Who will write the next Great American Novel? PBS recently sponsored the Great American Read, featuring 100 of our favorite novels. What makes a novel great? Is it characters, plot, setting or resolution? Is it what we learn about ourselves as a result of reading it? Is it the feeling we have when we think about it? Is it the impact a novel makes on the world or the reader?
Every author has a different explanation on the process of writing. In a TeachingBooks.net movie, Lois Lowry talks about how she doesn't use an outline, but allows the story to move and shape with each new event. Kate DiCamillo shares how she reads her draft aloud--which may contribute to why her books are great read alouds.
And then there is the question of where do stories come from? Jack Gantos keeps journals--boxes and boxes of journals as idea sparkers. David Weisner's newest book, I Got It, came from an idea he had as a child--what happens in your mind can seem much longer than what happens in the real world.
November is National Novel Writing Month. It's a great time to start writing that Great American novel. You can stay indoors in your favorite chair. Get a cup of tea. Use a pencil. Choose your paper. Start a new file. Buy a journal. Write an outline. Inspire your students. Start with one word and the rest will follow.
And try these new books from 2018 about writing:
A heart-tugging
dog adoption story told through letters--deeply sincere and almost desperate
pleas for a forever home—from the dog, himself!
This elegant
and insightful biography of Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) was written by her
granddaughters, Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Lena Roy. Using never-before-seen
archival materials that include photographs, poems, letters, and journal
entries from when Madeleine was a child until just after the publication of her
classic, A Wrinkle in Time, her
granddaughters weave together an in-depth and unique view of the famous writer.
It is a story of overcoming obstacles—a lonely childhood, financial
insecurity, and countless rejections of her writing—and eventual triumph.
It's 1947, and India, newly independent of British
rule, has been separated into two countries: Pakistan and India. The divide has
created much tension between Hindus and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands are
killed crossing borders. Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't
know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore.
Fulton, Lynn. She Made a Monster : How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein. illus. by Felicita Sala. unpaged. Alfred A. Knopf. 2018. ISBN 9780525579618. Dewey: 823; IL: K-3; RL: 4.0
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