16 Scaling Up to Young Adult
Hold close and remember the things that made you who you are in the story of your life. – Kao Khalia Yang
Did you ever ask a teen “What are you reading for fun?” and hear them say “I have no time for reading.” Breaks my heart.
That goes double for writing. Self-selecting writing as a leisure activity seems pretty rare. Yet any time that I have provided Writing Boxes and prompts for an event, young adults are drawn to the supplies like flies to honey, like ants to a picnic, like me to a puppy.
Teens are expected to write competently and confidently. And they do, on their devices, in emoji shorthand and text speak.
In their academic world, their writing is constantly judged and found wanting. The revision process is boring and painful.
Writing Boxes for young adults in libraries provide a nonjudgmental possibility to shake free from perfection paralysis. Mentor texts and librarian-created examples provide a window into doability. An understanding that these teens “have something to say.” An opportunity to say “I can do this.” “I am good at this.” Practice builds competence. Competence builds confidence. Writing Boxes programs facilitate these growth processes.
All of the writing exercises described in this book can be scaled up for young adult participants.
I recently presented two days of professional development workshops on mentoring writers in school libraries. Day one was focused on elementary, with a few schools being K–8, while day two was focused on high school library service. Each presentation was very much the same, yet very different.
The same? Each group needs the following. (Forgive the repetition, but these points bear repeating.)
A topic of exploration
A theme for the writing.
A selection of mentor texts.
Librarian-made example.
Writing Box and supplies.
A nonjudgmental space.
Time to write.
Time to reflect and share.
Different? For the high schoolers, I needed to think about adolescent social, emotional, and intellectual development, adapting my selection of mentor texts to address these issues as well as looking at how the Writing Boxes in practice provide space for both critical thinking and communication skills. And I talked about creating workshops that align with personal objectives—writing college application essays, resume writing and cover letters, public speaking, and zines.
Working with teens also gives the writing mentor librarian the opportunity to go deeper into each of the topics.
What do I need to know to scale up?
What is my understanding of what a teen is? Am I thinking about 13-year-olds or 16-year-olds? Developmentally and socially, these two are very different creatures. Is a teenager in Roseville, Minnesota different from one in Brooklyn, NY? Do I change my programming to meet the individual needs of different communities? Do I have an understanding of teen growth and development, and do I use that knowledge to plan, provide, and evaluate library resources, programs, and services that meet the multiple needs of teens? Do I ask for help in understanding culture and languages that are not my own?
Thinking about teen services and writing
There are times that youth services librarians find themselves serving age groupings that aren’t in their comfort zones. Sometimes this means moving from elementary aged programming to teen programming, due to staff shortages, reorganizations, and coverage. The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) provides extensive resources for serving this population of library users. They provides a checklist of competencies—what a librarian needs to know to be successful, including how to identify developmentally appropriate materials, how to engage with the community, and how create a culturally respectful environment and ensure access to all..
Example: scaling up “recipes & menus”
Ellen Frank Bayer is the school librarian at Flushing High School in New York City. She has provided a writing program for her students that includes all of these elements, and I’ve reproduced it here with her permission.
The participants
The participants were students in the library’s “books with bite” club. Bayer also coordinated with the leadership class.
The preparation
Ms. Bayer selected mentor texts to read aloud to her participants, and partnered with Amber Loveless, a librarian from the Queens Public Library, who visited the group and read excerpts from the cookbook, Indian(ish) by Priya Krishna. Ms. Bayer also created a writing sample describing her own childhood memories of her mom baking honey cake from her grandmother’s recipe.
Introduction
Ms. Bayer first read pages 134–137 from Shelley Pearsall’s All of the Above, then reviewed the process of citing sources.
The prompt
- Share and jot: what are three foods you like to eat?
- Choose a food or dish that reminds you of home, and expand it into a family memory. What memories are brought about when you eat the food? (Write 50–100 words.)
- Find a recipe online or in a cookbook to adapt and reproduce.
The outcome
A book of recipes, each including a short essay—a snapshot memoir.
My Mom’s Honey Cake
Ellen F. Bayer
My Mom, Gladys Reznik Frank, made this honey cake for the Jewish New Year and shared it with her family. It was my Grandmother’s recipe and always took my mom back to the times when she lived with her family in Bensonhurst.
When I was going to school in Boston, my Mom made me bring it back to share with my great aunt, Ethel, my grandmother’s sister, who happened to live a block away from me. My aunt shared with me that it wasn’t really her favorite cake but she loved getting it, just to keep the memories alive.
My mother also baked the cake and shared it with my uncle Sidney, who also loved to eat it, even though it contained a lot of honey and really wasn’t good for him.
On sad occasions, the cake was made too. We brought it to the cemetery to eat after the unveiling of my Uncle Nussie’s tombstone.
My Mom died in 2009 but I still make it each year to celebrate the Jewish New Year. The sweet smell fills my kitchen and brings my Mom close to me.
My Uncle Sidney, my mom’s last remaining brother, died in 2015. The cake lives on. I mailed it to my aunt just this past October. Memories of the Reznik clan will live on through the delicious sweet heavy dark brown honey cake.
Ingredients
5 eggs
2 cups sugar
l lb. honey (can also substitute 8 ounces of
honey and one banana)
2 heaping tablespoons of Crisco or Spry
1 lemon grated with rind
l orange grated with rind
2 teaspoons cinnamon
¼ cup raisins
1 walnut
l cup hot coffee
1 flat teaspoon baking soda (put baking soda
into hot coffee)
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Directions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prepare a large pan (8 x 11).
- Beat sugar with shortening for five minutes until it is creamy.
- Add orange and lemon.
- Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
- Slowly add coffee, with baking soda already added, into the batter.
- Add honey and cinnamon.
- Add flour, baking powder, and one walnut. Batter will be very thick.
- Pour into prepared pan.
- Blanch the almonds (take skin off).
- Place almonds gently on top of the cake right before you put it into the oven.
- Bake for one hour.
This recipe comes from Ellen’s grandmother, Belle Reznik Frank.
The mentor texts
Ms. Bayer provided a variety of mentor texts including cookbooks, websites, and a newspaper article from The Washington Post titled “We asked ambassadors where they eat when they’re homesick….” Ambassadors from around the world wrote about foods that reminded them of home. The Irish ambassador, Daniel Mulhall, recalled his courtship of his wife when they both lived in India. In Washington, DC, they enjoy having dinner at a restaurant, Rasika. “I’ll order a chicken dish, prawn for her; we enjoy the cucumber raita and fall in love again.”
The South Korean ambassador, Cho Yoon-je wrote, “Naengmyeon. What would summer be without this dish? Chewy noodles in a slushy broth that’s tangy and a little sweet; there’s nothing more refreshing on a hot day, especially when it’s served with a slice of Asian pear. And yuk gae jang. It may not be one of Korea’s most famous soups, but I used to eat it all the time when I was a student. Shredded beef and vegetables make it as nutritious as it is delicious, and the broth is so spicy you can’t stop eating it, lest the heat catch up and overwhelm you. In the summer, Koreans like to say you should ‘fight fire with fire,’ and there are few soups better suited to that task than yuk gae jang.”
On reflection and revision
Ms. Bayer asked her participants to share what they had written with their friends. She also asked them to reflect on their pieces: What images do you see in your mind when you read the piece. Is it descriptive? How can you improve the writing?
My Mom’s Pulao
Adiba
Pulao, a cultural dish from India and its surrounding countries, is a dish that always indicates celebration. From a young age, it created an aura of ingredients such as eliaiches, garlic, onion, and chillies that wafted through the house, and it informed me that a special occasion was at bay. It was and still is a popular dish to serve, come the time of Eid, a religious celebration, to congratulate us for fasting during the time of Ramadan. It can be eaten with eggs, chicken, beef or salads. It was a large dish to make so I couldn’t necessarily help out in the kitchen, but watching my mother throw together all the ingredients and work her cooking magic was a mesmerizing thing to spectate.
Ingredients
4 ½ cups Basmati rice
6 cups water
vegetable oil
2 onions
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1 teaspoons garlic powder
2-inch pieces of cinnamon stick
4 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon ground ginger
10 cardamom seeds
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon saffron threads or turmeric
Directions
- Fry onion and garlic in oil.
- Season with cinnamon sticks, garlic, cumin, ginger, salt and crushed cardamom.
- Add 6 cups of water to pot.
- Add rice to pot.
- Boil rice with the spices for about 20 minutes. If using saffron threads, put threads in boiling water to steep, add the water which was flavored to the pot.
Text from student of Ellen Bayer, School Librarian, Flushing High School, NYC. Writing response, “Books with bite.”
Recipe from Sigrid, “Indian Rice (Pulao) Recipe.” Allrecipes, 11 Sept. 2006, z.umn.edu/wbr74.
826
You’ll find more about 826 National in the next chapter. For scaling up to older ages, I look to the work of the participants at 826 Minneapolis, AKA the Mid-Continent Oceanographic Institute (MOI), which provides a safe space for after-school writing, field trips for school classes to immerse themselves in the creative writing process, and the embedding of staff and volunteers into schools to facilitate writing as part of the classroom practice.
The two “Where I’m From” poems included in this chapter are products of the 826 Minneapolis embedding classroom program. The volunteers and teachers encourage writing from the heart, along with revising for publication. The program supports the classroom teachers as they guide their young adults in gaining the literacy skills needed to succeed in this world. For these teens, reading and writing skills are by-products of a creative process where adults are truly listening and caring about what they have to say.
Where I’m From
Ktru Moo
This poem is from Adventures Within Another: Stories of Identity and Culture from Como Park High, published by the Mid-Continent Oceanographic Institute (MOI), an 826 affiliate. MOI empowers underserved K–12 students to think creatively, write effectively, and succeed academically alongside a community of caring volunteers. Volunteers worked at Como Park High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, for a school year, and were embedded in the classroom.
I am from where the rice is grown,
The weather is fresh, under the feet.
I’m from under a leaf, blanket, and covers,
Smiling face and fire burnt the candle.
I’m from where birds flew away to settle.
Like a seed under soil that needs water.
I’m from this little hand can pray,
And faith leads us like water.
I’m from houses, not a home, and crawling with feeling.
I’m from eight lives, eight minds,
Eight hearts and smiles.
I’m from “don’t sing while you eat”
or the tiger eats you.
I’m from the wind singing, leaf dancing,
And “things don’t last forever.”
I’m From under a roof but not under a roof,
And even permanent marker doesn’t last.
I am from Hill Tribe house, made of bamboo,
Dirt, leaves and smoke flying.
I’m from spicy food, wheat fields, green forest,
And strong root.
I’m from looking up at the moon, wishing on a star,
And moving on.
My family is like a watered flower.
When the flower is grown it becomes lovely, beautiful,
And it feels special like a dead tree is still growing.
We are a blast of brightness,
To know it is a blessing of God,
Whether we are close or far,
We are a family in love like moon and star love each other.
Ktru Moo has a cat named Grey. They live in St. Paul with their parents.
Reprinted with permission of MOI.
I Am
Gloria Yellow
I am from my dad
Working Hard to make sure the
rent’s paid
I am from donuts
I don’t like plain donuts
I am from sleeping ‘til 10:00 a.m.
My brothers wake me up from
being so loud
I am from money don’t grow on trees
scholarship
I am from the microwave
Thrown on the floor in an
argument
I am from one of my mom’s
tweaked-out stories
None of the stories are school
appropriate
I am from my grandma’s house
One-bedroom house, the smell of
hairspray,
hangover soup
I am from my brothers
“Better not have no boyfriend Gloria”
Gloria Yellow is a 10th grader at South High in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Reprinted with permission of MOI.
Indigenous Originated
Just published in Spring of 2019, Indigenous Originated: Walking in Two Worlds is an anthology of youth voices by 9th and 10th grade All Nations students from South High in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Produced by MOI as a culminating project, the book is a perfect mentor text for young adults, providing them an opportunity to see their own lives reflected in poetry and prose. The book gives voice to marginalized populations and honors their lived experiences.
Indigenous Originated is a professional development treasure trove. The appendix contains writing prompts that ask writers to explore moments of othering, the capacity of the creative writing process to change how we see ourselves in the world, and the ways in which confident and competent written words can empower a community.
Selecting mentor texts for teens
Every book I read and love makes me think “Wow, that would make a great mentor text for writing.” Here are some recent ones.
Ross Gay’s Book Of Delights, an adult book, is a collection of short essays about how important it is to be observant about the many items, moments, kindnesses, words, and ideas that may delight in this finite life we lead. And to write about them. So I did; I’ve included my piece here.
Big Ideas for Curious Minds is a collaboration of illustrator Anna Doherty, designer Katie Kerr, and publishing manager Srijana Gurung, who together have created an accessible compendium of things to think about. The contents page is a who’s who of well-known philosophers, and the book has a joyful vein running through some pretty serious ideas. In particular, take a look at “Know Yourself, with Socrates,” “Learn to Say What’s on Your Mind, with Ludwig Wittgenstein,” “When Someone Is Angry, Maybe It’s Not You Who Is Responsible, with Ibn Sina,” and “People Are Unhappy, Not Mean, with Zera Yacob.” That last one struck me hard. Hmm. What a good prompt. The publisher has given me permission to reproduce that one here.
Dan Brown’s Unwanted: Stories of Syrian Refugees, an award-winning informational book, is an important, timely, and eye-opening exploration of the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis. The graphic format suggests it as a mentor text for combining research and comics workshops. Because of the timeliness of subject matter, it is also the perfect mentor text for fact-checking and intertextual connections using newspapers, websites, and journals.
My library received a donated copy of Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence. This romantic mystery novel told in the form of letter has inspired a lifetime of postcard writing. While certainly not a children’s book, it’s a perfect mentor text for teens.
The book I keep returning to is We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, an anthology of essays, poetry, art, and song edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson. It includes a letter from Jacqueline Woodson urging her children when they go out into the world to be safe, be kind. What kind of letter would we write to our future children? What kind of letter do we wish someone had written to us?
Finding Delight
It was a Saturday morning at
7:30 am and already I was
having a crappy day.
The temperature had
dropped from 60 degrees to
40, high winds and rain.
Each joint in my body felt like
it was on fire.
I told a friend I would meet
her at church and then we
would go for coffee.
As I was walking up the
sidewalk to the church door,
I am sure I was scowling. I
remembered that I was
supposed to find a delight.
Well, the rain stopped. That
was something. But not really
delightful.
Then I saw a movement out of
the corner of my eye.
A tree about 50 feet away had
bloomed apple blossoms.
Pinkish red, and they were
moving, shaking but it wasn’t
the wind.
The tree branches were
heavy with birds who took
refuge from the wind and the
rain sheltered by the spring
green leaves.
Looking closer they were tiny
yellow finches, flapping their
wings, jostling the thin
branches that they gripped in
their claws.
Okay I thought.
This is a delight.
Partnering with subjects teachers
Every teachable moment, I think, can be improved by putting it through the Writing Box process.
We know, for instance, that we learn concepts more deeply when called upon to teach them. Why not partner with a biology instructor asking the students to make picture books explaining the concepts that they are learning? Gayatri Narayanan was taking a biology class and as an independent study wanted to create a picture book on photosynthesis. The goal was not only to understand photosynthesis itself, but to evaluate the mentor texts, and to experience the creative process of the picture book and the uniqueness of its format for conveying information.
I recommended informational mentor texts like Molly Bang’s My Light and online resources like Balloons Over Broadway, Melissa Sweet, and the Engineering of a Picture Book, a digital resource on how a picture book is made.
The recommendations were mine, the annotations are Gayatri’s.
- Kramrisch, Stella, and Praful C. Patel. 2007. The Presence of Siva. Motiala Banarsidass. Kramrisch draws on the Vedas, the primary religious texts in Hinduism, as her sources and makes their ideas accessible in English and to a novice in Hindu philosophy. The central idea of female energy and the opening prose in Sunrise is based on the story of Parvathy as Prakriti (the female energy) as told in The Presence of Siva.
- Bang, Molly and Chisholm, Penny. Rivers of Sunlight. 2017. New York, The Blue Sky Press. Molly Bang’s Rivers of Sunlight is a guide on the use of prose to supplement images with movement and wonder. Rivers of Sunlight is both scientifically sound and visually evocative of the water cycle. The prose also inspired the layout of sentences spread over two pages in Sunrise.
- Groves, Julia. Rainforest. 2017. Swindon, UK: Child’s Play Ltd.. The end note on the Amazon rainforest in Julia Grove’s Rainforest was the basis for the end note on photosynthesis in Sunrise. The notes give the reader a chance to look back at the book and connect information with the illustrations.
- Burton, Virginia L. The Little House. 1942. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The Little House provided inspiration for the use of movement and stillness depicted in Sunrise. The impact of the contrast between stillness and motion is very powerful in The Little House, and the illustrations further the story independently of the prose.
- Pringle, Lawrence and Henderson, Meryl. 2017. Spiders! Strange and Wonderful. Honesdale, Pennsylvania: Boyds Mills Press. The book Spiders! provided a good reference for the use of watercolour to create scientifically detailed and accurate images. The medium chosen for Sunrise is watercolour, and so Spiders! was used to inform the level of detail, play of light/shadows with plants and insects, and show the progression of events in nature as in the fruiting of the orange trees.
- Bogan, Carmen and Cooper, Floyd. Where’s Rodney? 2017. Dream on Publishing. The illustrations in Where’s Rodney? use the entire page and show how text can be placed within the image to make the reading and understanding of the story flow smoothly, and how different amounts of text can be used at different places in the story to give the necessary amount of detail.
- Martin, Jacqueline and McGehee, Claudia. 2017. Creekfinding. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Creekfinding showed how conversational prose can be injected with detailed information, as it tells a story from the third person while describing the features of the creek. The layout of the prose was variable according to the information and its specificity to the image.
Guidelines for Teen Programming
from YALSA, the Young Adult Library Services Association
- Create programming that reflects the needs and identities of all teens in the community.
- Align programs with community and library priorities
- Facilitate teen-led programs.
- Develop interest-based, developmentally appropriate programs that support connected learning.
- Develop rich, mutually beneficial community partnerships.
- Staff programs sufficiently and appropriately.
- Participate in targeted and ongoing training to build skills and knowledge relating to programming.
- Host programs in spaces that support the engagement, growth, and achievement of teens.
- Develop appropriate and welcoming policies.
Remember
Honor teens where they are. It’s crucial to provide a nonjudgmental writing space.
Honor privacy. Everyone has the right not to share. Writing is a powerful tool for expression, but also for processing privately.
Mentor texts
826 National. 2011. Don’t Forget to Write for the Secondary Grades: 50 Enthralling and Effective Writing Lessons. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Adventures within Another: Stories of Identity and Culture from Como Park High School. 2017. Minneapolis, MN: Wise Ink Creative Pub.
Bang, Molly, and Penny Chisholm. 2017. Rivers of Sunlight : How the Sun Moves Water around the Earth. First edition. ed. 1 vols. New York: The Blue Sky Press.
Bantock, Nick. 1991. Griffin & Sabine : An Extraordinary Correspondence. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
Bogan, Carmen. 2017. Where’s Rodney? Yosemite National Park, CA: Yosemite Conservancy.
Brown, Don. 2018. The Unwanted : Stories of the Syrian Refugees. Boston ; New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Bruchac, Joseph, Miranda Paul, and Marlena Myles. 2019. Thanku: Poems of Gratitude. Minneapolis, MN: Millbrook Press.
Burton, Virginia Lee. 1942. The Little House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin co.
Doherty, Anna H., and Alain de Botton. 2018. Big Ideas for Curious Minds: An Introduction to Philosophy. London: The School of Life.
Elder, Joshua, and Chris Giarrusso. 2014. Reading with Pictures : Comics That Make Kids Smarter! Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing.
Gay, Ross. 2019. The Book of Delights. First edition. ed. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
Graham, Paula W. 1999. Speaking of Journals: Children’s Book Writers Talk About Their Diaries, Notebooks, and Sketchbooks. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.
Heard, Georgia. 2013. Finding the Heart of Nonfiction : Teaching 7 Essential Craft Tools with Mentor Texts. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Hudson, Wade, Cheryl Willis Hudson, and Ashley Bryan. 2018. We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices. New York: Crown Books for Young Readers.
Indigenous Originated: Walking in Two Worlds. 2019. Minneapolis, MN: Wise Ink Creative Pub.
Kramrisch, Stella. 1981. The Presence of ŚIva. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Krishna, Priya, and Ritu Krishna. 2019. Indian-Ish : Recipes and Antics from a Modern American Family. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,.
Martin, Jacqueline Briggs, and Claudia McGehee. 2017. Creekfinding : A True Story. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Morgan, Richard. “We Asked Ambassadors Where They Eat When They’re Homesick.” Washington Post, May 16, 2019.
Morgernstern, Susie. 2006. The Aspiring Writer’s Journal: Harry N. Abrams.
Pearsall, Shelley, and Javaka Steptoe. 2006. All of the Above : A Novel. 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown.
Pringle, Laurence, and Meryl Henderson. 2017. Spiders! : Strange and Wonderful. First edition. ed, Strange and Wonderful. Honesdale, Pennsylvania: Boyds Mills Press, an imprint of Highlights.
Wariyaa: Somali Youth in Museums. 2018. Soo Fariista: Come Sit Down, A Somali American Cookbook. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press.
Resources
826digital, with prompts, lesson plans, and inspiration: 826digital.com.
