In Memoriam: Remembering Black Children's Writers, Illustrators, & Scholars

 

So many creatives in children's literature have passed over the years. I still have a newspaper clipping of an obituary for Gwendolyn Brooks that I look at from time to time. I want to remember and honor these artists because their work has meant so much to me.   

Ashley Bryan, author, illustrator, teacher

Gwendolyn Brooks, poet

Lucille Clifton, poet

Floyd Cooper, author, illustrator

Leo Dillon, illustrator

Eloise Greenfield, author

Virginia Hamilton, author

bell hooks, author, scholar

Julius Lester, author, teacher

Patricia McKissack, author

Toni Morrison, author

Walter Dean Myers, author

Jerry Pinkney, illustrator

Faith Ringgold, artist, author

Ntozake Shange, playwright, poet

Althea Tait, scholar

Joyce Carol Thomas, author, playwright

VivianYenika-Agbaw, scholar

*I realize some writers (e.g., hooks, Morrison, and Shange) may be more well-known for writing for adults rather than children.  

What have I been reading?

I have had a memoir fest lately. Two books that couldn’t differ more stand out:

Hartzler, Aaron. Rapture Practice: A True Story.  

This book made me laugh and nod my head because I could relate to Hartzler’s deeply religious family.

Knisley, Lucy. Relish.

Because it was a graphic novel, I left this book wishing I was in France eating the croissants I could see and almost smell. I’m not the cooking type, but I was in the kitchen **baking cupcakes and pies for weeks after reading this book. I was kind of mad at Knisley for not putting a gingerbread recipe in it.

I’m weird.
 
I know.

You can find my reviews of both books in VOYA.

*I am limited in terms of  the number of things I can cook.

The Best Book I Read Last Week?

No contest! Wes Moore’s Discovering Wes Moore.

The people closest to me have gotten the entire story out of me because I thought Moore’s approach was interesting. Z and I are scheduled to review it for VOYA , so I don’t want to dishonor my agreement with them by discussing it in detail here.

I will state the obvious: It is a young adult edition of The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, which received media attention.

 I love it when books provide a segue into difficult discussions. There are so many things in this book that I’ve discussed with Z simply because he is a black male experiencing feelings (and coming into an awareness) that both Wes Moores shared. But on a lighter note, we used the book to talk about writing ideas and finding the perfect angle. In other words, having something to say and an interesting way to say it, is vital.

Image Grammar Student Activity Book by Harry R. Noden

I think Stephen King (I'm listening to On Writing again) is responsible for this, or maybe it’s because I just bought about twenty book that Z has to have for freshman year and I figured someone should read them (Just Kidding!). Anyway, I just finished reading Image Grammar. By the looks of the first sentence above, I guess I need to reread it. Oh, well!

I liked the author’s method of paring grammatical instruction down to what he calls five brush strokes: using action verbs, absolutes, appositives, participles, and adjectives out-of-order.

Noden uses short excerpts from everything from novels and speeches to popular movies and advertisements, and students are asked to imitate the demonstrated technique. The technique of zooming in on a noun and a verb will be useful to students.

I got lost trying to use the templates, but I’m sure good teachers know what to do with them.

I wonder what students think of the “Shalersville University Occupational Inventory of Grammatical Knowledge.” The quiz made me want to learn more about how to teach the "status producing" twenty or so common grammatical errors. Who knows, if I teach them, I might be able to boost my inventory ranking to the $200,000 and above level. If only my earnings would reflect that….

Can the Dead Write?

Have you ever read a memoir written after someone is dead?


I did.

Read the review of My Life After Life at ForeWord Reviews.

What do you think?

You Can Do a Graphic Novel

Writing a graphic novel (GN) isn’t in my plans, but I was drawn to this book because I was curious about the process and how the process might be described to younger writers. The chapter devoted to plot is my favorite because it offers the clearest directions for plotting a story that I’ve come across in all of the writing how-tos I’ve read for young people. It describes how to layout language, including the use of balloons, and how the drawing indicates how the speech should be delivered. (e.g., If the balloon looks like a curvy cloud, the speech represents what the character is thinking.)

I didn’t know about splash pages until I read this book. A splash page is usually the first page in a GN, and it often includes the setting, narrative voice, and mood. You Can Do a Graphic Novel has a glossary, and the author shows the process of making a comic from layout and design to after it has gone to the penciler and inker. Finally, the author shares six student samples that will appeal to readers.

Spilling Ink

Spilling Ink has three parts and a total of thirty-one short sections and an appendix. Though there are two authors, Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter, only one pens each section. The authors interview each other in the end which reveals interesting information about how they got started as writers.


The “I Dare You” activities seem like they’d be useful in my classes. My favorite so far is the one on page 29 that helps you get to your character’s heart desire. Here are the steps:

1. Ask students to list things they want (e.g., a million dollars tax free, to sleep in everyday, to play the X-box until eyes bleed, even on school nights).

2. Pick one thing on the list they want the most (e.g., to play the X-box until eyes bleed, even on school nights).

3. Jot down three or four ways (encourage creativity) they could obtain the item (e.g., get straight “A’s” and try to use this as leverage; play the X-box while parents are working late; play the X-box when your parents think you’re doing homework).

4. Write a story in which a character wants the item and tries to get it several times, but can’t.

What about you? How do you teach students (or your children) to develop stories?

Getting Started with Spilling Ink

Getting started on a piece of writing can be tough. As I mentioned before, Po-jacks can help. Anne Mazer, co-author of Spilling Ink, might know something about Po-jacks. During her early days as a writer, she’d meet with a writer friend and practice writing. Mazer recalls, “Using a line of poetry, or a random sentence as a jumping off point, we wrote as fast as we could” (Spilling Ink, p.35).


She goes on to say she never thought much about this process, but eventually she used it to write a poem that inspired her to write The Oxboy.

I do what I call false starts. I think I got the term from one of Andrea Lunsford's books when I taught at Norfolk State, but I had been doing it since high school but didn’t have a name for it. With false starts, I simply start writing the piece as if it is the draft, stopping periodically to reread, throw out, and redirect. I also use this blog as a form of writing practice (and as a huge learning log where I record discoveries about reading and writing).

What about you? How do you get started on a piece?

July 8 at the Si

I learned that character education still exists in high school, and that seems like a good thing to me. I often read the column for teens in Success Magazine to Z because they are about character development. He balks at first, but then gets into the scenario.