Stupid Cupid is one of the books I picked up at the Girls Taking Over the World Tour at Blue Manatee Books on Saturday. Rhonda Stapleton has created a fun read that many of my girls will love! I can’t wait to let this one loose in my classroom.
Felicity loves nothing more than hanging out with her two best friends, Andy and Maya–unless, of course, it’s drooling over Derek, her current crush. This looks to be a good year, especially when Felicity picks up a part time job at a matchmaking service. When she shows up to the first day of work at Cupid’s Hollow, she learns that she really is a cupid. Armed with a hot-pink and totally tricked out PDA (the modern equivalent of Cupid’s bow and arrow), she is ready to start making matches at her high school.
Since she can’t be bothered to read the directions (they’re boring), she decides to go with her gut. The first matches light a fire between couples, but will any of them last? And then there’s the problem of Maya. She beautiful and talented but shy. Felicity would love to hook up her best friend with just the right guy, but which one? Why just one? She shoots her email arrows at three different guys for Maya so Maya can choose herself. Along the way she also shoot arrows to get revenge on some mean girls and spice up her parents’ marriage. Before she knows it, Felicity is in over her head with love problems. Can she sort it all out before it’s too late?
I laughed my way through Felicity’s antics at school and home, and hope you will, too. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more adventures in Flirting with Disaster.
104) The Believers by Janice Holt Giles – an interesting look inside a Shaker village through story
105) Schooled by Gordon Korman – hilarious! I can’t wait to share this title
106) Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose – I am amazed at what I didn’t learn in history class. Claudette’s story is inspiring and brave and should be shared with every teen who feels their life can’t make a difference
106) Beauty Queens by Libba Bray – fantastic! awesome! I want more!
107) A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg – I like Addie Ann
108) Crossing Stones by Helen Frost – poetry, women’s suffrage, and war
109) War Horse by Michael Morpurgo – Joey is quite a horse
110) Ain’t Nothing But a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry by Scott Reynolds Nelson – what a way to make research come alive
111) The Roar by Emma Clayton – Is there going to be more to follow, or should I be satisfied with the ending?
112) The Mammoth Hunters by Jean Auel – Listening to this one made me realize how much of this series I skim when I read them.
113) Stupid Cupid by Rhonda Stapleton – a fun read that many of my girls will enjoy
Sometimes early drafts of writing are filled with tired, overused words. You want to avoid these in your writing! Instead, you want your poem–or other writing–to offer a word picture. One way to revise is to crack open these tired words to find the crystal clear image inside. It’s like cracking open a geode to find the sparkling crystals inside.
Here are some tired words and sentences that need cracked open:
words like fun, nice, pretty, wonderful, scary, good
It was a nice day.
I had a lot of fun.
The flowers were colorful.
Snow is nice.
She is a wonderful person.
What examples do you find in your own writing?
Questions are the hammer you use to crack open these tired words and sentences. What questions can you ask to discover the image inside? You can also use your imagination. Close your eyes and picture what a nice day might look and sound like. Be sure to use all five senses.
Here are some examples of what you can do with your writing:
It was a nice day =
The sun came up over the sea. Cold water splashed my feet sending a chill over my body. The air smelled of sweet salt water. The sun rays made the water glitter like fireworks. The sand felt warm on my frozen feet. The wet rocks made a beautiful shade of gray. The stars came up. The little sparkling dots made me feel safe in bed.
It was kind of dark =
The sun barely peeks through the curtain, making the empty living room dim, not the grim kind of dim, but a serene dim that leads the mind to creativity.
This lesson come from the wonderful Georgia Heard, in The Revision Toolbox (Heineman, 2002).
And you can take part. All you have to do is head over to Tera Lynn Child’s blog where she has links to all the clues you need along with complete rules and directions, not to mention helpful hints.
What are you looking for? The title of the second book in her latest trilogy about the Medusa girls. The first book is called Sweet Venom (and it comes out next week!), but the title of the first book has been a secret until today. Each blog you visit will provide another letter of the title. You just have to weed out the duplicates and put the remaining letters in the right order to create the title.
What treasure will you win? Five lucky winners will win signed copies of Sweet Venom. The grand prize winner will win a $50 gift card to the bookstore of your choice. Hey, sign me up for that one!
Here it is if you haven’t guessed already: this blog is sponsoring the letter of the day, and it is….
Mika and Ellie live in a future world very different–and far worse–than our own. The Animal Plague caused humans to destroy almost all animal and plant life before retreating behind the Wall that isolated the Northern Hemisphere from the wasteland to the south. There is not enough room for everyone. If you have enough money, you can live in the Golden Towers of London. The rest live in refugee cities or the Shadows, a flooded, moldy slum beneath the towers.
Ellie disappeared a year ago, and Mika is the only one who believes she is still alive. He will do anything to find her again. When the Youth Development Foundation starts recruiting mutants to compete in violent virtual reality games, Mika signs up even though his gut tells him his whole society is based on lies. Will he discover the truth and find Ellie before it is too late for them all?
The Roar (Scholastic 2010) by Emma Clayton had me turning pages to find out what would happen next. There is nonstop action from pod fighter battles to harpoon guns. The action in the arcades soon spills out into real life, often sooner than any one expected. The secrets–concealed and revealed–kept me guessing until the last page. Mika is determined to learn the truth, and to do so, he learns to hide what he knows.
The ending leaves me wondering. Is there another book to come? (It looks like there is a sequel called The Whisper, but it’s not available.) In some ways I found the ending satisfying, but it definitely leaves open the question of what will come next? Mika and Ellie reach their full potential, but they haven’t yet discovered what they are capable of. The children awaken, but what will they do?
Read first fifteen minutes. Review mystery and suspense in Characteristics of genre notes. Finish the peer conference you started last Friday. Remember to read let your partner know what you want feedback on and read your writing aloud to them. Responder, listen carefully, share what you heard, point out positive parts, ask questions. Writer, decide what you will do next to make your writing better. Once you have finished, go and revise! Homework: Read and work on poems. Turn in one poem by Friday.
Tuesday
Read first 15 minutes of class. Review traditional literature in Characteristics of Genre Notes. Cracking open an image to revise your writing. Ask questions to discover what image your tired, wornout sentences hide. Homework: Read and work on poems.
Wednesday
Read first 15 minutes of class. Review Memoir/Biography/Autobiography in Characteristics of Genre Notes. Complete a second peer conference to help each other crack open images. Homework: Read and finish draft of poem.
Thursday
Read first 15 minutes of class. Review informational texts in Characteristics of Genre Notes. Good poetry is cut to the bone. Look through you poems and cut out any words you don’t need. Be ruthless! Homework: Read and work on poems. You should be ready to turn in a poem by next week.
Friday
LIBRARY. We will visit the library every other Friday throughout the year. Our library day is a day to take care of book business. During library time you may check out and return library books, read or comment on book or author blogs (once we are in the new library) including your classmates, read. I expect everyone to bring or choose a book to read during library time. Homework: Read.
Read first fifteen minutes. Review mystery and suspense in Characteristics of genre notes. Finish the peer conference you started last Friday. Remember to read let your partner know what you want feedback on and read your writing aloud to them. Responder, listen carefully, share what you heard, point out positive parts, ask questions. Writer, decide what you will do next to make your writing better. Once you have finished, go and revise! Homework: Read and work on poems. Turn in one poem by Friday.
Tuesday
Read first 15 minutes of class. Review traditional literature in Characteristics of Genre Notes. Meet your Individual Proofreading List. It is important to make your writing as conventional as possible. Use your proofreading list to check for errors you know how to correct. Everyone will add these conventions to begin with: 1) Obvious stuff; 2) Circle and look up every word you are not 100% sure how to spell; and 3) Capitalize the first, last, and important words in titles. Homework: Read and work on poems.
Wednesday
Read first 15 minutes of class. Review Memoir/Biography/Autobiography in Characteristics of Genre Notes. I Am poems. Think about how you see yourself and how others see you. Brainstorm ideas using the graphic organizer. Use your ideas to create a poem. Begin and end with the phrase “I am what I am.” Repeat the phrase periodically throughout your poem to create a sense of rhythm and repetition. Homework: Read and finish draft of poem.
Thursday
Read first 15 minutes of class. Review informational texts in Characteristics of Genre Notes. Good poetry is cut to the bone. Look through you poems and cut out any words you don’t need. Be ruthless! Homework: Read and work on poems. If you have not yet turned in a poem this week (with two peer conferences), have one ready to turn in tomorrow.
Friday
LIBRARY. We will visit the library every other Friday throughout the year. Our library day is a day to take care of book business. During library time you may check out and return library books, read or comment on book or author blogs (once we are in the new library) including your classmates, read. I expect everyone to bring or choose a book to read during library time. Homework: Read.
On Saturday I trekked over to the Blue Manatee in Cincinnati where I met five fabulous YA authors for the Girls Taking Over the World Tour. There was a small crowd, so we had lots of time to ask questions and interact with all five writers. I won sparkly stuff for asking questions, and they even let me take a picture!
Here I am with Lara Zielin, Christine Johnson, Sara Bennett Wealer, Saudran Mitchell, and Rhonda Stapeleton.
Of course, I had to buy books and get them autographed. They were also generous with swag. Just wait until you see the bookmarks I have to share.
It was hard to know which book to start with, but I picked up Cupid Stupid by Rhonda Stapelton. I’ll bring them all in as I read them. I think you’re going to like them.
Where do good ideas come from? Whether you are looking for a good idea for writing or for anything else, see what Steven Johnson has to say. Maybe I’ll check out his book and create some more good ideas for class, too!
I found this video on the blog for The League of Extraordinary Writers. It’s a great place to visit if you like dystopian literature–that means books where the world has gone way wrong. I’ll share some of my favorites in class today.
Stupid Cupid is one of the books I picked up at the Girls Taking Over the World Tour at Blue Manatee Books on Saturday. Rhonda Stapleton has created a fun read that many of my girls will love! I can’t wait to let this one loose in my classroom. 
