Enticing Hard-To-Reach Writers Blog Tour and Giveaway

     "Do you want to go for a walk?" Ruth stood over me, standing close, an urgency in her voice, like the time was now. 
     "Sure." I stood, making sure my things were settled and followed her outside.
     We were at a Choice Literacy retreat, surrounded by forests with trails and a glistening lake. Ruth and I wandered down a path and into the woods, getting to know each other the further we went. 

     Just this weekend, I walked with Ruth at the NCTE annual convention but this time our feet traveled over the rain-soaked sidewalks of St. Louis. We know each other well now so our conversations are less getting-to-know and more what-do-you-think, what-if, and how-about-this? 

     Even though the kinds of questions we ask each other have changed, the urgency is still there. Ruth is a determined woman and that's one of the many qualities I love about her. She sets the bar high for herself and others and she gets things done. 
     Because Ruth is who she is, this book is a beautiful tribute but also a call to action. She shares how hard the work is, how possible it is, and how necessary it is. Weaving personal stories and professional experiences together in her new book Enticing Hard-To-Reach Writers, Ruth invites us to walk alongside her on this journey of teaching writing. Don't worry, she'll guide the way.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"We are all changing. This is life - constant change. 

The intent is to move toward better versions of ourselves." (p. 29-30)

"Humans are wired as storytellers. Our brains use story to make sense of the world. Unfortunately, the stories children tell themselves are too often inaccurate." (p. 32)

"Our classrooms may be the last place where healing is possible for some students. Writing workshop may be the only opportunity for their voices to be heard." (p. 34)

"When teachers write, we stop creating assignments and begin cultivating a community. Writers thrive when surrounded by people who write. I know this, so I surround myself with writers. I love to talk with writers about writing. I can't believe how different we all are: I write to a word count, but my friend Tam says she'd never do that; I write at home, but my friend Jen writes at Starbucks; I keep a physical notebook full of sketches and lists and maps and notes, but my friend Franki keeps most of her thinking electronically." (p. 48)

(Hey! I think that's me! I'm Jen and I loooooove writing at Starbucks!)

"When we unlock the writing process of ourselves, 

we become prepared to guide students as they do the same." (p. 49)

"It's a misconception to believe that there are writers and nonwriters, 

that some people can write and others can't.

Everyone can learn to write.

Everyone can put words on the page.

And everyone struggles with wanting to not-write." (p. 57) 

"Writing workshop is the best vehicle for students to become the kind of people who are positive world changers." (p. 67)

Links

• Stenhouse Book Page
• Discover Play Build
• Book page on Ruth's website
• Enticing Writers Book Club - If you forward receipts to enticingwriters@gmail.com before November 30, you'll receive a free registration to Ruth's new course, Enticing Writers Book Club!

Be sure to visit all the stops on the blog tour!

11/13 - Clare & Tammy - Assessment in Perspective 

11/15 - Michelle Nero - Literacy Zone 

11/17 - Leigh Anne Eck - A Day In The Life 

11/20-  Mary Helen Gensch - Book Savors 

11/22 - Jen Vincent - Teach Mentor Texts 

11/27 - Julie Johnson - Raising Readers and Writers

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I Blame Writer's Workshop (And Reader's Workshop Too)

It's all Writer's Workshops' fault.

And Reader's Workshop too. 

I blame Writer's Workshop (and Reader's Workshop too) for making me into the writer I am today. 

I had time to read, time to talk about what I was reading, time to visit the library and explore books that were interesting to me, time to know myself as a reader alongside all the reading I did for school. I know I'm not the norm, I loved reading classics in high school. I felt really cool reading books that felt important, except for James Joyce's A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man. I loathed reading that book actually. It was okay though because I knew that even if that book wasn't for me (and it really wasn't for 17-year-old me), there were others that were for me. Without Reader's Workshop and the fact that I knew there were other books out there, I might have judged reading solely on my experience with that book. I might have *gasp* stopped reading. I could have decided it was me and my trouble to connect with this particular book and applied that to every book out there. But no, thanks to awesome teachers I had in middle school and especially in high school, I knew there were other books. My identity as a reader didn't hinge solely on the books I was assigned to read in school. 

It's definitely Reader's Workshop's fault for helping me grow as an independent reader who loved reading outside of school as much as in school. 

Because if I hadn't loved reading books so much, I wouldn't have all the experience with stories and words that gave me a great foundation for being a writer.

Reading and writing goes together. They directly influence, impact, and interact with each other. Writing is taking reading to the next level. Readers soak up all these wonderful words...but the real trick is to now take all this knowledge of stories and words and to create your own. 

While I can point a finger at Reader's Workshop for making me a writer, Writer's Workshop has to take some of the blame too.

I had time to write, time to discover topics I wanted to write about, time to share with peers and give and get feedback, time to confer with my teachers and get their feedback, time to share my writing, time to understand that writing is a process and I could navigate it. Most of all, I had time to get over that little voice in my head that told me I couldn't write or it wasn't worth it or I wasn't good. Lots of people have that little voice. I do sometimes, but most times I can just sit down and write. The thing is, last year I had coffee with one of my high school English teachers and we were talking about free writing. I told her my rules for free writing and she pointed out that I shouldn't forget about not listening to the little voice in your head. Guess what?! I had totally overlooked it! Why? Because I don't have to fight that little voice! I don't have to fight it because my awesome teachers helped me get over it in Writer's Workshop. She had it in her mind because she remembers how important it is but I forgot it because she did such a good job of banishing it from my brain. 

*boom*

Pretty awesome, right? 

See?

It's all Writer's Workshops' fault.

And Reader's Workshop too. 

 I wouldn't be the writer I am today without Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop. 

Obviously, I'm a fan of Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop because I know the power of Workshop firsthand as a student who experienced it. But there is so much out there about the benefits of using a Workshop model in teaching literacy. 

Thanks to Stacey Reidmiller, I discovered Megan Smith's new blog One Book, One Pen where she shares ideas for how to get started with Workshop and I'm in love already and can't wait to read more. I'm so excited to share it with teachers in my district. I'd love to hear which are your favorite workshop resources so please share in the comments! 

My Thoughts on How Education Can Change the World

Sometimes being an educator keeps me up at night.

And that leads to me creating a middle-of-the-night video that shares my thoughts on education because I'm so fired up I can't sleep. 

Teachers have the power 

to change the world
because we are charged 

with changing the lives of children.

I believe every teacher has to show kids they see them and they have to inspire them. And the easiest way to do that is to get them fired up to be consumers and creators. That's why I blog at Teach Mentor Texts and Story Exploratory to share ideas for how we can all be consumer and creators. With everything I share, I hope someone is inspired in some way.

I'm over doing things how they have always been done when we know better. 

I'd love to generate more discussion about how education can change the world. 

Here are some things you can do to join in:

• Watch this amazingly powerful speech from Chris Emdin. It helped me solidify some of my own thoughts. (Thanks to Kathy Burnette for sharing it with me.)
• Create your response to the question: How can education change the world? Link or share it in the comments below.
• Share this post and my video. We need more people in this conversation! Please invite others to think about this and join in. 

Thanks for listening! I see you. You inspire me. 

Animal Atlas

Title: Animal Atlast
Author: Virginie Aladjidi
Illustrator: Emmanuelle Tchoukriel
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Publication Date: October 4th, 2016
Genre/Format: Non-Fiction/Atlas - Informational
GoodReads Summary: Did you know that: 
Sea otters can spend months in the water without returning to land? 
Flying fish can glide for 300 ft over the water? 
A Praying Mantis can rotate its head 180 degrees?

Become an expert on all things that swim, fly, walk, hop, slither, and crawl! In a celebration of the many animals that share our planet, this gorgeously illustrated atlas explores over 250 different animals across the seven continents. Learn where different animals live, what they eat, how they communicate, and many more fascinating facts!What I Think: The setup of Animal Atlas makes it really easy for readers to see where animals live on the Earth. The concept of the Earth being such a big place and understanding where other countries are compared to our is pretty abstract. Animal Atlas is organized so animals are presented with other animals that live near them. Readers can easily see where animals are in the world while also learning about many different animals. This book covers a range of animals, some common and others unique. This book would be a great to use when inviting students to learn about animals in a certain part of the world and could lead into further learning about animals. I work with a 4th grade teacher who did a focused Genius Hour where she let students pick any topic to research as long is it related to the northeast region (which is what their were studying in their SS unit). This book would be great if you want kids to think about researching animals from a certain area of the world and then encourage them to read other texts to learn more about a specific animal they chose.
Snatch of Text: 
"Appaloosa Horse - Equus caballus, Class: mammal
The Appaloosa, with its spotted coat, was brought to American by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, then raised by the Nez Perce tribe near the Palouse River, from which the horse gets its name. The Appaloosa breed is popular for western riding competitions." (p. 3)
Writing Prompt: Can you find your favorite animal in the Animal Atlas? Incorporate what you learn about an animal in the Animal Atlas and what you read about that animal elsewhere to share what you know about that animals.

For The Love Of Mentor Texts - Jennifer Laffin

Welcome to another guest post in my series For The Love of Mentor Texts here at Teach Mentor Texts. I love to talk about the power of mentor texts to impact our writing but I'm thrilled to have friends share how they use mentor texts for a fresh perspective. Today I'm excited to share thoughts from Jennifer Laffin who blogs at A Sweet Writing Life. I hope you are as inspired by her ideas as I am!

Would you like to write a guest post for For The Love of Mentor Texts? Just let me know by filling out this simple form. 

*********************************

In the summer of 2011, I took part in the National Writing Project’s Summer Institute at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Those three weeks were heaven on earth for me as I wrote, researched, and learned about the best practices in teaching writing. I came to the Institute knowing very little about teaching writing, but I was like a sponge, ready to soak up any and all wise words.

I had to choose a Teacher Inquiry Project to research during the Institute. After mulling over hundreds of topics (literally hundreds because I knew very little about teaching writing), I decided to spend my time learning about using mentor texts in the writing classroom. Mentor texts combined two things I loved -- reading and writing.

That choice, to research how to use mentor texts in the writing classroom, was the best decision! It was the toehold I needed to launch me into this beautiful world of teaching writing. Before the Institute, I hadn’t even heard of using a mentor text in the writing classroom. Now, I can’t teach writing without one.

There are many reasons why mentor texts help make teaching writing easier, but here are a few of my favorites:

Mentor texts can be used for all phases of the writing process. They can spark an idea, help with revision, and show us how conventions make writing strong.

Mentor texts show us some cool writing tricks. Including the Power of Three (listing three details in a row), varying sentence length for effect, or varying your first line are just a few ways mentor texts can support student writers.

Mentor texts help us teach some writing elements that are difficult. For example, take character development. Many young writers create rather flat characters. However, after studying how an author develops a character, these writers can change their character into one that has life.

Mentor texts are a great way to teach conventions within the context of writing. Do you have students who don’t capitalize the letter “I” or the first word of a sentence? Are run on sentences running rampant because your writer forgot how to use a period? Is the writing missing paragraphs, making it very difficult to read and follow? Pull out a mentor text for a quick study of how the author used these conventions to make the writing easier for the reader.

Any book can be a mentor text. You don’t necessarily need a special title to get the job done. Read through your favorite picture book and point out some things you notice that your student writers could pull into their own writing. Soon, your students will do this on their own.

With a mentor text, you never have to teach writing alone again. Think of all those experts that are just waiting in your classroom library for their chance to help!

Don’t know where to start? The Writing Fix website has an amazing bibliography of mentor texts and lessons to accompany them.

If you aren’t already using mentor texts in your writing classroom, I hope you will give it a try!

A giant hug to Jennifer to stopping by to share her love of mentor texts!

Let's Play The Why Game! #HowToTellaStory

Last week, Aly from Kid Lit Frenzy and I shared The Why Game to kickoff How To Tell a Story Week! We hope you've had fun playing along. I can't even begin to tell you all of the crazy stories we've come up with in my house! Today is your last chance to enter the giveaway to win a copy of How To Tell a Story or a Skype visit with author Daniel Nayeri. 

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Today is also the day to share your stories from The Why Game. Visit our public How To Tell a Story Padlet, double click to start a new box, and then share your story. If you want to remember what blocks we're playing with, you can go here or here. 

And if you missed any of the How To Tell a Story Week fun, you can check it all out here:

Jennifer Reed at Reederama 

How To Tell a Story in Action!

Aly at Kid Lit Frenzy Interviews Brian Won

Jen Vincent at Teach Mentor Texts Interviews Daniel Nayeri

Cynthia Alaniz at Librarian In Cute Shoes

How To Tell a Story in Action!

We hope you had a great time writing stories with us! A giant thanks to Workman for making this possible. We appreciate receiving How To Tell a Story in exchange for our honest reviews and the opportunity to host How To Tell a Story Week and offer the giveaways. Thanks so much for celebrating with us!

Interview with Daniel Nayeri - #HowToTellAStory Week!

The celebration of How to Tell a Story by Daniel Nayeri with illustrations by Brian Won continues! I'm thrilled to have Daniel Nayeri here to talk about how the book came to be and his thoughts on creativity and writing. Huge thanks to Daniel for entertaining our questions!

Can you share with our readers how you came up with the ideas for How to Tell a Story and what steps you went through to test out your ideas?

I love storytelling games. And there are several products out there that are essentially a deck of cards full of images, or a dice, and the idea is that you look at them and you’re off. The core idea at the center of HOW TO TELL A STORY was to give a little bit more scaffolding to that experience. And the reason is simple. I’ve asked teachers, and many said to me that their kids would look at the dice or cards, and say, “Now what?”

Obviously, kids have an amazing capacity for imagining stories. But often they don’t have any craft under them, to help guide them. They look at a bunch of images and the possibilities are limitless…essentially, they get choice-paralysis.

So with that problem in mind, I thought, what if you could prompt a kid a little bit, with a basic plot structure? The problem with that is language. If I showed a bunch of images and then said, “Find a protagonist for your story that can be either animate or inanimate…” I’ve already lost them at the word protagonist. That was when the color-coded system came to mind. If we just made all animate nouns red, and inanimate nouns blue, and places orange, etc, then we could bypass all the technical jargon.

I went home that night, grabbed my son’s alphabet blocks, and printed out a bunch of images from illustrators I admire. I made the prototype right then.

Sidenote: You can see work by Joy Ang and Aurélie Neyret, two artists I have been lucky enough to edit in the past. You can also see that I initially conceptualized the color-coding as a frame. Thankfully, our art director (Colleen AF Venable) convinced me that we could have the entire background be a solid color, and she was completely right.

With my prototype, I immediately started play-testing. I wrote prompts, created games, and got a sense of what worked, and what was too formalistic.

When it came time to think of an illustrator, our first and only choice was Brian Won. We wanted a style that felt “storybook vintage,” a modern take on Paul Galdone. Brian’s work has such strong iconography and bold colors and textures…we knew the images would still look great on a 1x1 block.

At first, we went for a more muted color palette.

Here’s an early look at the block template using that color scheme. 

It’s nice, but we quickly shifted to something more playful.

We also spent a lot of time thinking about what images would be ideal in each category (things, places, emotions, etc). What is the best way to represent “fearful,” for example? Brian and Colleen made a brilliant duo in that regard. Here we had really basic concepts like sadness or trees, and an artist would draw anything. It was our turn to experience a bit of choice-paralysis.

I remember with the image for “greedy,” we had a long discussion. The initial sketch of a snake was super fun, but I remember everyone had a different interpretation for it. 

I thought it represented “ambition,” which can be greedy. Others said “perseverance.” After that, we tried one with fish. The idea was that it was already a well-fed fish, but its greed was getting it into trouble. It also didn’t quite read right, even though the image itself is striking. 

We kept working on it, and eventually ended up with my favorite image in the entire project. Greedy squirrel. Look at that guy. He’s not sharing with anybody.

Around this time, we had locked down our package, which is this delightful box, with the cubes arranged around the book itself. But that created another challenge. How do we design a cover for the book that can stand alone, but also look good with 20 other images nestled around it? It would either need to be 1 strong image, bigger than the others, or a type-driven design. Here are three samples that I absolutely adored. 

We saw a lot of potential in the third option, and it’s easy to see how it developed into the current cover. 

Throughout all this, we were play-testing more and more. It was especially helpful to take it into a few 3rd grade classrooms. I also had the opportunity to show the idea to an ESL teacher, and she really pushed our understanding of where the idea could go. We immediately removed all text from the images on the blocks, and I looked into Bloom’s Taxonomy to organize my thoughts in the book.

It was visions and revisions after that, and even more revisions besides.

What are some experiences that helped you become a writer?

Ooph. I think the experiences that shaped me into a writer are definitely third- or fourth-date kinda material. James Tate had a brilliant poem on the subject. It goes like this: 

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems

They didn’t have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
“You look like a god sitting there.
Why don’t you try writing something?”

I read that and I see three equally important experiences for the ape to become a writer…suffering, pride, and the inability to do anything else.

I think we have a tendency to fetishize the suffering part. Lots of artists out there seem to be actively seeking it as if it was an entrance requirement to MFA programs. For me, as I see it in the poem, the experience is better rendered as the ability to see the world as it is, to empathize with it’s highest and lowest creatures at the same time, and to see their pain equally. But that’s not a particularly concise way of saying it. I wonder if anyone ever said it better than James Tate.

A more positive approach to this same idea is that we write in order to create a world that ought to be.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, you said, “I want to make really meaningful art objects for great and terrible children.” What are some thoughts about your audience that you kept in mind as you designed How To Tell a Story? How did writing for children/young adult impact the work?

Art objects for great and terrible children is actually the editorial mandate I set out for our team at Workman. 

To me, it hits several points I try to make about our work:
We don’t think of children as quirky adults.
We care enough to call our stuff objects (even artful ones).
But we realize that to children, a kite or a good noisy fart can be an art-form.
And we think enough of childhood to reference the “great and terrible wilderness," where kids often roam, and need help in order to turn their faces to adulthood.

That may be pompous and overwrought, but it’s also true.

I find a lot of kids products try to be “cool” in their voice or their design.

They either pander, or they pretend that a kid is interested in the exact same things as a 30-something hipster. To me, there is as implicit disdain for children in a product like that. It feels like an adult—afraid of looking silly in front of other adults—trying to entertain kids while also sneering at them. I don’t like that feeling. I’m not trying to preserve some sense of coolness. I want to share something that I find genuinely neat. Something amazing and wondrous. I also embarrass myself a lot, so what do I know.

What inspired you to experiment with the format of combining a book with a game that eventually leads to stories and writing?
The short answer is that I wanted the project to be interactive so that I didn’t get caught in the trap of proscribing—from on high—some silly formula for writing. It isn’t a project that tries to limit storytelling, assert three-act structure, or any sort of formalism like that. That would be foolish and 100 years out of date. But I did want to impart some basic ideas about conflict, motivation, and characterization. These are elements of the craft that you can find in every great story. If I could do that, while readers bounce off the walls with the craziest ideas they can imagine, then all the better.

What is your favorite indie bookstore (where is it and why do you like it)?
That’s a tough one. If you’re an author lucky enough to tour around the country, you meet some wonderful booksellers. They’re not wonderful just because they sell books either. But because they’re the beating heart of the community. It is not hyperbole when I tell you, I survive my trips caravanning from one indie bookstore to the next. They are filled with passionate people, with roots in the community, who create a space unique to the region. Often, they have a section for local attractions, folklore, and cookbooks. I walk in thinking the whole world is a strip mall, and I walk out in love with the entire town. How can I choose?

But to really answer your question, Astoria Bookshop is my local indie store and I love them. Lexi can chat with you for ten minutes and then pick out the exact book you should read at that moment. She recommended I read THE NAME OF THE WIND by Patrick Rothfuss, for instance, and she was completely right.

Finish the statements: “Reading is…” and “Writing is…”
Reading is skydiving. Writing is jumping out of a plane.

What are you reading and loving right now (or recently)? What are some ways what you have read influences your own writing/art?
I just read ORBITING JUPITER by Gary D. Schmidt. What a difficult and spotless book. I really love his ability to capture a teenage boy’s internal voice. I haven’t stopped reading Shaun Tan’s RULES OF SUMMER since the day it came out. It’s gorgeous and uncanny. As for influence, I have a pretty literal impression of it. I think of it like any other kind of nutrition (or fuel injection). Sometimes, after a bout of reading terrible books for a few weeks, I can feel myself unable to think clearly. After one short story by Karen Russell, or a return to Italo Calvino, I could survive for months.

What is the best writing advice you have received and what advice would you give student writers?
The best writing advice I ever received was my football coach screaming in my ear that every half-decent player in the world could do the big things right. Nobody gets a cookie for being good enough. The great ones, if you study them, were precise. It’s a game of inches, he’d say. Slow attrition over time. That’s why the best players do the smallest things right, every time, over time. Turn your elbow an inch to the left, and your throw sails wide. Hit your blocks an inch one way and you don’t clear a gap. Give up an inch here, an inch there, and suddenly you’re losing after four quarters.

It turns out this is true of everything else in life.

As for advice that I give…I’ve said this before, but I’ll repeat myself because I’m not really that important of a person, and chances are that if someone is reading this, they haven’t heard it before. Besides, it’s my best advice: Please, for the sake of everyone in your life, realize that your work is propaganda. George Orwell said, “Above a quite low level, literature is an attempt to influence the views of one’s contemporaries.” He was right insofar as he meant that all art is propaganda of some kind. All art is telling you to worship something, and yours is no different. And the worst thing a young artist can do is pretend that he or she isn’t affected by that desire to convince others to worship alongside them. The worst mistake is to imagine they’re dispensing Truth with a capital T. That Moses came down the mountain holding their manuscript.

At this point you may have already decided that I’m crazy. But if you’re still looking, then my advice would be to find out what you're telling people to worship, and make sure that something is worthwhile.

Bravo! Thank you, Daniel! So awesome to hear your thoughts!

Stop in to read the other 
How To Tell a Story week posts!
November 3, 2015 - How to Tell a Story Week Kick-Off - 
Teach Mentor Texts and Kid Lit Frenzy
November 4, 2015 - Jennifer Reed at Reederama
November 5, 2015 - Illustrator Brian Won visits Kid Lit Frenzy
November 6, 2015 - Author/Creator Daniel Nayeri visits Teach Mentor Texts
November 9, 2015 - Cynthia Alaniz at Librarian in Cute Shoes 
November 10, 2015 - How to Tell A Story - 
Share your "Why Game" stories - Teach Mentor Texts and Kid Lit Frenzy

Enter to win a copy of How to Tell a Story: 

I hope you've enjoyed all the posts so far! Don't forget the giveaway! Hooray for Workman Publishing and the opportunity to offer a giveaway of one copy of How To Tell a Story to five lucky winners with a US mailing address. In addition, one winner will receive a Skype visit with creator Daniel Nayeri. 

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How To Tell A Story: #HowToTellaStory Week Is here!

We've been counting down the days for the past two weeks but How To Tell a Story week is finally here! Alyson Beecher from Kid Lit Frenzy and I are thrilled to be celebrating this awesome writing resource that is sure to get kids' imaginations going and their words flowing. 

Watch the video below to find out more about How To Tell a Story brought to you by Workman by author Daniel Nayeri and illustrator Brian Won. They so aptly describe it as "1 Book + 20 Story Blocks = A Million Adventures". You'll see just how many stories comes from this imaginative tool. 

We have a whole week of celebrations plan and an exciting way for you and your students to join in on the fun! Stop in to see How To Tell a Story in action and to hear from author Daniel Nayeri and illustrator Brian Won.

Join the Fun!

Wednesday, 11/4 - Jennifer Reed at Reederama 

How To Tell a Story in Action!

Thursday, 11/5 - Aly at Kid Lit Frenzy Interviews Brian Won

Friday, 11/6 - Jen Vincent at Teach Mentor Texts interviews Daniel Nayeri

Monday, 11/9 - Cynthia Alaniz at Librarian In Cute Shoes

How To Tell a Story in Action!

Tuesday, 11/10 - Final Celebration at Teach Mentor Texts and Kid Lit Frenzy

*We'll have a Padlet set up where you and your students can share your stories!

Ready to play along?

Here are the directions to The Why Game, one of the many activities in the book, and below you'll find a handful of blocks so you and your students can play along. Be sure to write down your story ideas or the stories you come up with and come back on Tuesday, 11/10 to share and read what others write too!

 

 

 

 

We hope you'll check out How To Tell a Story and visit the various blog posts we'll have up to celebrate #howtotellastory week! It is November and NaNoWriMo and PiBoIdMo are here! It would be great if you and your students take a try at The Why Game. We would love to hear what you think and what stories emerge when you give your brain a few ideas to get going. Thanks for stopping by and celebrating with us! We do have a giveaway as well. Thanks to Workman, we have a copy of How To Tell a Story available to five lucky winners with a US mailing address. Enter below!

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