What enrichment activities for a study of early man might be generated by reading a story about a reconstructed Iron Age village? How can biographies of authors such as Shakespeare and Dickens serve as useful introductions to reading classic works in middle school or high school? How can variations on traditional tales such as "Rumpelstiltskin" prompt important classroom discussion on culture and values?
On May 5, 1999, at the annual convention of the International Reading Association in San Diego, California, USA, author Diane Stanley addressed questions such as these during a "live chat" organized by the Association's Technology Committee. Stanley participated via computer from Houston, Texas, while questions were posed by people in San Diego, Clear Lake (Texas), and Tucson (Arizona).
To ensure that the chat would run smoothly, Technology Committee members, classroom teachers, and Reading Online editors prepared questions in advance; these were provided to Diane. Only one computer with Internet access was available in San Diego, so ROL content editor Martha Dillner entered questions, and her screen was projected so participants at the San Diego convention session could see the exchange. Also in the chatroom were Kit Chiu, a teacher from Clear Lake, Texas, and Brian Grove, a graduate student in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona.
Following is a transcript of the chat. (Certain exchanges and comments related to technical aspects of the chat's organization have been deleted to improve readability.) You might also like to continue your exploration of Diane Stanley's work by clicking here to access reviews of some of her publications.
Martha Dillner: Hello everyone. Diane, are you ready to start?
Diane Stanley: Yes.
Martha: OK, I will type the first question. I know that many of your books are biographies of famous people. Can you tell us how books such as the Bard of Avon and Charles Dickens could be introductions to reading the works of Shakespeare and Dickens in middle school -- or even in high school?
Diane: I think both Bard of Avon and Charles Dickens can be used by older readers as well as elementary age kids. They would make excellent preparation for reading those authors' works. Dickens was, as you probably know, a very autobiographical writer. It would be fun for readers to recognize characters and events in Dickens' life when he uses them in his books. Shakespeare would work in a different way. I think kids get so used to reading Shakespeare they lose track of the fact that he was writing for the stage. It would make reading his plays much more enjoyable to know, for instance, that the parts were all written for specific actors and all the women's roles were played by men. I also think the whole context of the Elizabethan theater and the birth of a whole new art would add to the appreciation of what they are reading.
Martha: I have been told by teachers that Saving Sweetness and its sequel, Raising Sweetness, are good tools for studying figurative language -- metaphors, similes, and idioms. Could you give us any examples of how to use some of the figurative language from these books?
Diane: I used as many idioms as I could find in the Sweetness books. I did it because I love language, find it fascinating. I think it makes the books fun to read, but I find that kids really respond to the whole business of looking at phrases they use every day and learning that they have been using idioms all along. My son's teacher "collected" idioms and wrote them on cards which she hung from the ceiling. You might just write them down every time somebody uses them in class. Put them on the board. Reading one of the Sweetness books would be a good way to get started on something like that -- a study of figurative language. You might even go through it and try to identify each phrase -- is it a metaphor? A simile?
Martha: In an earlier conversation with you, I was intrigued by what you told me about a novel which you are currently writing for middle school students. It is called A Time Apart and it has a most unusual setting -- a reconstructed Iron Age village. Can you tell us something about the book and perhaps give us some specific examples of how the material could be used as a fun enrichment for the study of early man?
Diane: The setting is based on an actual event. In Britain in the 1970s they actually created just such a village for a BBC documentary. They got a group of volunteers, including children, to live in it for a year. It was actually my mother who found this story -- the news article -- and thought it would be a good setting for a novel for young readers. But she died before writing it, so I wrote it instead! I was, at first, overly enchanted with the setting itself...the very thought of what it would be like for a modern American teenager -- from pizza to showers. But at one point my editor feared that the setting was taking over the story and I had to dig deep to find some other elements from the characters that made the whole thing come alive. I ended up exploring some very deep personal issues about families, about loss. But I hope in the end I came up with something that young readers will find engaging -- there's a lot of action, a good deal of humor, and some very sad parts -- but would at the same time be full of fascinating stuff about the Iron Age. There is stuff on beekeeping (the bees escape), about the chalk soil in southern England, about dyeing (they will love the human urine used as a mordant) and weaving, tanning, pottery making, wattle-and-daub construction, thatching, and so on. I hope it will make the readers look at all that historical material as a more real thing -- I hope they will imagine what it was like to be those people. I also hope that it will be reassuring to some kids whose families aren't apple pie perfect that you can "build the fire that keeps you warm." That you can reach out for love and support in all sorts of other places.
Martha: I know that you are currently using the computer to do the sketches for another one of your upcoming books -- i.e., Michelangelo. Can you tell us how the computer helps you incorporate some of Michelangelo's actual art within the framework of your own reconstruction of his life?
Diane: Yes. In Leonardo da Vinci, I pasted down photoprints of his paintings on the watercolor paper and painted around it. That way I could create the world he lived in while still showing my young readers what his art looked like. It wasn't easy, though. I had to cut the overlapping shapes out with a knife. It created shadows and weird stuff that made the art hard to scan. For Michelangelo I am trying to do the same thing on the computer. I scan in the original Michelangelo art -- say, something from the Sistine Chapel. Then I can work in layers to sketch Michelangelo and his pots of paint or whatever. I will then print up the sketch on watercolor paper, and paint my own part -- Michelangelo's world. The printer will then combine the two -- the high-resolution scan of the painting and the printers' scan of my art. This offers many interesting opportunities. For example, when Michelangelo painted the Sistine ceiling there weren't any cracks in it, of course. But thanks to Photoshop, I can clone them right out, restoring the art to the way it looked back then. I work on a Wacom tablet. I just draw on the computer and it comes up on the screen. I use Photoshop and Painter both -- each has its own advantages. I also like the feature of being able to play around with the composition -- which is one of the things about the sketching phase that I find particularly difficult. This way, I can try zooming in, panning out -- whatever. See how it looks before I decide. I will be doing the sculptures that way, too...which is something I didn't have to deal with in Leonardo da Vinci. I work with good scans, then put a "drybrush" filter over it so it doesn't look too photographic. That way, it can still live in the same world with my art while being absolutely true to what Michelangelo made. I think I would feel pretty insecure trying to do an illustration of the David. It's still a new process and I am feeling my way through it.
Martha: Would you make a few comments comparing your depiction of Rumpelstiltskin in Rumpelstiltskin's Daughter with the traditional versions of the story? What sort of discussions might be generated by studying stories based on folk tales?
Diane: I always hated the original Rumpelstiltskin. I couldn't understand why anyone would marry someone who had just kidnapped you and forced you, under threat of death, to do something impossible. And why was the one person who helped her out portrayed as the heavy? But I did want to do something more than just change the ending by having the miller's daughter marry Rumpelstiltskin. It did seem ripe for a feminist treatment. First, I gave the miller's daughter a name -- rather than defining her in terms of her male relative.... The name I gave her was my editor's -- sort of an "in" joke -- but Meredith sounded just right for the story anyway. I then called my heroine "Rumpelstiltskin's daughter" until the end, when you learn that her name is Hope. Kids may or may not understand the meaning of all that, but I hope they will. And I thought it was interesting to have her take on a broader agenda -- besides merely gaining her own freedom. I was recently in South Dakota and discovered that the people there really related to the story because it "was about the farm crisis." In fact, these problems are very real to people in farming communities. One never knows the ways in which a story will strike home. Anyway, obviously Hope is one of a number of new heroines who don't find happy ever after by marrying the prince. And in the case of this story, the king is not a very nice guy. Maybe that message will get across, too. I can imagine some very meaty discussions that could come out of comparing the traditional tale and my version. About women defining themselves through men and needing to be rescued and all that. I'll bet that a lot of little girls -- and boys, too -- haven't really thought about it, despite more than twenty years of feminism.
Martha: Do you have any suggestions for using the biographies as enrichment for history and social studies classes?
Diane: I think that any time you are able to study one aspect of history in depth rather than giving it the quick once-over (dates, battles, treaties), history comes alive. Because the books are pretty short, it would not be hard to ask the kids to read them as part of that history or social studies section. I remember about the time I was working on Cleopatra. I looked in my son's world history book in the period at the end of the Roman republic. There were Julius Caesar and Marc Antony -- but Cleopatra wasn't even mentioned. And really -- she was central to the whole event. I hope that teachers, for example, will try using my books and others like them to broaden -- and deepen -- the study of history. I'm not sure how much play artists and writers get in the history books, but I have a feeling it isn't as much as their importance to our civilization would demand. They just sort of don't fit into any organized study. Not in math or science, obviously. Not in English until the kids are old enough to read Shakespeare or Dickens. And probably not really in history either. So, for example, Bard of Avon could go along with Good Queen Bess and Leonardo (and soon, Michelangelo) in the study of the Renaissance. I feel that the funny little details that I have time to put in my books and which publishers of books hoping to sum up all of world history in one volume don't have the luxury of using -- I think those things get across the idea to kids that history can be fun. It's really about people -- fascinating people. It's not until college that we get to study anything in that kind of depth.
Martha: Now we have another sort of question: Everyone wants to know how you felt about being on a chat.
Diane: Kinda tense.
Martha: So was I. Can you tell us more?
Diane: I'm used to considering every word and rereading everything and checking the spelling and thinking over and over and all that.
Martha: That's the author in you. Me, too.... We really want to thank you.
Diane: It was fun, really.
Brian Grove: Thank you, Martha and Diane, for an interesting conversation.
Diane: You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me.
Martha: Thanks for coming. You were great.
Diane: Thanks.
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