• Baseball Books as Mentor Texts: BARBED WIRE BASEBALL by Marissa Moss

    May 21, 2014 /

    Barbed Wire Baseball By Marissa Moss Illustrated by Yuko Shimizu Abrams, 2013 Kenichi Zenimura loved to play baseball. He play baseball for years. Until World War II, when he and other Japanese families lived their lives in internment camps. But inside that bleak camp, Zeni made a baseball field.…

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  • Mentor Texts for Writers and Character Post

    May 19, 2014 /

    Mentor Texts for Writers Recently I had the privilege of doing a workshop in Northern Virginia for a group of writers. The lovely and amazing Dianna Aston spoke in the morning about the stories behind her books. I spoke in the afternoon on using mentor texts to become a better…

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  • Baseball Books as Mentor Texts: MIGHTY JACKIE by Marissa Moss

    May 14, 2014 /

    Mighty Jackie: The Strikeout Queen By Marissa Moss Illustrated by C.F. Payne Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster, 2004 Jackie had been pitching her whole life, even getting coaching and encouragement from a former Brooklyn Dodger pitcher. But girls couldn’t play major league baseball. Her team played an exhibition game against…

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  • Baseball Books as Mentor Texts: Miracle Mud

    May 7, 2014 /

    This month, I will be featuring baseball books as mentor texts. Using sports-related books is a great way to get reluctant readers and writers interested in the story and the story structure. There are so many wonderful picture book baseball books that I couldn’t fit them all in. But…

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  • Poetry Mentor Texts: When Thunder Comes by J. Patrick Lewis

    April 23, 2014 /

    WHEN THUNDER COMES: POEMS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS by J. Patrick Lewis Illustrated by Jim Burke, R. Gregory Christie, Tonya Engel, John Parra, and Meilo So Chronicle Books, 2013 J. Patrick Lewis has captured fifteen international civil rights leaders’ struggles in this poetry collection. This would be an amazing…

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  • Water Can Be… and A Leaf Can Be… Poetry Mentor Texts

    April 2, 2014 /

    Water Can Be.. By Laura Purdie Salas Illustrations by Violeta Dabija Millbrook Press, 2014   If you love the sound of words and really love to be surprised by them, then you need to get this book. Water Can Be… is truly a beautiful piece of poetry, but there…

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  • Mentor Texts for Teachers Workshop

    March 26, 2014 /

    The month of March has been really busy for me as a writer and a teacher. I’ve attended three teacher conferences and one writing retreat. All of them were incredibly beneficial for me. I presented at two of the teacher conferences (one for my local school district and one…

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  • Mentor Texts for Writers Articles

    March 23, 2014 /

    I write about mentor texts for WRITERS and TEACHERS. See the links to the articles I’ve written for writers. Looking for Mentor Texts: The What, the Why, the How, the Where I Have Mentor Texts I Want to Use, Now What? Mentor Texts: Market Your Book to Teachers Reading…

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  • I Have Mentor Texts, Now What?

    March 10, 2014 /

    Last week, I posted about where to find mentor texts to use to improve your writing. Today I’m over at the GROG BLOG again talking about what you do with mentor texts.  Stop over there and tell us how you use mentor texts to improve your writing. Our new GROG…

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