Imagery/Descriptive Language – Unleashing Readers

Educators’ Guide for The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo

February 6, 2024 by Kellee

The Puppets of Spelhorst
Author: Kate DiCamillo
Illustrator: Julie Morstad
Published: October 10th, 2023 by Candlewick Press

Summary: From master storyteller Kate DiCamillo comes an original fairy tale—with enchanting illustrations by Julie Morstad—in which five puppets confront circumstances beyond their control with patience, cunning, and high spirits.

Shut up in a trunk by a taciturn old sea captain with a secret, five friends—a king, a wolf, a girl, a boy, and an owl—bicker, boast, and comfort one another in the dark. Individually, they dream of song and light, freedom and flight, purpose and glory, but they all agree they are part of a larger story, bound each to each by chance, bonded by the heart’s mysteries. When at last their shared fate arrives, landing them on a mantel in a blue room in the home of two little girls, the truth is more astonishing than any of them could have imagined. A beloved author of modern classics draws on her most moving themes with humor, heart, and wisdom in the first of the Norendy Tales, a projected trio of novellas linked by place and mood, each illustrated in black and white by a different virtuoso illustrator. A magical and beautifully packaged gift volume designed to be read aloud and shared, The Puppets of Spelhorst is a tale that soothes and strengthens us on our journey, leading us through whatever dark forest we find ourselves in.

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation and Discussion Questions:

Please view and enjoy The Puppets of Spelhorst educators’ guide I created for Candlewick Press:

You can also access the educators’ guide here.

You can learn more about The Puppets of Spelhorst on Candlewick’s page.

Recommended For:

Educators’ Guide for Nothing Interesting Ever Happens to Ethan Fairmont by Nick Brooks

January 23, 2024 by Kellee

Nothing Interesting Ever Happens to Ethan Fairmont
Author: Nick Brooks
Published: October 4th, 2022 by Union Square Kids

Summary: Something cool happening in Ferrous City? Not a chance.

Until one day . . . when self-proclaimed genius inventor Ethan Fairmont runs into an abandoned car factory to avoid a local bully and accidentally stumbles across his ex-best friend Kareem, new kid Juan Carlos, and an extraterrestrial visitor. Cheese (the alien) is stuck on Earth in need of some serious repairs, spicy snacks—and absolute, total secrecy. That’s easier said than done when mysterious agents descend on Ferrous City to search for Cheese. With time running out and their family and friends in potential danger, can Ethan, Kareem, and Juan Carlos pull off an intergalactic rescue before they’re all found out?

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation and Discussion Questions:

Please view and enjoy the educators’ guide I created for Cake Creative Kitchen:

You can also access the educators’ guide here.

Recommended For:

Educators’ Guide for Airi Sano, Prankmaster General: New School Skirmish by Zoe Tokushige, Illustrated by Jennifer Naalchigar

December 12, 2023 by Kellee

Airi Sano, Prankmaster General: New School Skirmish
Author: Zoe Tokushige
Illustrator: Jennifer Naalchigar
Published: September 20, 2022 by Philomel Books

Summary: A hilarious story of new-school hijinks, filled with friendship, family, and plenty of pranks–perfect for fans of Dork Diaries and Diary of a Wimpy Kid!

Meet Airi Sano. After spending her entire childhood moving from one military base to another, she’s excited to be settling down for the long-term in Hawai’i. She’s less excited about her new teacher, who’s determined to make Airi like school. But she’s got a plan: prank her teacher so hard that she gives up on even trying to get Airi to do any work–especially any reading.

But Mrs. Ashton won’t give up, no matter what Airi does. Airi will need the help of her new classmates–who might even be her new friends–to get Mrs. Ashton to crack. It’s time . . . for a prank war!

With fun and funny black-and-white illustrations throughout, New School Skirmish kicks off a brand-new series for readers to adore!

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation and Discussion Questions:

Please view and enjoy the educators’ guide I created for New School Skirmish:

You can also access the educators’ guide here.

Recommended For:

Discussion Guide for How to Heal a Gryphon by Meg Cannistra

November 14, 2023 by Kellee

How to Heal a Gryphon
Author: Meg Cannistra
Published: October 4th, 2022 by Inkyard Press

Summary: To save her family, she’ll have to make a dangerous bargain and tip the scales off balance.

With her thirteenth birthday just around the corner, Giada Bellantuono has to make a big decision: Will she join the family business and become a healer or follow her dreams? But even though she knows her calling is to heal vulnerable animals, using her powers to treat magical creatures is decidedly not allowed.

When a group of witches kidnaps her beloved older brother, Rocco, and her parents are away, Giada is the only person left who can rescue him. Swept into the magical underground city of Malavita, Giada will need the help of her new companions to save her brother—or risk losing him forever.

Review: In the first book of the Giada the Healer series by Meg Cannistra, we enter a world where magic is real and mythical creatures exist and we get to meet Giada, a thirteen year old girl from a family of healers. She has magic, just like the rest of her family, but unlike them, her magic works best with animals. She knows she is going to have to tell her family that she wants to work with animals, not humans, but she has been putting it off trying to figure out how to break it to them without them being too upset. But before she can get a chance, she finds herself in the most important fight of her life–one against the witches underground to save her brother. Through this journey, will Giada be able to show that her passion is just as important as tradition?

Readers will love Giada and her story. It is paced so well, with a balance of plot-driven and character-driven elements, a body-positive message throughout, and the magical system & world building is intertwined with aspects of Roman mythology and Italian folklore. I also particularly love the lesson found within the book about passions: Giada’s internal struggle of passion versus expectation is one that so many readers will connect with, and Giada will be a great guide for those in similar situations.

I was lucky enough to be able to create a discussion guide for Cake Creative Kitchen and Inkyard Press for this book and educators will find that Cannistra’s novel includes imagery and descriptive language, complex characters, an opportunity to look at cause and effect, thought-provoking reflection opportunities, a quest-focused plot that follows the hero’s journey, and more elements that allow the reader to deeply delve into the text.

This book will definitely leave any reader wanting more, but they’re in luck! The second book in the series, How to Save a Unicorn, is waiting for them! Happy reading everyone!

Teachers’ Tools for Navigation and Discussion Questions:

Please view and enjoy the educators’ guide I created for Cake Creative Kitchen:

You can also access the educators’ guide here.

Recommended For:

Up In Flames by Hailey Alcaraz

October 12, 2023 by Ricki

Up In Flames
Author: Hailey Alcaraz
Published: October 3, 2023 by Viking

Summary: Gorgeous, wealthy, and entitled, Ruby has just one single worry in her life—scheming to get the boy next door to finally realize they’re meant to be together. But when the California wildfires cause her privileged world to go up in flames, Ruby must struggle to find the grit and compassion to help her family and those less fortunate to rise from the ashes.

At eighteen, Ruby Ortega is an unapologetic flirt who balances her natural aptitude for economics with her skill in partying hard. But she couldn’t care less about those messy college boys—it’s her intense, brooding neighbor Ashton who she wants, and even followed to school. Even the fact that he has a girlfriend doesn’t deter her . . . whatever Ruby wants, she eventually gets.

Her ruthless determination is tested when wildfires devastate her California hometown, destroying her parents’ business and causing an unspeakable tragedy that shatters her to her core. Suddenly, Ruby is the head of the family and responsible for its survival, with no income or experience to rely on. Rebuilding seems hopeless, but with the help of unexpected allies—including a beguiling, dark-eyed boy who seems to understand her better than anyone—Ruby has to try. When she discovers that the fires also displaced many undocumented people in her town, it becomes even more imperative to help. And if she has to make hard choices along the way, can anyone blame her?

In her powerful debut novel, Mexican American author Hailey Alcaraz chronicles a riveting portrait of transformation, resilience, and love with an unlikely heroine who, when faced with unforeseen disaster, surprises everyone, especially herself.

Review: This book reminds us all that we are imperfect, and we won’t always make the right choices. Ruby’s story is set in a backdrop of the California wildfires. The book includes richly realized themes, and I particularly appreciated the ways in which Author Hailey Alcaraz interrogated the intersections of race and class. I was invested in Ruby’s story and rooting for her from the beginning to end. She is certainly flawed (as we all are), and she felt very real to me. I really enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it. (The audiobook is excellent!)

Tools for Navigation: Teachers might have students map some of the many themes of this book, considering how they are integrated within the text and the lessons they teach readers.

Discussion Questions:

How would you describe Ruby? What qualities does she have that are positive? What qualities might she work on? What lessons does she learn?
How does the setting shape the story? How might the text be different if the setting was different?
How are Ashton, Remy, and Charlie different? How does Ruby’s relationship with each help us understand her more?

Flagged Spreads/Passages: She understood that some things required more than sheer willpower. Some things—the important things, the hard things, the things that defined you as a person—required patience and trust and listening, too (p. 370, Advanced Reader Copy, and the quote may change).

Read This If You Love: Realistic Fiction, Romance, Social Justice Stories

Recommended For:

**Thank you to Aubrey at Penguin Young Readers for providing a copy for an honest review**

There Was a Party for Langston by Jason Reynolds, Illustrated by Jerome Pumphrey & Jarrett Pumphrey

September 26, 2023 by Kellee

There Was a Party for Langston
Author: Jason Reynolds
Illustrators: Jerome Pumphrey & Jarrett Pumphrey
Published October 3rd, 2023 by Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books

Summary: New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds’s debut picture book is a snappy, joyous ode to Word King, literary genius, and glass-ceiling smasher Langston Hughes and the luminaries he inspired.

Back in the day, there was a heckuva party, a jam, for a word-making man. The King of Letters. Langston Hughes. His ABCs became drums, bumping jumping thumping like a heart the size of the whole country. They sent some people yelling and others, his word-children, to write their own glory.

Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and more came be-bopping to recite poems at their hero’s feet at that heckuva party at the Schomberg Library, dancing boom da boom, stepping and stomping, all in praise and love for Langston, world-mending word man. Oh, yeah, there was hoopla in Harlem, for its Renaissance man. A party for Langston.

Praise:

Melding celebratory text and kinetic, graphical art, the creators underscore the power of the subject’s poetry to move and to inspire. – Publishers Weekly, *STARRED REVIEW*, 8/14/2023

Evocative and celebratory words float around the dancers like strains of music, all the way to a culminating whirl of letters, laughter, and joy. Who knew these esteemed literary lions could cut the rug like that? – Booklist, *STARRED REVIEW*, 08/01/2023

Reynolds and the Pumphrey brothers take readers on a dazzling journey through Langston Hughes’ legacy … A bar set stratospherically high and cleared with room to spare. – Kirkus Reviews, *STARRED REVIEW*, 08/01/2023

This book is an absolute textual and pictorial glory of people, places, word-making, song-singing, storytelling, history-making moments, and images that are unforgettable. A beguiling, bedazzling collaboration that will send children to the shelves to learn more about all the names within, especially Hughes. – School Library Journal, *STARRED REVIEW*, July 2023

About the Creators:

Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a Kirkus Award winner, a UK Carnegie Medal winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, an Odyssey Award Winner and two-time honoree, the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. He was also the 2020–2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His many books include All American Boys (cowritten with Brendan Kiely); When I Was the Greatest; The Boy in the Black Suit; Stamped; As Brave as You; For Every One; the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu); Look Both Ways; Stuntboy, in the Meantime; Ain’t Burned All the Bright (recipient of the Caldecott Honor) and My Name Is Jason. Mine Too. (both cowritten with Jason Griffin); and Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor. He lives in Washington, DC. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com.

Jerome Pumphrey is a designer, illustrator, and writer, originally from Houston, Texas. His work includes It’s a Sign!, Somewhere in the Bayou, The Old Boat, and The Old Truck, which received seven starred reviews, was named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, and received the Ezra Jack Keats Writer Award Honor—all of which he created with his brother Jarrett. They also illustrated Jason Reynolds’s There Was a Party for Langston. Jerome works as a graphic designer at The Walt Disney Company. He lives near Clearwater, Florida.

Jarrett Pumphrey is an award-winning author-illustrator who makes books for kids with his brother, Jerome. Their books include It’s a Sign!, Somewhere in the Bayou, The Old Boat, and The Old Truck, which received seven starred reviews, was named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, and received the Ezra Jack Keats Writer Award Honor. They also illustrated Jason Reynolds’s There Was a Party for Langston. Jarrett lives near Austin, Texas.

Review: This book may just be perfection. All of it–the words, the story, the inspiration, and the art.

First, we have Jason Reynolds’s verse, written with a rhythm that is screaming to be read aloud (I can’t wait for the audiobook). The story is a celebration of Hughes about a celebration of Hughes, so the love is truly emanating off the pages. And the story of Reynolds’s inspiration is just so wholesome and a snapshot into history that deserves this book.

Second, the cherry on top is the pieces of art that illustrate Reynolds’s words. The Pumphrey brothers use handmade stamps to create spreads that complete the book into the complete package that it is. I loved how they included Hughes’s words and Reynolds’s words within the art as well.

I highly recommend reading Betsy Bird’s Goodreads review because she is so much more articulate and detailed than I am about this book in all of its glory.

Tools for Navigation: This text should be combined with Hughes’s work. His words are intertwined within the book which lends directly into picking up Hughes’s work to read alongside it. Readers could also find words within the illustrations and find which of Hughes’s work it comes from and look at why that particular section would be included at that point.

Additionally, other beloved authors were introduced to the readers, not only Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka but James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ashley Bryan, Octavia Butler, Countee Cullen, W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Ralph Ellison, Nikki Giovanni, Alex Haley, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright. These introductions could lend themselves to be the start of an author study, including asking why Reynolds and the Pumphreys would have chosen to include these specific authors.

Discussion Questions:

Why did Langston Hughes have a party at the library?
What are some ways that Reynolds captured the excitement and glory of the evening with his words?
How did the illustrators use words in their art? What does it add to the book?
How did some of Hughes’s purposes relate to issues we’re still facing in America?
What inspired Jason Reynolds to write this book?
How is this picture book biography different than others?

Flagged Spreads:

Read This If You Love: Poetry, Langston Hughes, Jason Reynolds

Recommended For:

**Thank you to Simon & Schuster’s Children’s Publishing for sharing a copy for review!**

Author Guest Post: “Delicious Details” by Caroline Hickey, Author of Ginny Off the Map

September 24, 2023 by Kellee

“Delicious Details”

How do you create a character that feels three-dimensional? One that readers can immediately picture and connect with? While there are many ways to approach this, I find that the simplest way to quickly nail a character is with details.

One of my favorite books about writing, Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, offers this wonderful bit of advice: “Often, a well-chosen detail can tell us more about a character—his social and economic status, his hopes and dreams, his vision of himself—than a long explanatory passage.”

The right detail can be an adjective, an action or even a gesture, but it has to be purposeful and specific.

In the opening scene of my middle-grade novel Ginny Off the Map, readers meet eleven-year-old Ginny Pierce, who, on the last day of school, does something pretty unusual.

My foot jiggles nervously under my desk. This morning we were told to collect all of our textbooks from our lockers and desks and place them in the designated piles at the front of the room. And I did—I returned all of them. Except one.

The Inspiring World of Earth Science is still in my backpack, which is tucked under my desk with my jiggling foot. My copy is old and battered, with rounded corners. The cover is sticky. Inside, it contains chapters on oceanography, hydrology, and atmospheric science. There are project guides detailing how to build a model volcano, how to re-create the formation of Hawaii, and how to make your own power station using the heat that fuels volcanic eruptions.

I love volcanoes. They are the earth literally turning itself inside out.

I don’t want to hand in this textbook. I was hoping the last day of school would be so busy that Mr. Sonito would forget all about it and I could keep it.

“I can’t find it,” I say. “I must have left it at home.”

Ginny lies to her teacher’s face and hides her science textbook because she wants to keep it so badly. This is the detail I chose to introduce her with, because I felt it said so much more than just an explanation of how smart she is, how much she loves science, and how different she is from most of the kids in her class, who were more than happy to hand in their books and head out the door for summer.

Coming up with unique character details can be a lot of fun. Try the following exercises to get the ideas flowing.

Exercise # 1 – Brainstorm Details

How do you get better at brainstorming details? Notice what’s around you! Have students spend a few minutes writing down a detailed description of the room they’re sitting in. Have them describe the person sitting next to them. Have them describe their breakfast, or something interesting they saw on the way to class. Good writing begins with paying attention!

Exercise # 2 – Name That Character

Ask students to think about a favorite character from a book or movie and try to recall a specific, revealing detail or action about that character. Ask them to describe the detail to their classmates, without naming the character or book/movie, and see if anyone can guess who the character is.

Exercise # 3 – Mix and Match

Write two lists on the board. One list should include potential characters, such as a grandmother, toddler, neighbor, friend, and coworker. The second list should include adjectives, such as optimistic, ornery, nervous, silly, flexible, and irrational. Draw lines at random between the characters and the adjectives to match them up, then give each student a matched set, such as an irrational neighbor or a silly grandmother, and have them come up with a specific detail describing their person. Share them with the class and discuss.

As Francine Prose said, “Details are what persuade us that someone is telling the truth.” Make sure to pay attention to all the interesting, ordinary things around you, and your writing will be better for it!

Published June 20th, 2023 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

About the Book: There are two things Ginny Pierce loves most in the world: geography facts and her father. But when her dad is deployed overseas and Ginny’s family must move to yet another town, not even her facts can keep her afloat. The geography camp she’s been anxiously awaiting gets canceled, and her new neighbors prefer her basketball-star sister. Worst of all, her dad is in a war zone and impossible to get ahold of. Ginny decides that running her own camp for the kids on her street will solve all her problems. But can she convince them (and herself) that there’s more to her than just facts?

With a fierce heart and steadfast determination, Ginny tackles the challenges and rewards of staying true to herself during a season of growth. This thoughtful novel explores the strength that develops through adversity; Ginny must learn to trust her inner compass as she navigates the world around her.

About the Author: Caroline Hickeylearned her world capitals by playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego in the 80s. She has since lived in more places than Ginny, her favorite being London, England. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School in New York City and is the author of Cassie Was Here, Isabelle’s Boyfriend, and many popular series books. She currently lives just outside Washington, DC with her husband, two daughters, and a labradoodle. Visit her at carolinehickey.com.

Thank you, Caroline, for these activities to add some more description into our students’ writing!