Category: New Book!

I have a new picture book on the way! Road Work Ahead

This one has been a lo-o-o-ong time coming. I started it when my son was 2…and now he’s 27! When he was 2, he loved to look at all of the trucks and machines along the road, so I started snapping pics for him, and made him a “look book” that later turned into a picture book. I loved that book, so I kept rewriting it, and sending it out…and now 25 years later, it’s a book you can hold in your hand.

Road Work Ahead is coming out with Viking Children’s Books on September 15, 2011! Viking published my very first picture book, Man on the Moon, in 1997, so I feel like I have come home.

The publisher, Regina Hayes, asked me to write a new beginning and ending, so we knew why the little boy was on the road looking at all of the road work. It also added a who, by showing us the little boy before he got into the car. I needed all 6 Ws (who, what, when, where, why and how) to make it a story, not just a list of machines along the road. Stories sell, but lists…well, not so much. Adding 2 short stanzas made it work. (A good editor can see what your story needs and give you the push you need to make it work!)

So I added my mother and her famous homemade oatmeal cookies to the book. (We used to eat them right after they came out of the oven. Yum!) Driving to Grandma’s house for fresh, warm, homemade oatmeal cookies is definitely a reason to keep going despite all of the traffic delays due to the work along the road. And when you get to eat them at the end of the book, ah, sweet reward!

Jannie Ho, the illustrator, and I, have created a Road Work Ahead Facebook page, and we post a new link with news, updates, or activities for kids there each week. This week I posted a link to the August 1st Publishers Weekly review.

Here’s a snippet of the PW review: A batch of Grandma’s homemade oatmeal cookies beckons, but for this backseat narrator, the sights and sounds along the road to her house are equally compelling: “Road work ahead./ Move over. Go slow./ Jackhammers crack./ Look at them go.”

(Notice how the change I made is mentioned in the review! The quoted text is the original beginning of the story. I had jumped too far into the action. What worked better was taking a few steps back and letting the reader know who the narrator was and why he was on the road in the first place. As I always say, “Writing is rewriting!” And a good editor makes ALL the difference!)

My NEW book is here! Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8
Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

My latest book, Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3–8, just came out, but it’s a book I’ve been writing my entire life.

I grew up in one of those households where we were always told to go out and play, so we spend a lot of time outdoors. At the same time, I was an avid reader and writer. In fact I wrote my first book when I was 11 years old. When I began teaching elementary school in 1977, I brought all of this with me to the classroom. I wrote for my young students and they wrote for me. We read and wrote and moved together. (It’s very hard for young children to sit still. Why not use that to your advantage?)

Many years later when I was a published author, I was asked to work on a sports series. Of course I said yes! I wrote 6 hi-lo sports history books.

Then I was asked to write sports fiction. I started with BMX…

and moved on to skateboarding…  I wrote novels about six different sports with the pen name Jake Maddox, but when I visited schools to talk about my books, the children were always very surprised. How could a lady write about sports, especially when there was a boy’s name on the book?

Once I began talking about the details, however, everything changed. I shared my sports stories with them, and they shared their sports stories with me. We had a great time!

When I developed a writing program for a local school district, I decided to tap that strong interest students had in sports. It helped me teach them an academic skill using their life experience. After I told the students that they could write about sports, in classroom after classroom my reluctant writers became active writers. They couldn’t wait to share their sports stories.

Over the years many teachers asked me to write a book that they could use in the classroom after my visit was over. This is that book.

Inside the covers you will find readers theatre plays to perform in the classroom and writing activities for nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. The speaking parts for each play have a reading level listed. The lines of dialogue are quite short, making the reading levels very low. This hi-lo approach allows everyone in your classroom to participate.

After students read about each of the 10 sports in this book, they are invited to write about them.

1. Football
2. Basketball
3. Hockey
4. Skating
5. Baseball
6. Soccer
7. Track
8. Gymnastics
9. BMX
10. Skateboarding

I write all three genres, so I teach them, too. Students will be asked to research and write an expository paragraph using three graphic organizers. Then they’ll be asked to write a narrative scene, using graphic organizers to help them plan their writing. The third writing section has graphic organizers to help students write an action-reaction poem. (Sports are about movement!)

One thing I discovered in all my years of teaching is that students work better with mentor texts. For many teachers, that means using a great book to guide young writers. I’ve taken it a step further and moved it into the pre-writing stage. Yes, I use mentor texts with graphic organizers. Throughout this book, students will see graphic organizers with someone’s thoughts written down. A blank page can be intimidating, but when you see how someone else has done it, then you know what to do. (I use this approach with ALL of my writers, from kindergarten to college. Graphic organizers are called GO Charts for a reason — they help student writing go, go, go!)

See Anastasia Suen
on the Nonfiction Book Blast: Booktalks and Activities for Your Library panel
June 26 at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans.

Are you ready for the Nonfiction Book Blast?
Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

On Monday afternoon, I had just sent a book manuscript to my editor
and was coming out to get a drink of water when I saw…

a BOX on the porch! More books for my booktalk blogs?

I opened it to see…

MY new books!
Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8 is available on April 30.

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Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.