LIS 510
Required: Please write the genre and response number at the top of the paper
e.g., Response # 3, Historical fiction
Start your response to the book you read with what you like or notice about it and use these impressions to uncover what you value or think is most important in the book. Finally take a look at the literary elements (plot/characterization/setting/theme/style/format) to explore the book in its entirety. Rather than delving into all of these elements, examine one or two that seem to be of prominent importance.
Always discuss illustrations at some length in picture books; if chapter books are illustrated in any way, determine whether the illustrations contribute and discuss how.
1. Picture books-Paying attention to the illustrations-
Note the medium or style that the artist used-how does it enhance the story?
Look for other books illustrated by the same artist. Is the medium/style the same? Different?
List the different types of media that you notice in the illustrations of all the books you read.
What do the illustrations add to the story?
Write about how one of the elements of design contributes to the mood of the story.
2. Choose a book with an ending that did not satisfy you. Try to decide why the author chose to end the story
that way. Write a new ending for the story. Does your attempt to rewrite the ending change your initial
perception and thoughts about the conclusion?
3. After reading a book you really liked--one that triggered you to think, write about your thoughts.
4. What happened to you as you read this book? What did you experience as you read the story?
5. Write about a book that bored you. Entertain possible reasons you cannot get involved with the book or
explain what happened that made you grow bored. Is it due to something personal? Or is the reason
due to something within the book, i.e. some shift in the story's structure or development.
6. What did you first notice about this book? Which parts did you like? Which parts puzzled you? Did you
notice any patterns? Recurring symbols?
7. Contemplate the meaning of the story. What is the story about? Anything universal? (Think of story as
extended metaphor)
8. "Language must be uttered before it can be heard. Naturally, therefore, a whole stratum of the narrator's
geology, the next level down is composed of hard-rock questions: Who is telling this story? Whose voice do we hear?" (Chambers, Booktalk, p. 103). What effects does the use of 1st person, 3rd person point- of -view create?
9. Divide your paper in half lengthwise. On the left side, write phrases, sentences, or passages that you like
from a book. On the right side of the paper, react to the passage.
10. What was worthwhile and worth remembering? What was disappointing or confusing? What did you find
to be interesting or thought-provoking? What did you object to, if anything?
LIS 510 Ideas for Response Joumal Entries
p. 2
For example, if I were writing about characterization in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and I said:
... In Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred Taylor presents us with a round and multidimensional character in Cassie Logan. We get to know her by seeing how she behaves in many different situations and how she reacts to a multitude of other characters in this book. We see both her good and not-so-good characteristics. She changes during the course of the story. The author is very descriptive in her presentation of Cassie.
I would have done nothing but repeat the evaluative criteria for fiction
Instead...
Taylor tells the story in the first person through the eyes of Cassie Logan, a nine-year-old African-American girl growing up in rural Mississippi during the 1930s - the time of the Great Depression. Because we experience the story through Cassie's eyes and are privy to her- thoughts, we get to know her well. At the beginning of the story, Cassie seems innocent and relatively untouched by discrimination. She is shocked and outraged by the way she is treated by a shopkeeper in the town of Strawberry that she visits for the first time. As readers, we share her outrage as she is shamed by the shopkeeper and forced off the sidewalk by Lillian Jean and her father. We see Cassie's craftiness, pride, and intelligence in the way she finally gets even with Lillian Jean. It reveals her determination to hold her head high. Cassie, along with her brothers, also struggles to understand the injustices they experience such as those imposed by the school system and the white school children. But, her eyes are also opened to more serious acts of racism as the 'Night Riders" threaten them and their Black neighbors and as her mother loses her teaching job.
BE SPECIFIC!! Use examples from the text of the book.
If you choose to write about a picture book, be sure to write about the illustrations and their
relationship to the text.