Barbara Park was the author of over two dozen Junie B. Jones books, as well as several stories for older readers including My Mother Got Married and Other Disasters, Skinnybones, and Mick Harte Was Here. Park's books have earned a number of awards, including many children's choice and parents' choice award lists. Titles in the Junie B. Jones series continue to appear on bestseller lists.
Have your students write their own "Junie B." stories after brainstorming issues they've experienced during the school year.
- First have the group make a list of the Junie B. adventures in the books they've read (e.g., cheating, school play, losing a tooth).
- Then ask students to brainstorm a second list of ideas that would make interesting stories.
- Students can work alone or in pairs to write their stories, using one of the ideas from the class list. Have students use the interactive story map to plan their writing.
- After all stories have been completed, have each student or pair share their story with the class.
Have students turn their stories into books, with illustrations, and then work with your school or community librarian to create a library display of all the new stories.
A website for kids, including a bibliography of Junie B. books, interactive and printable activities, as well as information about Park's books for older children.
This Random House resource provides summaries and teacher's guides for all of the Junie B. Jones books. Links are provided to other book series resources as well.
This resource contains a brief biography of Park as well as some notes and a list of some of her Junie B. Jones books.
This site provides links to resources about Barbara Park, including an interview in which she describes her experiences in writing the books.
Often considered to be the first true copyright law, the Statute of Anne drastically changed how copyright worked in Great Britain by naming the author, rather than the publisher, as the holder of the copyright. Later, this law had great influence on emerging U.S. copyright laws. In fact, the first U.S. copyright law began with "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning" —words taken directly from the Statute of Anne.
Create a students' copyright guide as a handy reference for classroom work or the library.
- First, form small groups to conduct web research on copyright issues. Assign groups topics, such as the types of copyright protected works, fair use, court cases, public domain works, and so on. Students can use the interactive Notetaker to help them organize their research findings.
- After students have finished their research, have each group compile their information into a page for the class booklet, by visiting the Printing Press tool and selecting the "flyer" option.
- Collect each group's work and create a booklet. Be sure to create a table of contents and index for the guide, as well as a cover page. Keep a copy of the guide in the library and near photocopying machines.
- You might also want to reproduce the guide and distribute a copy to each student.
This site offers teachers information on copyright issues, including a list of links to online copyright references.
This website provides resources for children, as well as parents and teachers. Included are copyright basics, a quiz, and more.
This series on copyright law and the fair use exceptions is aimed at teachers and covers things such as applying the law to new technologies and district liability.
This student interactive, from CyberBee, answers many questions students may have about intellectual property rights and fair use.
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American author best known for her examinations of relationships between mothers and daughters such as her 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club.
Project for students an excerpt of an interview with Amy Tan (Q8: Chinese Characters, 1:09:45 to 1:11:00). Discuss their impressions of her stance toward writing from her personal experience as an extension of her identity. Then invite students to tell a story of their own, either a fictionalized account of a memory or family experience or a more straightforward true story that is important to them and who they are.
Share the Story Map or the Story Cube interactives to help students generate and organize their ideas. Then give students the opportunity to share their stories by holding a classroom reading or creating an online or print collection.
Tan's eclectic website offers biographical information, photos, and multimedia.
In this TED Talk, Tan explores her creative process and the relationships between chance, ambiguity, and her fiction.
In this piece from The Atlantic, Tan reflects on an excerpt from Whitman's "Song of Myself" and relates it to her processes as a writer.
Roald Dahl was born in Wales on September 13th, 1916. His first book for children, The Gremlins, was written in 1943. Following this, Dahl went on to write several of the most popular children's stories of the 20th century, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, and James and the Giant Peach. Several of Dahl's stories, including these, have been made into motion pictures. He died in 1990.
Have students adapt a Roald Dahl story to picture book format. Read a Roald Dahl story that has been adapted to film (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda) Then show students the film. Have students use the Interactive Venn Diagram or Mobile App to compare and contrast the two versions, focusing on the images in the movie:
- How were the two experiences different? Similar?
- How did the images in the movie affect the story? Your enjoyment of the story?
- What are the benefits of reading a story? Of watching a film?
- How is the story in the movie different? Why do you think this is so?
Then have students create original picture book versions of the story. Afterwards, have students share their books and then add them to the classroom library.
This site offers news, contests, quizzes, activity ideas, and more to help readers around the world celebrate Roald Dahl Day on his birthday.
Roald Dahl's official site features a biography, photo gallery, author interview, online activities, and more.
The BBC Wales provides this audio interview with Roald Dahl’s relatives and related biographical information.
This site offers activites, suggestions, and ideas for celebrating Roald Dahl Month all September long!
April 12 is known as D.E.A.R Day! D.E.A.R. stands for "Drop Everything and Read," a national month-long celebration of reading designed to remind folks of all ages to make reading a priority activity in their lives. It is also Beverly Cleary’s birthday! D.E.A.R. programs have been held nationwide on April 12th in honor of Beverly Cleary’s birthday, since she first wrote about D.E.A.R. in Ramona Quimby, Age 8.
Today is the birthday of author Beverly Cleary, who brought to life the characters of Ramona and older sister Beezus. On this day, D.E.A.R Day, families are encouraged to take at least 30 minutes to put aside all distractions and enjoy books together. Get together with other readers, find someone to read to, or even just read alone. Here are some additional ideas:
Family Read Aloud
With this tip, learn a few simple read-aloud strategies that can sharpen a child's emerging reading skills and help you have fun together with a good book.
Journaling
This lesson encourages children to explore authentic reasons for writing by writing messages to their family in a family message journal.
Retell Stories
Tell me about it in your own words! If students can paraphrase the information they have read, then you—and they—can be confident that they understand it.
Drop Everything!
Don’t think that means that the celebration is only allowed during this month, though. It’s encouraged all year long!
This website has reading lists, activity ideas, digital assets, and other resources on D.E.A.R.
Reading Rockets shares resources about Beverly Cleary and D.E.A.R.
Drop Everything and Read suggestions from the International Literacy Association
Best known for his poems “We Wear the Mask” and “Sympathy” (the poem from which Maya Angelou took the title of her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote dialect poems, other poems, novels, short stories, and essays. Dunbar had served as class poet at his high school in Dayton, Ohio; he later worked as an elevator operator while he wrote in his spare time.
Project or share copies of Dunbar’s poem Sympathy. Read it aloud and ask students to discuss words, lines, and images that stand out to them as particularly meaningful.
Then share with students the critical excerpts on the poem from Modern American Poetry (including earlier and later versions of part of the poem). Ask small groups to read the excerpts and then discuss how the ideas from the three critics change or deepen their understanding of the poem.
Dunbar's entry on the Academy of American Poets website contains biographical information, a collection of poems, and personal correspondence between him and his wife, Alice Nelson-Dunbar.
The Poetry Foundation's collection of resources on Paul Laurence Dunbar includes a biography and several poems.
The Modern American Poetry page for Dunbar includes curated criticism and online examples of Dunbar's illustrated poems.
Novelist, essayist, and social critic James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in Harlem. At 14, he was in training to become a Pentecostal preacher, but by 17 he had become disillusioned with Christianity. Troubled by the racism he encountered in America, he moved to France when he was 24 where he wrote his first book, the semi-autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain. Later works include Giovanni's Room, known for its frank depiction of homosexuality, and a collection of essays, The Fire Next Time. Eventually known as a key voice in the Civil Rights Movement, Baldwin died in France in 1987.
Preview and share with students all or parts of Baldwin's 1963 essay A Talk to Teachers. Ask students to identify Baldwin's main contentions about race relations in America and think critically about connections they see to other texts (such as poems, books, or films) and to contemporary social issues.
Then invite students to use the Letter Generator to write a letter to Baldwin responding to his ideas and how they see them resonating with the present.
From the PBS American Masters program James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket, this "about the author" site shares biographical information and links to several video clips of Baldwin in conversation.
This New York Times article reports on the acquisition of Baldwin's personal writing by the Schomburg Center for Black Culture in Harlem. It includes images of several pages of Baldwin's hand- or typewritten manuscripts.
Baldwin's entry at the Poetry Foundation features an extensive biography and links to poems and other works.
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Picture. I Am Not Your Negro is Raoul Peck's 2016 adaptation of Baldwin's unfinished manuscript Remember This House. The site offers video excerpts and background information.
Louise Erdrich was born today in 1954. Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and is the author over a dozen novels as well as poetry, short stories, and books for children. Her work depicts Native American characters and settings and has won a number of awards, including the National Book Award for The Round House and the O. Henry Award for “Fleur.” She is also the owner of an independent bookstore in Minnesota.
Project for students the short video Louise Erdrich, author of LaRose, talks about her love of books. Briefly discuss Erdrich’s attitudes toward and associations with books before inviting students to write their own short memory piece about a pleasurable experience with a book, at a bookstore, or in a library.
Encourage students to include sensory details about the book, such as how it looked, felt, smelled, and so on. Then ask students to share their memories to join in Erdrich’s love of books.
Erdrich's Poetry Foundation page includes biographical information and links to several of her poems, including "Turtle Mountain Reservation" from Jacklight (1984).
This HarperCollins page offers a biographical sketch as well as information about all of her major works.
Louise Erdrich's blog is frequently updated and offers a glimpse into her work as an independent bookseller and reader.
This compendium of NPR resources includes booklists featuring Erdrich's works as well as links to archived audio content.
From the documentary series by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this page includes videos of Erdrich discussing her genealogy and the importance of ancestral history.
Winner of a 2016 National Medal of Arts, Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1954. Best known for her collection of vignettes The House on Mango Street and her short story collection Woman Hollering Creek, Cisneros has also been awarded MacArthur and NEA Fellowships for her fiction and poetry depicting life of Latino/as in America.
Read aloud or project this quote from Sandra Cisneros:
The older I get, the more I'm conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn't it?
Invite students to select a "tiny little thing" from their lives—an encounter with a stranger, a small object, a physical feature of a loved one, a fragment of remembered dialogue—and freewrite about its significance to their lives. Then read aloud a vignette such as "Hairs"/"Pelitos" (also available as a standalone picture book) and discuss how Cisneros takes something small and finds significance in it. Give students time to write, share, and revise to take up what they learned from hearing Cisneros' writing. Let students choose a form for their writing: narrative prose, poetry, or essay.
Cisneros' official website offers a personal glimpse into her life, work, and favorites.
Learn more about Cisneros' life at this site from Biography.com.
This press release announces Cisneros as a recipient of the 2016 National Medal of Arts and contains links to media associated with the awards ceremony.
In this NPR interview from 2009, Cisneros discusses the history and impact of The House on Mango Street, then in its 25th year.
In this official video interview from KnopfGrou, Sandra Cisneros talks about the story behind The House on Mango Street and its relationships with her own life.
"Tom Swifties" are a special kind of pun associated with Victor Appleton's Tom Swift book series, in which the author avoided the use of simple "said" as a dialogue tag. The Tom Swifty evolved into a pun in which the dialogue tag relates humorously to what the character said. The figures of speech gained prominence when Time magazine sponsored a contest for the best Tom Swifties in 1963.
- Share some examples of Tom Swifties and ask students to notice what they have in common. Literary examples include Charles Dickens' "'You find it Very Large?' said Mr. Podsnap, spaciously," work well, but everyday examples such as "'I need to milk the cows now,' Tom uddered" or "'I dropped my toothpaste,' Tom said, crest-fallen" might give students more to work with.
- Together, generate a list of principles about what makes Tom Swifties work. Importantly, the way in which a speaker says something comments on or relates to what was said in a humorous way. Often the dialogue tag has multiple meanings; single-word or phrase-length dialogue tags work equally well; and product names (such as Cheer or Clue) offer potential for punning as well.
- Let students meet in small groups to generate some Tom Swifties of their own. After the have had time to develop and polish a few, have a contest of your own to celebrate the best examples.
Mark Israel's thorougly sourced collection offers some background on the Tom Swifty and an alphabetically categorized list.
This site is a catalog of many of the Tom Swift books, focusing on the scientific nature of their plots.
Though this site requires a subscription to view all its content, students can get a sense of the popularity of the Tom Swifty through the link to the contest in the Society: Games section.