middle grade Archives - Page 312 of 313

Identify and Evaluate Advertising (Info Wise)
by Valerie Bodden (Author)

Booktalk: Here’s another hot topic for the back to school shopping season! What is advertising, and why should you care? Learn how to think critically about advertising. Who created and paid for an ad? What do the people who made the ad want you to do? Why does it matter if a website includes advertising? Find out how to pinpoint and evaluate common persuasive techniques used in advertising, including the bandwagon approach, emotional appeal, repetition, and more.

Snippet:
What is Advertising?
Every year, companies pour more than $500 billion into producing and distributing ads around the world. Why? It’s simple: they want to convince you to buy their products.

Six Traits Mini Lesson

Trait: Word Choice The book’s goal is clearly stated in the title. In four short words the scope of the book is defined:

Identify and Evaluate Advertising

Notice that there are two steps in the book title and both are stated as verbs: Identify and Evaluate. And what will readers be identifying and evaluating? The noun in the title: Advertising.

Trait: Organization The simplest way to organize a nonfiction book is to begin at the beginning. First, you define the topic. The chapter title asks a question.

What is Advertising?

The first two sentences in chapter one begin the explanation.

Every year, companies pour more than $500 billion into producing and distributing ads around the world. Why? It’s simple: they want to convince you to buy their products.

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

K-9 (Knightley and Son)
by Rohan Gavin (Author)

Booktalk: London’s Youngest detective is back . . . Darkus Knightley, tweed-wearing, megabrained, fiercely logical thirteen-year-old investigator of the weird, was just getting used to having his private-eye dad back in his life. Then Alan Knightley went off radar again, leaving Darkus with the family mutt, a traumatized ex-police dog, as his only partner in crime-solving.

Now a mysterious canine conspiracy is howling for the attention of Knightley & Son. Shadowy trained hounds are attacking policemen at the full moon. Family pets are being mauled by a beast at a top London tourist spot. And two curiously alert canines seem to be watching Darkus’s house. No one is using the word “werewolf”-yet-but it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out that someone or something sinister is messing with the minds of London’s dog population. Will our intrepid father-son duo make it to the next full moon?

Snippet:
Downstairs, Tilly was eating a large bowl of cereal while Clive watched in silence from the opposite end of the kitchen table.

“Well . . . ? Who is he?” demanded Clive flatly. “This mysterious character on the two-wheeled bottle rocket.”

Jackie raised her eyebrows and continued emptying the dishwasher.

“A friend,” Tilly replied.

Six Traits Mini Lesson

Trait: Word Choice “Show, don’t tell” is the advice given to many writers, but you actually need to do both. A story needs to show and to tell. It’s a question of when. This passage begins a new scene. To let the readers know where the scene takes place, the story in this mentor text tells them with a single word:

Downstairs,

Then it tells us the character’s names and shows us what they are doing:

Tilly was eating a large bowl of cereal while Clive watched in silence

The sentence ends with more telling by adding another setting detail.

from the opposite end of the kitchen table.

Notice how the sentence alternates between showing and telling? Nouns TELL (setting details, character names) and verbs SHOW (actions and emotions).