Slightly Invisible
SLIGHTLY INVISIBLE. Copyright © 2011 by Lauren Child. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.
This book will be for sale on May 10 and I suggest you make a plan to get it! I’ve read it to my own kids more than ten times already and today I shared it with two second grade classrooms.
True to Lauren Child’s work, the illustrations + text are full of whimsy and giggles. This book is a goldmine of lesson possibilities for primary writers interested in studying illustration techniques. After I read it, a second grade writer, Allie said, “May I borrow that during workshop? I have to look at it better because I think there are lots of book ideas in there.”
She’s right, just check out this page and imagine the possibilities!
SLIGHTLY INVISIBLE. Copyright © 2011 by Lauren Child. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.
What lessons can you envision teaching using this page as a mentor text? Leave your ideas in the comments.
Oh, so many things…how weather impacts feelings, character faces, character dress, impact of placement of words, backgrounds…oh, so many many things!!! Love it.
Well, there’s something about the “And yesterday,” being at the top of the page that draws me in for a split second into being anxious to know what happens next. It feels a little like she’s making the reader wait to see “now what”. I think that could be a words on a page technique …especially when a character has a whole string of mischief….like the book Cookie’s Week.
Though I love the sentence layout, I was drawn to the facial expressions of the kids and the bunny–my kids have been studying how to add detail by deliberate actions as illustrators. This page alone would be wonderful for teaching how to show characters’ feelings.
I am putting the book on my “books to order list”!
I can see a mentor sentence there. I love to study sentences. Here’s my own sentence imitated from this mentor sentence:
“And last night, as the wind roared loudly and the trees swayed like dancing sheets, I snuggled warmly under my bed covers and slept safe and sound.”
It’s so powerful to teach kids how to write sentences that help you visualize by imitating quality mentor sentences. Thank you for sharing!
I’m liking the creeping of the words across the page, as the creature evidently likewise crept. The font and size changes in words were fun also. It was a bit like a ransom note and I might have kids make one of their pages out of cut out letters glued down in similar fashion. If not that way, they could easily still type in different fonts in a straight line, showing emotion or action…or even just selecting one word on each page that they would like to use font selection to illustrate something about that word, such as a girl’s name or flower in script-like letters, italics to indicate speed, Rockwell bold for strength, etc. Fun, might try this myself!