middle grade Archives - Page 359 of 370

The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary
by Laura Shovan (Author)

Eighteen kids,
one year of poems,
one school set to close.
Two yellow bulldozers
crouched outside,
ready to eat the building
in one greedy gulp.

But look out, bulldozers.
Ms. Hill’s fifth-grade class
has plans for you.
They’re going to speak up
and work together
to save their school.

#kidlit Writing Lesson: the small details

The poem for April 21 (today!) begins:

April 21
STAND UP, SIT DOWN
Hannah Wiles

The phone rings.
I can hardly believe what I see.
Shoshanna’s number on the ID.
She says George is planning a protest
for our school to stay open.
She wants me to come.

The poem begins with an action:

The phone rings.

That action leads to a reaction that rhymes:

I can hardly believe what I see.
Shoshanna’s number on the ID.

What Shoshanna says on the phone comes next. The information is first:

She says George is planning a protest
for our school to stay open.

Then Shoshanna makes a request:

She wants me to come.

Not a word is wasted as the story in the poem moves forward line by line with actions and reactions.

The Eye of Midnight
by Andrew Brumbach (Author)

Booktalk: The BIG Picture

On a stormy May day in 1929, William and Maxine arrive on the doorstep of Battersea Manor to spend the summer with a grandfather they barely remember. Whatever the cousins expected, Colonel Battersea isn’t it.

Soon after they settle in, Grandpa receives a cryptic telegram and promptly whisks the cousins off to New York City so that he can meet an unknown courier and collect a very important package. Before he can do so, however, Grandpa vanishes without a trace.

When the cousins stumble upon Nura, a tenacious girl from Turkey, she promises to help them track down the parcel and rescue Colonel Battersea. But with cold-blooded gangsters and a secret society of assassins all clamoring for the same mysterious object, the children soon find themselves in a desperate struggle just to escape the city’s dark streets alive.

#kidlit Writing Lesson: the small details

Grandpa isn’t home when the two cousins arrive, so they go looking for him. Soon they end up in the cluttered basement:

And one detail in particular was impossible to ignore: in shape, the crate was very much like a coffin. As the cousins’ eyes met, there was no doubt they shared the same impression.

“What’s Grandpa got in there?” asked William uneasily.

The lid was pasted with several shipping labels and a conspicuous yellowed tag, which Maxine dusted off with her shirtsleeve.

“Noli me tangere,” she read.

“Is that Greek?” asked William.

“Latin, I think,” she replied. “I’ve seen it before in a book at school.”

“What does it mean?

Maxine traced the words with her finger, racking her brain, and the translation came to her suddenly from the depths of her memory.

“Touch me not.”

Notice the action / reaction pattern. The cousins see the crate:

And one detail in particular was impossible to ignore: in shape, the crate was very much like a coffin.

And then readers see their reaction:

As the cousins’ eyes met, there was no doubt they shared the same impression.

Dialogue is next:

“What’s Grandpa got in there?” asked William uneasily.

The dialogue is followed by description and a new action:

The lid was pasted with several shipping labels and a conspicuous yellowed tag, which Maxine dusted off with her shirtsleeve.

“Noli me tangere,” she read.

That leads to a new question:

“Is that Greek?” asked William.

And a new answer:

“Latin, I think,” she replied. “I’ve seen it before in a book at school.”

Which leads to another question:

“What does it mean?

And the search for an answer:

Maxine traced the words with her finger, racking her brain, and the translation came to her suddenly from the depths of her memory.

The chapter ends with an answer that leads to even more questions:

“Touch me not.”