Showing posts with label nonfiction writing. Show all posts

Monday, May 28, 2012

Roaring Brook Press, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. ISBN: 978-1-59643-449-3

This impeccably researched account of the history of the Temperance movement provides an interesting look at the societal issues and historical figures behind the passage of the 18th Amendment. Blumenthal also describes the unintended consequences of gangsters (including the famous Al Capone) committing alcohol-related crimes, as well as adults and children ignoring the law to bootleg and smuggle during the 13 years it was in effect. Black and white photos, archival materials, and a glossary enhance this engaging and readable work.

Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way) written by Sue Macy, published by National Geographic Children’s Books. ISBN: 978-1-42630-761-4

With the invention of the bicycle, women began by riding sidesaddle but quickly switched to riding astride sleek two-wheelers as they left their restraining corsets and petticoats in the dust with bloomers their preferred bicycling outfit. Adventurer or activist, young or old, African American or white, many women quickly adopted this new mode of transportation. As the period photographs, colorful advertisements, sidebars, and primary source material proclaim, bicycles empowered women to seek the freedom they’d long been denied.

Music Was IT: Young Leonard Bernstein written by Susan Goldman Rubin, published by Charlesbridge. ISBN: 978-1-58089-344-2

Rubin entices readers with her lively account of the challenging and passionate life of young Leonard Bernstein, beginning with his childhood in Boston and concluding with his brilliant conducting debut, at the age of twenty-five, at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic. A short epilogue relates the remainder of Bernstein's memorable life. A timeline, brief biographies of friends and colleagues, a discography, a bibliography, sources of quotations, photo credits and permissions, and an index add to the informative value of this fascinating glimpse into the formative years of a musical genius.

Previous Winners

2011

Winner: Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing by Ann Angel

Finalists:

They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti;

Spies of Mississippi: The True Story of the Spy Network that Tried to Destroy the Civil Rights Movement by Rick Bowers;

The Dark Game: True Spy Stories by Paul Janeczko;

Every Bone Tells a Story: Hominin Discoveries, Deductions, and Debates by Jill Rubalcaba and Peter Robertshaw, published by Charlesbridge

Learn more about the 2011 award.

2010

Winner: Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman.

Finalists:

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone,

Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justiceby Phillip Hoose,

The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P.T. Barnum by Candace Fleming,

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker.

Learn more about the 2010 award.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

So I was listening to Car Talk, the NPR show with the two old mechanics from the Boston area who take phone calls about car trouble. They were talking to a woman from Palo Alto who was having problems with a noise in her tire. Eventually, they asked her what she did for a living. She answered, "I'm a graduate student." Of course, they asked what she studied, and she responded, "Italian literature." They tried to make that into pleasant "small talk," and something came up about "at least you get to go to Italy." She said, "Yes, for research," and one of the hosts said, "sounds like a lot of work."

My first thought was, "what the heck are you talking about?"

My second thought was, "you must not be someone who enjoys research."

I was putting myself in her place. I was thinking about what it feels like, to finally dig into the topic to try to create your own original work, your own take on the issues that stir your field. To step forward and assume the mantle of the professional scholar, diving into the topic to discover and explain something new. An intellectual astronaut, as it were. If you are the kind of person who is lucky enough to have found a field that you can be passionate about, this is a dream come true. This is akin to meeting your childhood hero and getting his/her autograph and then sitting down for dinner with that person. It's a chance to drive your dream car, go on a date with your dream girl/boy, sleep in your dream house, and so on. It's a GOOD thing, not work. It's a chance to play in the "big show," the audition for the lead on Broadway, and so on. It's not a bad thing. It's not work.

There's lots of ways to think about this. I know that not everyone likes research, and not everyone gets a chance or a reason to conduct research on a topic that they love. But it's the kind of skill that everyone needs and that everyone wants. It might be work to do research for something you hate, but hopefully a graduate student is not someone who hates to do research. Hopefully, it's the opposite.

My point is this: research doesn't have to be work. It doesn't have to be painful and soul-crushing.

That's not to say that it isn't difficult or sometimes time-consuming or even expensive (like flying to Italy). But my own research experience was not really work, or not always work. True, there were a lot of difficult nights with piles of dense, seemingly irrelevant text to wade through. But there were great moments and the pleasure of discovery. There were times when I could make sense of things, and I could explain something new. That's a great feeling. I feel like I learned something and made something, and that has helped me in ways that are hard to explain sometimes. Perhaps it's like the kid who can be successful in sports, so he/she feels more confident off the playing field because of success on it. I don't know if that's adequate. But research is a chance to make something new, building things from the knowledge and experience of others. It's important now because of the vast opportunity to conduct research via the Internet and other electronic tools.

This is an ongoing concern, and I don't think I've adequately expressed it here. I'm going to think about the research process and post again when I'm ready to try to explain it again.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

OCTOBER SKY and coal

Well, I watched this movie because it came up in the library database attached to the keyword "coal." It's not really about coal, though it's set in West Virginia in a "company town," and the main character and his father are coal miners (or, in the case of the main character, work as a coal miner for a few months). It's about someone struggling against unlikely circumstances to be successful in a way that people don't expect or predict. It - or the director, Joe Johnston - sets the film in West Virginia, but that's more because of the "true story" that it's based on than because of any inherent need in the film for that setting. Homer's dad could have been a steel worker, a dock worker, a farmer, just about anything that could be dangerous or boring, and it would also work.

I think this movie is relevant to the conversation about coal, though, and sheds light on the situation of coal mining that would not otherwise be noticed. It's a mainstream, large-scale release of a film by a major studio (Universal) with some top-name actors (Jake Gyllenhall, though he wasn't a superstar yet, Laura Dern, and Chris Cooper), and several parts of the movie take place inside a coal mine in what appears to be a realistic depiction. It's not friendly to the coal-mining industry, but it's also not friendly to unions, either. It's that ambiguity about the setting that really makes it an interesting study for this topic.

Here's a link to the IMDB profile if you want to see more about the film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132477/.

Briefly, the main character's father, John Hickam (played by Chris Cooper) is a site manager or foreman at a mine in West Virginia. He's grumpy, favors his older, football-playing son, and distrusts his youngest son's strange habits. Later in the movie, after struggling with his son to contain an interest in rocketry, he is injured in a mine accident and sent to the hospital. Homer, the main character (Jake Gyllenhall) is forced to start working at the mine, dropping out of high school. The father recuperates, and begins working at the mine alongside his son, but Homer is inspired to return to work on his rockets and leaves his father behind.

Homer doesn't seem to mind the job so much, though it is clearly not a good fit for him. There's an aura of sadness (slow music, a shot of Homer staring up into the night sky watching a satellite as he descends into the coal mine), but it's not clear if we should be sad because he doesn't belong there, or because no one does. When the mine workers are on strike, the abusive father of one of Homer's friends takes a shot at John and misses - he seems to be aligned with the union, and the union doesn't look too good when men like that are mixed with it. There are good friends and honest workers among the miners, but none seem to favor Homer until he enters the science fair and becomes a town favorite.

At the end of the movie, we discover that John died of black lung disease about fifteen years after the events of the movie took place. All of Homer's friends - and Homer - escaped coal mining, and that appears to be a good thing. Clearly, people aren't supposed to want to be coal miners. But Homer lionizes his father, in the end, and the movie seems to make his father into a kind of blue-collar hero. Even though the father died of a work-related illness, he was well-suited to his position and became a hero through his work. He was fulfilled in that job, and - we seem encouraged to think - many people can be happy as coal miners. Even though not everyone wants to be a coal miner.

So, to summarize this into a pithy little statement: people ought to be allowed to choose what they do with their lives. There is honor in everything, from rocketry to coal mining. Honor comes from finding where you belong, and sticking to it. Something like that.

Coal mining is just another job, and some people choose to do it, and do it well. Unions are not part of this equation. Neither, it seems, are corporations, really. It's all about individual choice.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

TRAPPED by Marc Aronson

So, I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

One of the reasons that I pursued COAL as a topic is a book called Trapped by Marc Aronson. I heard him speak at the NCTE conference, and I had already encountered his great book, Sugar Changed the World. He spoke for a few minutes about the book, and mentioned some of the things the trapped miners said and did. (I remember him talking about the one word that made the difference for the miners - the thing that saved all of their lives and kept them all from dying. "Democracy." They voted on everything.)

Of course, the funny part is this: the book is NOT about coal mining. The people who were trapped in the San Jose Mine in northern Chile were mining COPPER, not COAL.

Oops.

Does this mean I need to change the topic? I don't think so. I think that the book and its ideas are still relevant, though perhaps less directly. I think that the concepts of mining that I can take from this book, as well as comparisons to other mining disasters, are useful. But it's funny, now, how this mistake in understanding (did he say that they were copper miners at the presentation? If he had, or if I heard and remembered it, I might have chosen some other topic.) helped me choose this topic. I hope that the decision turns out to be lucky.

I suppose we'll find out soon.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Text Frames and Nonfiction Writing

This is a really useful way to conceptualize nonfiction writing that works "both ways" - for reading and for writing instruction. That is the essential insight of authors like Lucy Calkins, Katie Wood Ray, Laura Robb, Doug Buehl, and Ralph Fletcher. (Or at least one insight common to all of them.)

What is a text frame? It is a way of structuring or arranging ideas in a text. It might be thought of as a kind of genre, a convention, a pattern, a formula, a rhetorical strategy, a heuristic, or even a trend. The easiest example is chronological order. A writer might choose to arrange her ideas in "time-order," or the order in which they occurred, or in a kind of beginning-middle-end narrative order. This arrangement suits narrative - one of the most common ways and reasons for writing - because it tends to represent the experience of the story. Writers often choose this strategy because it is common, engaging, and simple. Readers can easily interpret and empathize with this arrangement.

It makes sense to teach this text structure first for two reasons. First, it is the simplest and most common. Students will be able to understand it easily, because they use it and encounter it more often than any other. Because it is so common, students will be able to apply this understanding to future encounters with chronologically-ordered text. This ubiquity will also make it easy to locate models for students to learn from. Second, pointing out this strategy to students, and suggesting that there are others, will help students notice large-scale textual patterns and help them think about the possibility of other patterns. It will push them toward noticing holistic features - a powerful higher-order thinking skill.

Hopefully, when you start to teach text structure, you will open a door for students to thinking about texts in bigger terms, on a larger scale. When students seem to understand the concept of chronological order (which should not be a big leap), there are two good questions to ask:

What kinds of texts are organized in way other than chronological order?
Why would an author choose to compose a text that is not in time order?

Question 1 is really a reading question. Question 2 is a writing question. But both are really the same question. I hope this helps explain how text structure - the concept as an instructional focus - illustrates how writing and reading instruction reinforce each other.