Mentor Text: “Grandma’s Favourite Colour” from Louder Than Hunger by John Schu
Techniques: Writing about a loved one
Background – This is one of the “long weeks” in my school year. There are parent conferences this week, report cards due on Monday morning, and we’re between dance competitions and concerts at home. I don’t have time to share a mentor text this week.
I also need a tiny distraction from all that stuff.
And, honestly, the mentor text I’m sharing is more about sharing the whole book it comes from.
You are more than likely aware of John Schu’s role as America’s school librarian, and his energy promoting literacy in schools. He’s also recently released Louder Than Hunger, which is a pretty important book. It’s a novel in verse that is fictionalized versions of some of his own experiences, focused on disordered eating and treatment. It’s powerful, and should be accessible to students.
And, well, I’m a sucker for a novel in verse as a mentor text.
How we might use this text:
Writing about a loved one – I actually use a lot of poems and shorter pieces for memoir writing. Many of our writers don’t have the “full story” to tell yet, but have a lot of great elements to share. Writing using shorter pieces allows us to focus on specific elements we’d like to share, and craft pieces we’d like to focus upon.
Schu’s poem “written” by his narrator Jake focus on a single aspect of a person he loves, his grandmother. In the past few years, I’ve actually felt there’s a bit of a challenge in trying to get students to write about loved ones because they sometimes struggle to express that love. There are too many feelings and big ideas to share.
This poem works because of its hyperfocus. It is about one thing about the loved one, and what that means. There’s also a level of brevity in this poem that I love. It’s a deep exploration of this favourite colour, but it’s not a deep dive in the sense of the amount of words used. Writing using a poetic form often encourages an economy of language that helps focus a writer – they have to get right to the important stuff. The list elements of the poem allow them to give multiple examples of what they’re talking about, but there’s not a need to explain, just to simply state. (That being said, there is potential here during the revision stage to expand this, using the poem as a rough draft upon which to build a longer piece.)
Through the course of working the mentor text “beat” at Moving Writers, I’ve noticed my own preferences, and the things I tend to lean towards. It’s no accident that every other text I offer you is a poem, and that I’m often tying them to the mentor work we do. But I kind of love the purpose that this gives some of my reading.
Do you have any great poems you use to facilitate some memoir writing? What mentor texts do you have that you love to give your writers to encourage them to write about the people they love?
Leave a comment below or find me on Twitter @doodlinmunkyboy!
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