Hello, friends! How goes your writing this week? It’s hard to believe that we’re already in our final week of Teachers Write. Before we get started with today’s mini-lessons, I want to say thank you. I’m so grateful you chose to spend part of your summer writing with us, and I hope you’ll take that inspiration into your new school year.
And may I also take a moment to share some exciting news? THE NEXT SCIENTIST: THE UNEXPECTED BEGINNINGS AND UNWRITTEN FUTURE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT SCIENTISTS just got the most amazing starred review from School Library Journal!
Fascinating and captivating, Messner’s latest nonfiction book encourages elementary readers to keep digging, crafting, deconstructing, building, reading, and moving to find out more about themselves and the world around them…. The inclusion of names that are not often covered is a breath of fresh air. A first purchase for all libraries ~School Library Journal (Read the full review here.)
If you’d like me to sign a copy of this book especially for you and your readers, just order from my local bookstore, The Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid. I promise we’ll get it signed and sent out to you the week it comes out (8/27)!
All this month, we’ve been sharing specific revision strategies that you can try out with your own writing and with your students. Some of you have written to let us know how much you appreciate having a checklist of revision jobs to offer young writers and to use with your own projects. But today, I want to talk with you about departing from that list and trying something new. Sometimes it’s not a matter of fine-tuning text; it’s a matter of going back the drawing board entirely. And that brings me back to The Next Scientist!
When I was working on this book, I knew I wanted to include a wide variety of scientists from all different fields and all different backgrounds, so that every curious reader would have a chance to see themselves in the book. It probably won’t surprise you to know that my first draft was way too long. There were so many amazing scientists! How was I supposed to trim this manuscript down to a reasonable length?
Sometimes, the best way to revise is to return to an earlier stage in the writing process – in this case, brainstorming and planning. So I wrote down all of my scientists on Post-It Notes. I tagged those notes with smaller colored stickers to indicate the field of science in which each person worked. Then I rearranged the scientists into spreads that would make sense for both the text and the illustrations.
Stepping back from my laptop and getting away from the rough draft allowed me to look at the book’s subject with fresh eyes, and to create a new shape for the text, keeping that balance of diverse scientists and discoveries even as I trimmed. That allowed for a book that was much more readable and gave our amazing illustrator Julia Kuo a much stronger draft to start with when it was time to work her magic. Here’s a sampling of how those rearranged page spreads look now.
This week’s Teachers Write guest author Amy Guglielmo went back to the drawing board, too, when the draft of her picture book LUCY! HOW LUCILLE BALL DID IT ALL needed work.
My co-author, Jacqueline Tourville, and I struggled to revise our most recent picture book biography LUCY! HOW LUCILLE BALL DID IT ALL. Our opening page felt wordy, setting a slow, heavy tone for the rest of the book.
How it started:
Lucy loved to make people laugh. When Lucy was three, she hopped up on the counter of Mr. Newman’s general store and pretended that she was a frog. She stuck her tongue out to catch a make-believe fly. She puffed out her cheeks, crossed her eyes…and let out a great big Riiibbit!
We wanted the text to feel light and zippy, like a joke or a song. So, we decided to turn it on its head by trying it in rhyme.
Rhyming version:
Back in the days when kids were calm and proper…
A girl named Lucy put on shows for Newman’s shoppers. [At a grocery store]
A lady shook her head. “Good girls don’t yell out jokes!”
But Lucy just laughed and let out a great big…CROAK!
While the book didn’t ultimately come out as a rhyming book, this process helped us find our flow, rhythm, and groove with the pacing and page turns. We made major edits that let the text sing!
Final text:
Back in a time when children were told to be proper, calm, and quiet, a girl named Lucy hopped up on the counter of Mr. Newman’s general store, puffed out her cheeks, and let out a great big…
Riiibbit!
Trying something different can open a pathway to perfect pacing!