyreading about and getting lost in reading what interests you.

With all the camps and organized sports kids have these days, finding this time might be a bit hard to do. You will be rewarded, though, if you find a chunk of free time to wander in your imagination. There is too much noise in our lives these days. Find some quiet time for your own thoughts and interests.

WRITING
Set up a writing station and a time to go to it every day. Writing well takes practice. If you always wait for inspiration, you might not get much done. If you peck away every day, though, you’ll be surprised by how much you produce and by how much better you get at it.

Gather your tools. A laptop might be enough. Otherwise, store your pens, pencils, dictionary, and thesaurus at your writing station or in a backpack you can take to your station every day.

Have a set time to write and make sure other people in your house or apartment know to leave you alone. A thirty minute period might be just the right amount of time for most kids. Not too long; not too short.

If you have a pesty little brother or sister, you might have to ask for some help from an adult to be left alone.

During that writing time, only write. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t go to the kitchen for a snack. Only write or sit quietly looking at and thinking about your writing. A couple of new lines each day will turn into a story or poem in a week or so.

HAVE FUN! Your imagination is a wonderful place to visit!

The Haiku

2008-06-09T08:08:00.000-07:00

Let’s leave rhyme behind for a while. Instead, let’s look at the haiku, one of the most popular poetic forms we know of.

The haiku form comes from Japan and grows out of quiet observation of nature. It has three lines

The first line is made up of five syllables.

The second line is made up of seven syllables.

The third line is made up of five syllables again.

The haiku tries to make a picture of a single moment in time in just a few well-chosen words. The traditional Japanese haiku makes mention of something from nature in that moment.

Rocky forest trail
Rich greens after a spring rain
We walk in silence

As we in America have adopted the haiku, we don’t always center it on nature. Our daily lives and city environment sometimes takes nature’s place—or we just get whimsical.

Race out of the house
Breathlessly catch the school bus
Oops! Forgot homework!

Misunderstanding
I thought, you thought all mixed up
How to say sorry?

A day at the fair
Yummy melting ice cream cones
Our sticky fingers

What we keep, as you can see, is the form (five, seven, and five syllables) and the effort to say a lot in just a few well-chosen words.

Your challenge: Sit very, very still and quietly. Observe all that is going on around you. Describe it in haiku form. Practice will sharpen you at anything.

At Last! An Essay on Kids Write 4 Kids!

2008-06-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Hannah! I have been waiting for an essay to appear on kidswrite4kids.com for a long time! "You're Not the Only One on This Planet!" is both informative and, because of the facts you present, persuasive. The topic is close to my own heart, too.

I especially like, and find effective, the use of questions to introduce and then to begin wrapping up the topic. The final sentence pointing to websites to check out is a very effective call to action.

Keep the essays coming! I hope your skill and wonderful energy inspire other kids to share their thoughts and research on important topics.

The Triplet

2008-05-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

Let’s look at what we have seen so far. The couplet means a couple (2) lines together. The quatrain means four lines. Now we are going to look at the triplet, which means three (3). Three lines, that is.

Here’s a triplet from my poem “A Little Peace and Quiet, Please!”

Down the street hammers pound (A)
A truck backs up (B)
It makes that beeping sound (A)

The rhyme pattern here is ABA, but that’s not the only pattern you can use. How about AAA? Or AAB? Or ABB? Or no rhyme at all! Just three lines. You could do any of these.

I’ll try using these right off the top of my (bald) head, making the lines up as I go along:

Visiting the animals at the zoo (A)
A water buffalo blasts a “Moo!” (A)
Hey, that ox is blue! (A)

Belongs to a Bunyan named Paul (A)
That tall tale guy I saw (A)
In a book about Babe the Blue Ox (B)

No, not Red Riding Hood (A)
The four-legged big guy (B)
His ears lost up in the sky (B)

Well, that’s a pretty crazy one! Not a very good poem, I’m afraid, but it does show the patterns. It’s also a lot of fun to mix the triplets with quatrains and couplets, as in “A Little Peace and Quiet, Please!”

Down the street hammers pound (A)
A truck backs up (B) (TRIPLET)
It makes that beeping sound (A)

Beep, beep, beeeep! (A)
Slam! Bam! Bam! (B) (QUATRAIN)
Beep, beep, beeeep! (A)
Bam! Slam! Slam! (B)

Even when I close my door (A)
The noise comes in (B) (TRIPLET)
I can’t take it anymore (A)

Siblings fight; One of the cries (A)
It doesn’t help to close my eyes (A) (COUPLET)

The phone rings (A)
The t.v. blares (B) (QUATRAIN)
I want SILENCE (C)
But no one cares (B)

Maybe I’ll hide under my bed (A)
Pile pillows over my head (A) (COUPLET)

Stick cotton in my ears (A)
And stay that way (B) (QUATRAIN)
For years (A)
And years (A)

Your Challenge: Try some of these patterns and post them on www.kidswrite4kids.com
(ALL material on this blog is copywritten.)

The Quatrain

2008-05-23T14:33:00.000-07:00

Last time we looked at the Couplet—a couple—made of two rhymed lines: AA/BB/CC and so on. This time, I want for us to look at the Quatrain—lines coming in fours.

These are popular forms. Just listen to most any song from hip hop to church hymns, and you will most likely catch the rhyme patterns we are looking at here.

You can have lots of fun with the rhyme patterns of the quatrain. My poem “To Peanut Butter” uses a common quatrain pattern. Here’s the first stanza:

Peanut butter, peanut butter,
A culinary star!
Pack it for your lunch;
Go ahead, take the whole jar!

All the stanzas of the poem follow this same pattern: ABCB. The rhyme, of course, is the B:

Carry it up Mt. Everest (A)
Or float down the Ganges (B),
Tote it across Africa (C)
Or fly to your Aunt Angie’s (B).

It’s the perfect companion (A)
Wherever we eat (B),
And makes every meal (C)
Soooooo sat-is-fy-ing-ly complete (B).

Spread it on bread (A),
Add a little jelly (B),
Pop it in your mouth (C),
Send it to your belly (B).

Peanut butter stuck (A)
On the roof of your mouth (B)
Can’t move your lips (C)
Either north or south (B).

“Mm,” you mumble (A),
“Gibme mooooore!” (B)
Run around the corner (C)
To the peanut butter store! (B)

But this rhyme is not the only choice you can make with the quatrain. How about ABAB? I’m in the mood to share some of my goofy poems today, so here’s another called “Fred Fedora.”

Fred Fedora slurps spaghetti (A)
While sitting on his desk (B)
Talking to a girl named Betty (A)
But, oh, how grotesque! (B)

Didn’t his mother ever tell him (A)
“Don’t talk with your mouth full!”? (B)
Didn’t his father ever tell him (A),
Not to let his lips drool? (B)

He smacks his lips with glee! (A)
He bleats a blasting burp! (B)
Poor Betty wants to flee (A),
Not listen to Fred slurp! (B)

These are the two most common patterns to use in the quatrain. Sometimes they come naturally as we are writing a song or a poem; sometimes not. If I have trouble finding a rhyme or figuring out where my poems is going, I use the alphabet method discussed in my last blog. It works pretty well for me and is fun because it usually gives me a surprise.

The Couplet and Finding Rhymes

2008-05-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

Couplets
Not all poems rhyme. If you want to write unrhymed poems—hey!—that’s just fine. Many, many, many of the very best poems have no rhyme at all. They are written in “free verse.”

I am going to spend a few blog entries writing about poetic forms that do use rhyme, though, because I find rhymes fun. Finding a rhyme also often leads to surprises both in what we say in our poems and in how we end up saying it.

Maybe the easiest rhymed poetic form to understand is the “couplet.” A couplet is made of two lines (a couple—2) that each end in the same sound. Check out “Halloween” by Annie from Buffalo, NY, on www.kidswrite4kids.com:

Little ghosties in the street,
Spider dogs beneath our feet.
Eerie noises fill the air,
Skeletons give us a scare.
Goblins, heroes, and big, black cats,
Creepy witches in pointy hats.
Candle lit pumpkins shed their light,
Trick-or-treaters fill the night

This poem is written in couplets. Here is how we would describe the form:

AA/BB/CC/DD and on through the alphabet from there as the poem goes on. All this means is that the first two lines (A and A) rhyme with each other, the third and fourth (B and B) rhyme with each other, and so on.

Little ghosties in the street (A),
Spider dogs beneath our feet (A).
Eerie noises fill the air (B),
Skeletons give us a scare (B).
Goblins, heroes, and big, black cats (C),
Creepy witches in pointy hats (C).
Candle lit pumpkins shed their light (D),
Trick-or-treaters fill the night (D)

Finding Rhymes
“Ah,” you say, “that’s just fine, but I can’t think of a rhyme right off the top of my head!”

I know what you mean. I can’t either. When I am writing a new poem, I struggle. My paper is covered in crossed out lines and scribbles. It’s a terrible mess.

The margins of my papers are also covered with lists. Lists? Yup. Lists of rhymes. Here’s what I do:

Let’s say that I just wrote a line that ends with the word “dog.” I want to find a rhyme for “dog.” Okay. I start at the beginning of the alphabet and write down every word I can think of that rhymes with “dog.” Like this—
Bog, cog, fog, gog, hog, log, nog, sog, tog. I can’t think of any others right now. Maybe you can.

Now I look at that line I just wrote.

Wonderful Willie called for his dog

Then, using one of the rhymed words I found, I try a next line.

He whistled and hollered into the fog

Okay. I didn’t know at first that there would be a dog lost in the fog in my poem. Finding the rhyme gave me that idea. Now I have to see what I can do with it.

“Come, boy! Come!” calling out his name

Name? What rhymes with “name”? Well, time to go through the alphabet again.
Blame, claim, came, dame, fame, game, lame, same, tame

“Come, boy! Come!” calling out his name
And out of the mist his loyal dog came!

This all could have gone in a different direction:

Wonderful Willie called for his dog
Who had run off again chasing a hog
“Come, boy! Come!” calling out his name
Willie was tired of playing this game.

Your challenge: Try writing a poem in couplets. If rhymes don’t come right away, go through the alphabet and follow where the rhymes you find take you. Have fun!

Introduction: What IS a Poem, Anyway?

2008-05-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

For the next couple of blog entries, I’ll be talking about poetry. So, what IS a poem, anyway?

Is it anything at all, as long as it is not written in our usual sentence or paragraph form?

Is this a poem?

For the next couple
Of blog entries
I will
Talk about poetry

It kind of LOOKS like a poem. I don’t think it is one, though. For one thing, all it does is give information about the next couple of blog entries. A poem does more than just give information.

Poems try to say something more important or interesting than that. They try to make you feel or think—or, better, feel and think.

Here’s a poem from my book Kerfuffle! It’s called “Temper Tantrum.”

You make me mad!
I’m one huge hurricane!
I’ll point my mean finger!
Don’t you do that again!

Watch out, Bub!
I’m the boss!
I’ll cut you off
And it’ll be YOUR loss!

Don’t you walk away!

How can I yell at you then?!

Hey, come back here!

Guess I shoulda counted to ten.

As you see how silly/crazy we can be when we are mad, I hope you laugh a little. I hope the poem makes you think about what happens when we lose out tempers, too.

Poems also have form. Some poetic forms are pretty strict, like the rhymes in “Temper Tantrum.” In the next couple of blog entries, I will write about some of these poetic forms. I hope you will try writing in them, too, and publishing on www.kidswrite4kids.com.

Just remember one thing as we start, though: The new ideas for poetic forms never end. You can make up your own—and I hope what I write will inspire you to do just that!

Coming Soon to the Writer’s Wing

2008-05-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

The members of www.kidswrite4kids.com have recently submitted some wonderful poems and stories. Check out the most recent poems by Morgann and Jade-Alice, our two newest members. Both Morgann and Jade-Alice were in classes I taught last week, and Jade-Alice even named a poem after me and mentioned my book of poems! Keep it coming!! Don’t let the end of the school year slow you down.

In the next couple of weeks, I will be writing about poetry. Here is an outline of the blog entries I’ll be making:

Introduction: What IS a Poem, Anyway?
The Couplet and Finding Rhymes
The Quatrain
The Limerick
The Villanelle
The Haiku

I hope that you try writing in one or two (or all) of these forms. It is great fun to see what happens—what you end up saying—as you go looking for a rhyme or for just the right number of syllables.

As I get these entries together for you, keep writing! Also, of course, always keep reading. This might be a great time to reread some poems by your favorite authors.

You Own Your Work

2008-04-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Parents and Kids:

I have listened to our members and readers and have rethought the statement on the bio and parent's page of www.kidswrite4kids.com. As a writer who has had to give up rights to my work over the years, I understand how it feels to lose control of your hard work.

The changed--and much better--statement is below. Check it out!

The young authors who publish their work on www.kidswrite4kids.com own their work. We do ask, however, that they respect the fact that the work was published here first. With the author’s permission, works submitted to www.kidswrite4kids.com may later be published in a variety of media styles such as books, magazines, CD-ROM products, and other printed or electronic material. Young authors appearing on www.kidswrite4kids.com are encouraged to display their work in any way they wish. We only ask that they note on the publication that the writing was published first on www.kidswrite4kids.com.

I like this much better.

Three StoryStarters

2008-04-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve used each of these story starters with lots and lots of kids and seen them do wonderfully imaginative things with each one.

1.) Your story begins with a boy or girl about your age just coming home from school.

Maybe she or he is just getting off the school bus. Maybe the character is walking or riding a bike. He or she might be alone or with other kids. It’s up to you.

As this character gets closer to home, he or she sees that there is somebody at home that he or she DOES NOT WANT TO SEE!!

Could be the police. The school principal. The cousin who always breaks things and starts fights. You name it.

But your character has to go home. Your character has to interact with this visitor.

2) Your story begins just as your character’s family is arriving at their new house.

New house? Actually, it’s a different house. This place is not new. It’s at least 100 years old—and it’s huge.

Your character is seeing it for the first time and definitely does not want to live there. As he or she explores this new place, your character dislikes it even more.

3) Your story begins as your character is exploring in the woods on a camping trip. Maybe the character is alone, maybe with a friend or a brother or sister.

Suddenly, though, nothing looks familiar. Your character is lost! Now the real adventures begin.

An added fun element is to have the character discover something unusual or mysterious. A brightly painted play house deep in the forest. A fairy ring of mushrooms after a rain. A talking animal or a colony of the wee folk.

Steps to Publishing on Kids Write 4 Kids

2008-04-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

Always keep a copy of your writing in a safe place. The wrong click of my mouse has more than once eaten writing I had worked hard on. The following steps will help to prevent that from happening to you.

1. Write your story or poem on your home or school computer.

2. Revise and edit your writing. See entries on this blog for editing ideas, and remember that professional writers go back over their work many, many times.

3. Save and then Copy your writing. If you are not sure how to do this, have someone show you. Once you have done it a couple of times, it gets pretty easy.

4. Now sign onto www.kidswrite4kids.com click on Publish Your Writing.

5. When the publishing page comes up, type the name of your writing into the title line, then Paste your story or poem into the large empty space below the title line.

6. Read back over your work to be sure everything is as you want it to appear.

7. Click Submit at the bottom of the page, then wait at least a minute before clicking anything else or leaving the page. This is an important step.

Tip: If you are new to Copy and Paste, practice first. Ask a teacher or a parent or an older friend to show you how it is done. Then practice making copies and pasting them onto a page on your computer before you publish.

You’ll be a pro in no time! Happy publishing!

I Like What I See on the Website!

2008-04-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

Wow!

Members of www.kidswrite4kids.com have contributed some wonderful work so far. Please keep it coming!

If you haven’t already, go to the site and read Clarasophia’s “We Can Do It, Papa,” an excellent piece of writing.

Hannah’s work displays her far out imagination and wild sense of humor, as in "Yuck!" I’m looking forward to seeing more and more of this fun, well-written work.

Annie began publishing with “Halloween,” the first poem to be published on the site, which really knocked my socks off! Wonderful. And her work keeps coming and getting more and more interesting—from a serious short story “The Walk Home” to the funny “Baldie Locks and the Three Hair Bears.”

You may notice that so far all our contributors are girls. I know that we have some members out there who are boys, and I would love to see some work by boys on the site. Let’s see some adventure! Some slaying of dragons! Escapes from evil wizards! Surprise us!

Editing Idea 1--Dialogue

2008-04-12T12:13:00.000-07:00

Dialogue, the conversation between your characters, is important to making your story entertaining for your readers. There are a couple of rules that will help you to do this well.

First, each time you change speakers, begin a new paragraph.

Example:
“Where did you hide my teddy bear?” whined Winfield.

“You don’t need that teddy anymore,” answered his brother James. “You are a big boy now.”

Winfield’s face screwed up, ready to cry. “But I can’t go to sleep without my teddy,” he managed to say.

The story is much easier to follow when you obey this rule. You do not want your reader to be confused.

Second, use quotation marks around the exact words the characters say to each other.

Wrong: “Winfield asked for his teddy.”

Right: “Where did you hide my teddy bear?” whined Winfield.

Notice: Winfield did not say whined Winfield; the narrator said that, so we do not use quotation marks there. We do use them around “Where did you hide my teddy bear?” because those are the exact words Winfield said to his brother.

Your Challenge:
Go over your story now and try to set up the dialogue following these rules.
Back to www.kidswrite4kids.com

Revision Idea 2

2008-04-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

Figurative Language

Sometimes when I go back over my stories I just look for places I can slip in some figurative language. That is language that makes my sentences more colorful and lively. I especially like simile and hyperbole.

Simile: The magic work here is Comparison. A simile is a comparison of one thing with another using helping words like Like or As. For example, “Watch out! When he gets mad , his head turns as red as a stop sign!” Or “My brother Frank is as tall and skinny as a flagpole.”

Hyperbole: This one is fun in crazy stories and poems. It’s an exaggeration. For example, He screamed so loudly and so wildly that for a mile around squirrels were losing their balance and falling out of trees!

Your challenge: Go back through your story two more times—once looking for places to slip in similes and a second time looking for places to add a hyperbole or two.
Back to www.kidswrite4kids.com

Revision Idea 1

2008-04-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Re-vision?

"What's that?" you may ask.

Well, re means to go back, and I'll bet you know what vision means, right? So revision means to go back and look over--Oh, and make changes to make your story even better.

I once heard author Avi say that he goes back over his chapter books as many as 70 times before he is finished. When I write a new story, I go back over it at least 30times.

Nobody expects kids to go over their stories that many times, but we do hope you go beyond that first rough draft a couple of times anyway. The next two blog entries will give you some ideas for what to do when you go back over your work.

As you go back over your story to make it better and better, you might want to work on making your characters more vivid.

How?

1. Physical Description:
Not So Vivid: Banjo McKnight arrived at school looking unusual.
More Vivid: Banjo McKnight arrived at school wearing a red headband and cowboy boots. His denim jacket was three sizes too big and hung on him like a tent draped over a chair.

2. The What and How of Dialogue:
Not So Vivid: Albert demanded the money and took it right away.
More Vivid: “Gimme the dollar, kid,” snarled Albert as he snatched the money out of my hand.

3. Description of Actions:
Not So Vivid: Banjo came into the room nervously.
More Vivid: Banjo slunk through the doorway and edged his back along the far wall, his eyes darting back and forth nervously.

4. The Character’s Thoughts
Not So Vivid: Banjo thought about the last time he’d been here.
More Vivid: Banjo’s mind raced over what had happened before in this very room—the whole room full ch people staring at him and then breaking into laughter and pointing at his poor clothing.

5. Backstory the Narrator Tells
Not So Vivid: He came from a poor family with lots of kids.
More Vivid: He’d grown up in a shack in the mountains of Pennsylvania, in a place called Poor Hollow. The further up Poor Hollow you went, the poorer it got, and he and his seven brothers and sisters lived all the way at the top. No running water. No electricity. Wood heat. The poorest part of Poor Hollow.

Your Challenge
Try some of this as you read back over your story. You may discover something new about your characters.
Back to www.kidswrite4kids.com

Attention Teachers Who Would Like to Write for Children!

2008-03-31T13:51:00.000-07:00

As I travel around visiting schools to teach poetry and story writing, I often meet teachers who want to write for kids. I like to read the stories or poems these teachers are working on and give whatever helpful advice I can.

Now, though, I will expand this practice and, after reading and discussing the teacher's work, I will send them to an excellent blog. Margot Finke is an Aussie living in Oregan and writing children's books. Teachers, check her out at http://margotfinke.blogspot.com/ .

Click on her "Musings" column for lively and realistic insights into writing for kids. Also, follow her links to look at her books, learn about her school visits, and get lots and lots of ideas for classroom activities.

Kids, you'll find lots to like at the site, too. I especially enjoyed the "Kids Do Ecology" pages.

Climax: The Turning Point

2008-03-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

Usually the Most Exciting Part of the Story

This is where your character must dig deep inside herself/himself to find the courage or cleverness to solve the problem—or at least learn to live with it.

99.97% of the time (well, most of the time, anyway) this is a Scene. It happens right smack, dab before the end of the story.

Remember what you need for a Scene:
1) One small place
2) Other Characters for Dialogue and Action
3) A Feeling Word to Show and Not Tell

Jack ran and ran, the bag of gold tucked under his arm like a football.

“Ahma gonna git yer!” yelled the giant as he chased Jack out of the castle gate. “Ahma gonna make ye a ham sanditch, jest lak Ah did wit yer daddy!”

Jack began sliding down the beanstalk, reaching inside his pants pocket for his cell phone. He could smell the giant’s filthy bare feet and garlicy breath. The giant’s feet came closer and closer as Jack fumbled with his cell phone. He could see the long, yellow toenails curling over the ends of the giant’s toes. He pressed speed dial on the phone. “Come on, come on!” he nervously whispered as he continued sliding down the beanstalk.

“Hello,” his mother’s voice said at the other end of the phone.

“Mom!” Jack nearly screamed into the phone, “bring the axe to the bottom of that stalk in the back yard!”

“I beg your pardon, young man,” came her not-so-pleased answer. “I’ve told you before not to yell into the phone. Now. What can I do for you?”

Jack could smell the giant’s smelly body odor. He repeated—much more politely—his request that his mother bring the axe. But when he got there, she had brought that awful chain saw he always had trouble starting.

The giant roared with laughter as Jack struggled to start the saw, but he did get it going, and sawed the beanstalk down. It crashed to the ground, sending the giant hopping to the emergency room with a broken ankle.

“Oh, me goodness!” he yelled. “That’s the one I twisted playing tennis last week! Oh, me! Oh, my!”

Your challenge: Write an exciting scene in which your character tries to solve his or her problem.
Back to www.kidswrite4kids.com

Complication—The Main Events

2008-03-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

Complication is the middle of your story. These are the main events where your main character is trying to deal with, solve, the problem.

The trouble is that usually the problem does not want to be solved easily. Maybe it gets worse. Sometimes the character has to have a series of adventures to deal with it, like going on a journey, a mission, or escaping from a prison.

During this part of the story, your character encounters difficulties. An excellent way to make this part of the story fun and interesting is to introduce one or two (or more) Antagonists.

An Antagonist is a troublemaker, somebody who makes things more difficult for your main character. Not all Antagonists are bad, by the way. Some are helpful.

Here is a list of some Antagonists:

The Villain—a bad guy like a school bully or the giant in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Think of Count Olaf in Lemony Snicket or Draco Malfoy or Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter.

The Trickster—someone who misleads your main character. The trickster can be a villain, too, of course, but can be good, too. The little man trading the cow for magic beans in “Jack and the Beanstalk” ends up having been helpful to Jack and his mother.

The Taskgiver—a character who gives the main character a job to do that he or she would not otherwise have done. Jack’s mother sends him to town. This sets off all his adventures, and some real trouble like being chased by a giant.

A Natural Force—not all antagonists are human. Some are animals like bears or snakes. Others are snowstorms that make travel difficult or mountains characters have to cross, rivers that flood, earthquakes that destroy cities, fires that burn out of control.

The Pest—anybody with a younger brother or sister or has fought off mosquitoes knows what a pest is.

Bad Choices—my favorite! Your character might do something he or she knows is not right or kind or smart. He or she may give in to peer pressure or just not know what is right in a situation.

Your Challenge
As you do this part of your rough draft, try using one or more of these antagonists.
Back to www.kidswrite4kids.com

Plop Your Character Smack into a Conflict Scene

2008-03-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

You are ready to begin writing your story for www.kidswrite4kids.com. The best way I know to jump right into the action on this first rough draft is—with a Conflict Scene.

What’s that?

Well, the Conflict is the first part, the beginning, of the story. It’s when the reader first meets the main character and his or her problem.

Okay, what’s a Scene?

That’s a part of the story where we hear dialogue (conversation) and see the actions characters are doing. It’s the slow motion part.

“Good grief, Jacque! When did you learn to do that?” yelled Bob as he hung his coat in the hall closet. He stood on tiptoe to reach his tuba on the top shelf. “This is great! We can play music together now!”

Jacque shook his kitty head back and forth and kept pounding on the tom-tom. “No way,” he mewed. “Tubas are for suckers! Learn to play the harmonica and we’ll talk.”

Bob’s face fell. He loved playing the tuba, and where could he learn to play the harmonica, anyway?

So what do you need for your Conflict Scene?

1) For now, please pick one small place where your character has the problem you wrote down.

For example, maybe your character has trouble (as I did long, long ago) with math. One place he might have that problem is in the classroom when he is asked a math question. Another is on the school bus, where the other kids tease him. Still another is at the kitchen table at home while he’s trying to do his math homework.

Remember, choose one small place. Don’t write “school.” Write where at school—the gym, the classroom, in the media center, or by the lockers in the hallway. Don’t write “at home.” Say what room at home.

2) It will also help your storytelling to have other characters in that place while your character is having that problem. Soooooooo—who else is there?

3) How does your character feel when he or she is having the problem you wrote down? Please just write one (1) feeling word: angry, embarrassed, sad, alone, frustrated, but—please, pretty please—not happy!

I never have felt happy to have a problem. At least, I don’t think so.

Your Challenge--
Try not to use that feeling word. That would be telling. Show it instead. If you need to, go back to the lesson on showing and not telling to refresh your memory. Then see if you can write the scene without telling the word.

Oh, one more thing: Make the problem worse by the end of your scene. This is the beginning of your story.

Back to www.kidswrite4kids.com

Welcome, New Members!

2008-03-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

Welcome, new members Zach and Caryn to www.kidswrite4kids.com. We are sure both of you will make great contributions to the website. We are looking forward to reading what happens next in Zach's wonderfully descriptive story, "The Hunt," which he left as a real cliffhanger!

Who Is Telling This Story, Anyway?

2008-03-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

Well, you are, of course!! Right? Yes, you are. But. . . there are a few tricks here. If you would like to join and publish on www.kidswrite4kids.com, keeping what you read here in mind will help you write a better story.

First Person Narration--

You may decide to pretend to be the character you made up. This is called First Person Narration. The teller of the story is inside the story talking about himself or herself, saying “I.”

This can be great fun for your Dream Mind because you become a kind of actor.

Here's a way to think about it: Draw a circle. Now imagine that everything in your story happens inside that circle. In First Person Narration, the teller of the story is inside the circle. The teller of the story--the narrator--is part of the story. Some or all of what happens in the story happens to the narrator.

First Person Narration sounds like this:

I want to tell you the story of the day my cat played the drums. I came home from my job at the cookie factory, and what do you think I saw?! My cat Jacque playing a drum!

“Good grief, Jacque!” I yelled. “When did you learn to do that?”

Third Person Narration--

On the other hand, you may decide to have your storyteller stand outside the story. This is called Third Person Narration. The narrator says “he” or “she” in this case.

Bob dragged himself home from his job at the cookie factory, thinking he’d spend the evening playing games on his computer. But when he opened the door to his house, there sat Jacque, his cat, playing a drum.

“Good grief, Jacque!” Bob yelled. “When did you learn to do that?”

In this case, the teller of the story is standing outside looking in. The teller of the story is outside the circle, is not a character in the story.

Your Challenge--
Choose whether your narrator is inside or outside the story, and then try to stay with that choice all the way through the story.

Watch for the next blog entry! See you then!
Back to www.kidswrite4kids.com

Give Your Story a Motor

2008-03-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

This will be a short blog entry, but it’s an important one. Put on your thinking cap.

What would happen if your car didn’t have a motor?

Go ahead and answer out loud.

Right!

You couldn’t drive it. It wouldn’t go anywhere. Everybody would have to get out and push. Most people would get tired of that pretty quickly.

The same is true with stories. Without a motor, your story won’t go anywhere.

Staying on that Dream Page, give your character a problem, a motor. Be careful, though. Make sure the problem grows out of, comes from, is somehow suggested by something you invented when you answered all those questions. Make sure, in other words, that the problem is related to something you wrote down in answering the questions.

It can be a big or a little problem. In “Jack and the Beanstalk” the problem is that Jack and his mother are poor. Big problem; big motor. I’ve been poor. Believe me, it’s no fun!

In the beginning of the first Harry Potter book, we meet him orphaned and living with a family that treats him badly. Big problem!

In a story I wrote a long, long time ago, my character had to wash the dishes by himself. Small problem. He made it bigger as the story went along, but it started small.

Maybe the problem in your story comes from where the character lives.

Maybe the problem comes from the best friend.

Just make sure your character has a small or large problem and make sure it’s related to what you have written down so far.

Watch for the next blog entry! See you then!

Create Characters Who Jump Off the Page

2008-03-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

STORIES GROW OUT OF THE LIVES OF YOUR CHARACTERS

Something in your character’s life makes the story happen.

Let’s create a character as you think about that. I’ll ask you a bunch of questions, and you write the answers on a separate piece of paper or in another window on your computer.

Answer quickly. Don’t fret (worry) about spelllllling or neAtneSs. This is nothing but a Dream Page. It’s not your story. Just some ideas.

And you can change any answer any time you like, right up to the minute you show your story to a friend or publish it on www.kidswrite4kids.com. Let your dream mind take over.

Oh, and don’t worry about naming your character right now. If you have a name, great! But don’t let that hold you up. Toss in a name whenever you like.

Also, skip any questions you don’t like. You may use everything you write here in your story, OR you may use almost nothing. This is just a way of getting your ideas cooking.

Take this seriously and take your time, but have fun—remember, Dream Mind!

a)Is your character a boy, a girl, an animal (which?), an alien, a made up creature like a dragon or unicorn?

b)Does your character live now, in this time? In the past, like during Medieval times? In the future?

c)What’s special about your character’s appearance? For example, if your character is especially tall or short, wears baggy pants, or has a nose ring, write that down. What is your character’s favorite piece of clothing? Maybe even, what color is your character’s hair?

d)Does your character live in the city, in the country, in the forest, in the sea, in a real place like New York or Tokyo, or does your character live in a place you are making up?

e)Does your character live in an apartment, a mansion, a tree house, on a ship, in a space ship? Let your imagination go!

f)What is your character especially good at? For example, she or he might be great at math and science, drawing, playing soccer, or climbing cliffs. Put down as many things as you like. Maybe your character has a special way with animals.

g)Who is your character’s best friend and what do they like to do together?

h)What is your character NOT good at? Again, you can put down more than one thing. Hint: Characters who do everything perfectly can be pretty boring. Not always, but they can be and OFTEN are boring. It’s always good to think of something with which your character struggles.

i)With whom does your character not get along? Why do they not get along? This could be a school bully or a brother or sister, anybody.

CONGRADULATIONS! YOU HAVE JUST CREATED YOUR OWN ORIGINAL CHARACTER!
Next blog entry: Giving your story a motor—

kidswrite4kids.com launched!

2008-03-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Annie, for "Halloween" and "The Walk Home," published in the kidswrite4kids.com Word Castle! This is an excellent start for us and, I hope, will inspire many, many more young authors to join and publish their work.

Show It! Don't Just Tell It!

2008-02-20T18:44:00.000-08:00

WARM UP EXERCISE (You will use this idea again soon)

SHOW IT! DON’T TELL IT!

When you read a story, I’ll bet you try to see and hear what is going on in the story in your imagination. It’s like you have a movie playing in your head.

When writers repeat the motto “Show, Don”t Tell,” they are reminding themselves to create that movie.

Mostly, we show by what the reader can see and hear happening in the story.

I’ll show you what I mean. Tell me if you like this beginning of a story:

Harvey got mad at his brother Tim.

Pretty exciting, right? I’ll bet you were sitting on the edge of your seat wanting to know what happened next, right!?

No? It was boring? I agree.

It was boring because I TOLD you how Harvey felt, but I didn’t SHOW you anything.

Let me try again:

“Leave my room NOW!” yelled Harvey, his face turning red as a giant tomato about to splatter all over the walls. “I don’t want to even LOOK at you anymore!

“Why should I?” demanded his little brother Tim, who made fists of both his hands and stayed right there by the open door. He smiled a nasty little smile.

Harvey crouched on his bed, ready to attack. His chest heaved up and down, like he was beginning to turn into a werewolf. “This is the last time I’m going to tell you,” he snarled.

Better? More fun to read? I think so.

Did you notice that I didn’t TELL you Harvey felt angry? I SHOWED you by what he said and how he said it. He yelled and he snarled. I also showed you what he did. He crouched, ready to attack. His chest heaved like he was turning into a werewolf. He turned red.

Now do a little warm up. If you want, you may use Professor Kerfuffle, the cartoon at the top of this page.

Let’s say that his friend Gigi is trying to cheer Professor Kerfuffle up because he is looking for his pet cat and can’t find it. Show the professor being sad without telling the reader he is sad. Show Gigi trying to cheer him up (and help him) without telling the reader she is trying to cheer him up.

What do we see them do?

What do we hear them say?

How do they look and speak?

Show how they feel; don’t tell it.

You will use this idea later as you do the storywriting exercises.

If you want, and if you are a member of kidswrite4kids.com, send your story to the WordCastle. I’ll try to comment one some of the stories in one of my blogs.

Read This Introduction!!!

2008-02-13T18:16:00.000-08:00

Some people can sit down and write a story without much thought before they start. The story seems to just drop right out of their fingertips as they sit at the keyboard.

I never could do that. I could always tell a story to my buddies at the cafeteria table at lunch. I could make the milk come right out of their noses with the funny, crazy stuff I came up with!

But if the teacher asked us to write a story—HELP!! I was suddenly lost.

Then I became a professional writer. How did THAT happen? Not by magic, I can tell you. I needed to learn the story elements first, and then I needed to learn how to use them.

The steps I will show you are the very steps I follow when I am writing a new story. I have used them to help thousands of students write stories. Thousands over twenty years as a writer/teacher/storyteller visiting schools. That’s my job. Some people are lawyers or doctors or carpenters or balloon animal makers. I’m a writer/teacher/storyteller. Try saying that all at once and fast five times.

Anyway, all you need right now is something to write with (pencil, pen, computer, chalk, crayons, jar of mustard, ketchup, peanut butter—wait! Is it lunch yet?). Better start over. All you need is something to write with and your imagination, your Dream Mind.

After a little warm up on the next blog, we’re going to cover three areas together.

Area 1: I’m going to walk you through a prewriting exercise. It’s kind of tough, but kids who have done it have written some awesome, award winning stories. Kids at all levels. Even kids who didn’t think they could.

Area 2: This is where I’ll guide you through your first draft. We’ll use a kind of Story Skeleton. In fact, that’s what we’ll call it—The Story Skeleton or Story Bones. Also, in this part I’ll introduce you to some kinds of characters who can give added twists to your story.

Area 3: This is the part most kids avoid like a computer virus. Want to know a secret? Most adults do, too. But skipping out on Area 3 is a BIG MISTAKE. Unless you don’t want to write a great story. You do want to write a great story, right? Okay. In this part, I will give you some pointers for how to go back over your story to improve what you have written in your quick draft. I’ll help you to polish your work.

Ready? Good. Look for my next entry and we’ll get started!

Welcome!

2007-09-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

Welcome to writerswing.com, the blog for kidswrite4kids.com!
I am sooooooo excited!
I have been helping kids become better writers for more than 20 years. Many of my students have been published. Some have even won prizes. Now every kid 13 and younger can be published on kidswrite4kids.com!
The writing ideas you will find on this blog have all been tested with kids your age.
Over the next couple of weeks, I will be telling you about storywriting. After that, I will be writing about poetic form, figures of speech, etc., etc., etc. But for now, here’s an outline for the next couple of weeks:

HOW TO WRITE A STORY, PART I
A. Read This Introduction!
B. Show It! Don’t Just Tell It!
C. Create Characters Who Jump Off the Page
D. So Who Tells This Story, Anyhow?
E. Plop Your Character Smack into a Scene
F. Story Bones!
G. Villains and Troublemakers Stir the Plot!
H. The Change—Hey! What just Happened!?

Be adventurous and try the exercises and story ideas I suggest.
If you want to be REALLY adventurous, become a member of kidswrite4kids.com. That way you can begin showing the world your stories, essays, and poems.

Twice a year, I will pick the very, very best stories and poems and essays from kidswrite4kids.com to be in my online magazine.
Bookmark this site and check it every couple of days to see what I’ve added.