Book and Author Information for this week's blog post
Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina and Illustrated by Angela Dominguez
Author: Meg Medina https://megmedina.com
Illustrator: Angela Dominguez https://www.angeladominguezbooks.com
Book Awards:
2016 Pura Belpré Honor for both literature and illustration, American Library Association
Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts illustrated by Lauren Castillo
Author: Maribeth Boelts https://maribethboelts.com
Illustrator: Lauren Castillo http://www.laurencastillo.com
Awards and recognitions
A Society of Illustrators Original Art Show Selection
A Junior Library Guild selection
Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year
Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices List
A New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing selection
100 Magnificent Children’s Books of 2012 selection
A 2015 Elementary Connecticut Nutmeg Book Award nominee
Summary of Stories
Brief Summary of Mango, Abuelo, and Me
Mango, Abuelo, and Me, written by Meg Medina is a beautifully written story about language barriers and overcoming those barriers. The main character, Mia gets a new roommate… her abuela (grandmother). Mia is so excited about her abuela coming to stay with her, but she is unable to tell her grandmother everything she wants and her abuela struggles to tell Mia everything she wants. With perseverance, a parrot, and some sticky notes, Mia and her abuela learn that love is a universal language.
Brief Summary of Happy Like Soccer
Happy Like Soccer, written by Maribeth Boelts tells the story of a young girl who is a soccer player. However, unlike her teammates, she doesn’t have family at her soccer games because her Auntie always has to work. She often feels left out, leaving her neighborhood and her surroundings behind to go play soccer with young girls who don’t share jokes with her. Sierra learns to use her neighborhood and where she belongs to her advantage when a soccer game is cancelled. She is happy to be reminded of where she comes from.
Both of these stories are written in a narrative format, meaning that they are written from the main character’s point of view; it is a story from their life. Even though these two stories are different in their context, both stories connect the reader to their story. How? How is this possible? How do writers connect us to their stories or their main character’s story?
My answer: In my experience, I find that I connect the most with literature that is personal. Regardless of the genre of the writing, I, as a reader, form connections with literature that lets me have an inside look into someone’s life. Maybe it is because I am nosy, but even if I can’t relate to the context of the story, authors use empathy to draw in their readers.
Personal Connection: For example, in Happy Like Soccer, it appears that Sierra lives with her Aunt. Her parents aren’t mentioned in the book. Unlike Sierra, I lived with both of my parents who attended my volleyball games. I did have to travel to my games, like Sierra, because I played travel volleyball in highschool. I played ‘Home’ and ‘Away’ volleyball games…. And nothing felt more exciting than playing in your ‘home turf’. Like Sierra, when I played volleyball in my ‘home turf’ I felt a strong sense of community, strength, and power. Everyone knew who I was and I had the support of my family and my community. The feeling was different during ‘away games’.... I felt like I had something to prove. I was on edge. However, one of my favorite parts about playing a sport was having my family supporting my on the sildelies, so when Sierra doesn’t have her aunt around for her games, I empathize for her. I can’t imagine from my personal experience how that feels for someone else, but through her narrative I was able to step into her shoes and see what that does feel like. When her aunt was finally able to come to her game in her neighborhood, I knew the excitement that she was finally able to feel. I have felt it before too.
Let’s Take a Look at Chapter 3 from Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children's Literature (Dorfman & Cappelli, 2017).
Learning to write narratives is hard for many students. They constantly struggle with the internal conflict of having “nothing” to write about. We have all heard our students say it at least once… or twice… or more. As we talked about in last week's blog post, students can use heart maps to find inspiration on what to write about. This week, I want to dig deeper into a different strategy that you, as a teacher, can use to push students towards their writing narrative goals. We are going to focus on the Your Turn Lesson 1: Using an Inverted Triangle to Find a Specific Writing Topic (65).
Because this week, I read Happy Like Soccer and Mango, Abuela, and Me, I am going to use these texts to influence the following lesson.
Note: The following lesson is a script of how I would discuss it with my students.
Hook: Together, we are going to read Happy LIke Soccer and Mango, Abuela, and Me to influence your writing. We will use these books to think about personal territories or “ the treasure chests of their hearts and minds where they store precious memories about people, places, events, and objects (52).
Purpose: The purpose of using an Inverted Triangle model is to start with a broad idea or topic and narrow it down to a specific “inside story”. Your topic can be about anything that catches your attention such as a person, place, event, or object. The ideas are limitless, so let’s start brainstorming!
Brainstorm: We need to start thinking of big ideas. What writing territories come to your mind? Is there a topic that fascinates you? If you have NO idea, look around the classroom. What grabs your attention? Let’s revisit Happy Like Soccer and Mango, Abuela, and Me.
Model: The Inverted Triangle is a model that we can use together to narrow down our topic. When I was a student, I had such trouble staying on topic and finding a specific writing topic. I know many of you have expressed your concerns about narrowing down a topic. Let’s do it together.
Shared/Guided Writing: Now, let’s work on making an inverted triangle together. We are going to go through the inverted triangle together, working step by step to narrow down your inverted triangle. Remember, we start with a general topic at the top of the triangle and then our topic gets more specific as we move down the triangle.
*Student Example*
Independent Writing:
Now that I have modeled the inverted triangle and guided you in making one yourself, you have the opportunity to make one all on your own. Remember, the idea of the inverted triangle is to narrow down your topic to a specific topic.
Reflection: We have finished our independent writing assignment and everyone has done a fantastic job at creating their own inverted triangle. This is a great strategy to use for an in class assignment or if you’re writing in your writer’s notebook at home. I and many professional writers use this strategy, so now you can too!
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