Mentor Text: Three Dragons in Three Styles from Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer
Techniques:
- Exploring style
- Description
Background –
I’ve had Jeff Vandermeer’s Wonderbook on my shelf for a minute, but I recently pulled it off, and while my students read independently, that’s what I’m reading.
And taking lots of inspiration from. Wonderbook is a wonderful exploration of the intricacies of writing imaginative fiction. As I write this, I’m just beginning the third chapter, but it is a treasure trove of ideas that writers can use to explore, and expand, their writing, with a focus on the genres of fantasy and science fiction.
The book is overstuffed with insights and ideas, not just from Vandermeer, but from other genre greats. Even the margins have material in them, including some web extras. I’m sharing one of those web extras with you here, because it comes as a ready mentor text set.
How we might use this text:
Exploring style – The second chapter of the book explores some of the elements of fiction, including style. This web extra includes 6 excerpts from different pieces where the authors are describing dragons.
If I think of what I’ve got left this semester, we’re sitting with this mentor text set in Grade 9 when we’re exploring the fairy tale/fantasy genre. In Grade 11, it’s going to feature when as we dabble in dystopia. The initial step will be the same, looking at all the texts, and noticing the moves the authors make in each text, maybe even finding the one, or two, that we like best, that we might try out.
In Grade 9, we’ll decide on some other fantastic fairy tale creature to describe, and try out a couple of the styles from tis set. In Grade 11, I think we’ll be describing robots, but the intention will be the same. I just love the idea of practicing craft and creativity in small doses like this, especially of we’re building to a larger piece by the course’s end.
Description – Obviously, this isolated exercise isn’t just about style. There’s some practice in descriptive writing in there too. I’m so glad I opened up Wonderbook, because I feel that the creative, imaginative side of writing is something I need to develop in my classes. It actually came up as a discussion item as teachers in my area gathered to mark our provincial assessments in January, that we needed to explore things that would support the craft of our writers who choose to write aesthetic pieces for that writing task. They need some more tools in their toolbox. Exercises like this one encourage them to think about their description, and how that impacts their style. (It will also have a positive impact in their informative writing.)
I don’t know how many others do what I do too often, and have teaching texts languishing in a TBR pile, but it’s so nice to finally open them and find gold! Wonderbook is here on my desk beside me at work, accumulating flags and inspiring lots of scrawling in my notebook.
What books are languishing in your teacher TBR? What’s the golden book you’ve pulled off that TBR recently?
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