Another Take On Research - Using a News Story to Help Students Create and Publish A Children's Book or YA Fiction

Like most readers, I go through phases and read various styles of fiction and then fall in love with non-fiction. One book that got me hooked on well-written, well-researched non-fiction was: Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea: The History and Discovery of the World's Richest Shipwreck by Gary Kinder.  This is the brief summary from Amazon.com.  Ship of Gold tells the gripping tale "of the sinking of the SS Central America, a side-wheel steamer carrying nearly six hundred passengers returning from the California Gold Rush, two hundred miles off the Carolina coast in September 1857. Over four hundred lives and twenty-one tons of California gold were lost. It was the worst peacetime disaster at sea in American history, a tragedy that remained lost in legend for over a century." Reading this and other non-fiction books helped me decide that it was a possible source of publication opportunities for my students.

I had noticed a growing trend in children's books to connect stories to some news worthy, historical event or use the narrative to explain a process such as voting. The excellent children's book buyer at Barnes and Noble provided me with several sample books - which I purchased to use as examples for my students.

You could visit the public library and get the same support. Elementary teachers are looking for non-fiction texts that provide high-interest reading topics for their students so that they can meet the demands of the Common Core and/or just find good source material to get students involved in enjoying research at an early age. It's also a great motivation to write with an actual audience in mind.  If you can use your school district's instructional support personnel to match you with an interested elementary teacher, that would be an excellent way to find topics.

One I had introduced the format for children's books which was extensive use of illustrations, limited use of words per page and limited vocabulary - my students took on the challenge of writing children's books based on a newspaper article (it could also be YA).

Note: It will take me some time to scan in the pages so I will do this over the next few days - please have patience.  The first scan is the article that inspired Alicia's book: Big Boy The Tree Cat.

 I will be adding the rest of the pages over the next few days because each scan with my old machine takes ten minutes or longer. So you will get the whole story of Big Boy!!  This assignment does have the potential to be a money maker if handled properly.  For my students who were not artistic - computer generated copyright free clip art was fine or finding another student to act as an illustrated was also fine.  Good luck for a restful summer - go to jjcombosizing.com for some exercise ideas to get healthy on summer break. :-)