Holiday Break Reading Challenge

Take the Holiday Break Reading Challenge!

I came across this challenge late in the game, so I don't think that I'll be able to participate in all aspects of the challenge, but I'm gonna try!

Happy holidays and best wishes to all of you!

Fourteen Days of Thankful

I wish I'd thought of this earlier, but as the old adage goes "better late than never"!

We have fourteen days left in this month. Let's use those fourteen days to be aware of the blessings and gifts that we have in our lives and all that we have to be thankful for. We'll start today:

What are you thankful for on this Tuesday? Please create a visual to represent your thanks this on this beautiful morning.

If you're not feeling especially appreciative, here is a link to some photography where you might find a place to start. If you need more photos to choose from, here's another site that offers the Day in Photos.
If this isn't enough to move you toward thankfulness, read this article to find additional health benefits related to being thankful year-round.

What's Your Story?

There's an awesome new trend in Young Adult Lit: Teens telling their own candid stories and having their stories published. The publisher that's doing the most work with this right now is called HCI books and they're running a contest for the next series of true-life teen stories. Their series is called Louder Than Words: Real Girls, Real Words, Real Life. They are looking for girls (sorry boys) who like to journal, blog, and/ or write poetry. It seems to me like some of you have powerful life stories and could be potential candidates for this contest.

If you'd like more information or some help/advice on what pieces you should submit, feel free to come and see me.

Coolest Reflection EVER!

So, part of the responsibilities of my little Chick Lit Junior Advisors (very official title, no?) is to reflect about our meetings. I ask that they include some thoughts about how the meeting went and what we need to think about changing for future meetings.

This morning, a super-fab Junior Advisor came in a gave a a graphic version of her reflection. I LOVE it! I may require that she keep this comic strip going for the entire year. What do you think?

Contest for Maine Juniors

I just received a flier and some pamphlets describing a contest called Journey Into Writing. This contest is sponsored by the Governor and by the Maine Community College System. The contest is limited to students who are juniors in a Maine high school. That's you and that's a pretty small pool of candidates.

Also, the prize is pretty huge. Up to three winners will receive $2,500 cash and fifteen of the top choices will receive $500. That's pretty cool, eh?

AND you can submit any type of writing that you'd like. It can be a non-fiction piece, a fictional piece, a poem, a whatever. It just can't be more than 1,500 words. You can only submit once piece of writing, and I know a lot of you have several choices. The deadline for this contest is December 1st, so we'll talk more about this in the future. Be thinking about your piece in the meantime.

Creative Writing Contest

Well, I hurt my leg yesterday. It's not broken or anything, but it is sore. Rather than coming out and telling you the boring truth of what happened, I'm going to have you all write short stories describing how I obtained my injury. You can make your story as realistic or as fantastical as you like; just tell a better story than the one I have!

As a reward, I'll choose the top two stories (one from each section of Study Skills) and buy lunch for these two winners at the Rainbow Cafe when it opens this year. I'll let you know who won and the actual story after I've collected and read all of yours. Be creative!

Six-Word Memoirs

I have been anxiously awaiting the newest collection of six-word memoirs, titled I Can't Keep My Own Secrets: Six-Word Memoirs by Teens Famous and Obscure, all summer. Why I have I been so excited? Because these collections are just too darn amazing in their power and complex simplicity, if that makes sense. Here are a few:

"Anything but monotone. I am Technicolor."
--Nancy B.

"I told him everything. Big mistake"
--Lindsay B.

"I lost more than my innocence."
--Angela G.

And this list could go on and on and on. Too many to list; read book. See? That was six words! Not a memoir, but a sorta commentary on why you need to get your hands on a copy of this new title!

I guess that I love these because they belong to the people who wrote them, of course, but many of them could also be the story of SO many lives. There are some universal truths underneath each of these six-word sentences. Some are funny, some sad, some filled with hope, and others are still searching. Together, they make up stories that all of us can relate to in at least a few respects.

If you're feeling as inspired by this new book as I am, you can create your own six-word memoir and publish it online.

The Longest Poem(?) in the World

Poetry has just become a little easier. A man named Andrei Gheorghe has come up with a sort of generator that compiles all of the tweets on twitter into a poem that's running at over 4,000 lines per day. Somehow, this poem rhymes but it's definitely lacking in the meaning department.

I'm not sure how I feel about this project as an actual representation of poetry, but it's a cool idea and it's given me some ideas for classroom use. If you'd like to see this poem, click here.

All About Poe

For those of you who love the dark, haunting rhymes of Edgar Allan Poe, it's your lucky day. Or, rather, this is your lucky semester. That's right. Local UMF professor Michael Johnson has teamed up with Poe scholars and Devaney Doak and Garrett Booksellers (right downtown Farmington) to bring you months of Poe-related activities! Why all of the sudden hoopla over a poet who's been dead for 160 years? Because this year is the bicentennial of his birth. That means that if he were alive today, he'd be two hundred years old.

To participate, you may join in on some of the creepy-eepy readings or just surf through Dr. Michael Johnson's site. I'll update you about events that are happening in town and at UMF. Check with me if'd you'd like to learn more about these events and/ or about Poe.

For those of you who are new to Poe, check out one of his most famous poems, "Annabel Lee".

Laurie Halse Anderson Writing Challenge

Author Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak, Chains, Wintergirls) has issued a challenge for all: commit to writing for just fifteen minutes a day for the entire month of August. For the whole month of August, Anderson is going to post daily writing prompts on her blog to help those of us who have writer's block or who'd like to have some sort of structure to this venture.

Anderson is using her personal blog to post her prompts. You can post your own fifteen minutes worth of writing on your own blog or you can use a good ol' fashioned writing utensil and keep a hard-copy version of your writings. Either way, join the hundreds of teens and adults who're writing with Anderson this month!

Cool Idea: Maybe Next Year?

I think that this could be a cool addition to the Senioritis project or the vignette project. Hm. We'll have to see!