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From the Classroom – First Chapter Friday

By on October 28, 2024   /   For Teachers, From the Classroom  

First Chapter Friday listing for Alone by Megan Freeman, showing the book cover and a photo of the author

Welcome to our newest feature – From the Classroom – sharing tips and tricks for integrating a love of middle grade books and authors into your classroom. First up: First Chapter Friday!

First Chapter Friday is a super-easy way to introduce your students to a wide range of books. It can be a weekly feature (like it is in my classroom) or an occasional add-on. All you need is a book with a great hook and 5-10 minutes to read aloud the first chapter.

What is First Chapter Friday?

First Chapter Friday is exactly what it sounds like – read aloud the first chapter of a book… on Fridays. Really, you can choose any day of the week, but it’s hard to pass up the alliteration and rhythm of First Chapter Friday. (On weeks when we miss a Friday, we have taken to also having First Chapter FThursday and First Chapter FWednesday. The week before Thanksgiving is our only First Chapter FTuesday!)

I make a Google Slides page for each First Chapter Friday book we read that features the title, the book cover, and a photograph of the author. The photograph is a key way to remind kids that authors are real, actual people. If an author has many middle grade books I usually make a second slide highlighting those titles, and I might read a blurb or two from those.

My students have a “Books To Read” list in their classroom notebooks, so they can jot down titles and authors that interest them. This is a great way to counteract the “I don’t know what to read” whining. My more industrious students often take their notebooks home and request a bunch of books from the public library to bypass the classroom wait list. Smart!

If you can, it helps to have read the chapter aloud to yourself beforehand. The more fluent and dramatic your read aloud, the more likely you are to hook a range of readers. After you finish the chapter, have an easy way for students to indicate they are interested in the book. In my classroom, everyone just jots their name on a sticky note, and I use a deck of cards with students’ names on them to choose.

List of circles and checkmarks for keeping track of First Chapter Friday books

It helps to have a system to track who has which books, as First Chapter Friday books often stay in demand for weeks and months. I use a simple spreadsheet with student names in one column and book titles in the rest of the columns. Circles indicate who wants to read a book, and I write in the date when I hand out a book.

What Makes a Great First Chapter Friday Book?

First up, you want a book with a great opener. You only get one chapter, so you need to make it count. Some books are more of a slow burn, and while those are often awesome titles, they aren’t the best choice here. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling is a riot right from the start, and Ghost by Jason Reynolds shifts tone mid-chapter and absolutely grips you.

Cliffhangers are another popular choice. Any book that makes your class audibly groan when you read the end of the chapter is a winner for sure! Battle Dragons by Alex London has such a dramatic cliffhanger (err, apartment-balcony hanger) that I usually have to read the first page of chapter two so everyone can catch their breath.

You also want to vary the books that you share: different genres, different formats, different lengths, authors and characters of different backgrounds, beliefs, religions, gender expression, etc. etc. Students who might never pick up a novel-in-verse might after the first few poems of Alone by Megan Freeman or Starfish by Lisa Fipps. I do a whole series on spooky stories around October, which is always a big hit.

First Chapter Friday - Scary Middle Grade. Includes: Scary Stories for Young Foxes, The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street, This Appearing House, and The Jumbies

Give it a go!

Take a look at some of the many books recommended here on the Mixed Up Files. Grab a few favorites, a pack of sticky notes, and start reading! You’ll be amazed how fast it builds up your community of readers.

In the comments, please share your favorite middle grade books with thrilling first chapters!

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Pack for Where You’re Going: How to Write with Intent

By on October 25, 2024   /   For Writers, Writing  

Sitting down to write a book without a plan is like going on vacation without deciding on a destination. An exciting new idea will tempt you to simply throw things in a bag and run to the airport. But, like a heavy backpack, the farther along you get into your first draft, the more you start to feel the weight of all the decisions you haven’t made. Doubt catches up to you in the terminal. Where is this story going? How do you know if the idea is strong? What should happen, and who should it happen to?

The best way to start writing is by setting intentions. Intent is the why that informs your story, and knowing that will help you with the what and how as you write. Intent will help you make decisions on everything from theme to plot to syntax. It tells you what needs to be in the story and what doesn’t. Put another way, if you know where you want to go, you’ll know exactly what you need to pack.

 

A traveler sitting on her colorful suitcase at the beach | Setting intent with writing

Photo by Anastasia Nelen on Unsplash.

Using Theme to Set Intent

When you sit down to start a new project, it’s vital to know what you want to say. Theme is a great way to begin. I always recommend approaching theme as a sentence rather than a word or phrase like friendship or coming of age. This way, the theme becomes more dynamic and engaging because it’s expressing what you want to say about that topic. Here are ways you could craft a theme:

Friendship → Friends help you find out who you are.

Coming of age → Growing up means taking responsibility for what you care about.

As you can see, these sentences go a lot farther in helping you decide what the story will be about. To find your own theme, consider the words or phrases you associate with your book. When you have a grasp of the topic, think about what you want to say about it. What perspective would you like to share with your readers?

Using Intent for Plot and Character

Once you’ve got your theme, you’ve set an intention for what you want to say. Now let’s look at the elements of the story itself: the plot and characters that will make it happen. How can you use these elements to support what you want to say? Let’s go back to the examples above to see how intention can help you decide what needs to be in your book.

In the first example, you might be looking at plot elements that touch on identity and the kinds of characters that will emphasize that thread:

Friends help you find out who you are.

→ Your main character is unsure where they fit into a new group, school, or neighborhood.

→ A talent show or contest is coming up, and everyone is expected to participate.

→ Something or someone has changed your main character’s perception of themselves for the worse.

In the second example, you might consider ways to show the difficulties kids face as they start becoming more independent.

Growing up means taking responsibility for what you care about.

→ Your main character is brainstorming ways to raise money.

→ Your character needs to help out with a younger sibling.

→ Maybe they plant a garden, start a club, or practice hard to make a sports team.

These are just a few ideas, but I hope you can see how intent can help you see ways to use your characters and plot to keep working towards your intention.

Using Intent for Tone and Mood

Intention can also help you make decisions on the scene and sentence level. If you want to write a scary story, for instance, you need to think about everything the story needs to make readers bite their fingernails and scooch to the edge of their chairs. That’s where word choice, imagery, and setting come into play. A scary story might emphasize light and dark, creepy noises, unusual smells, or bad tastes. On the other hand, if you’re writing a funny story, you might reach for brighter imagery, more playful narration, and breezier verbs.

Reach Your Destination

When you set your intention, you have everything you need to start writing. Now you can get to work choosing elements that will support the book; everything from characters to plot to the way it’s written. Intention will also help you finish and revise. You simply have to ask yourself, “Did I accomplish what I set out to do?” If the answer is no, you can revisit scenes or chapters that aren’t supporting the intention you set and make changes so the story can get back on track. Remember, only pack what you need for where you’re going!

Interested in how other writers get started? Check out this article from the Mixed-Up Files archives!

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Interview With Author Josh Roberts

By on October 23, 2024   /   Author Interviews, Fiction, kidlit, New Releases  

I’m thrilled to welcome Josh Roberts to the Mixed-Up Files . . . Just in time for Halloween. Today we chatted about his new middle grade, THE CURSE OF WILLOW COVE. This is the second book in THE WITCHES OF WILLOW COVE series.

Grab a cup of hot chocolate and pull up the covers; it’s time to talk all things spooky.

Lisa: Tell us about THE CURSE OF WILLOW COVE.

Josh: Thanks for inviting me to talk about my new book. I always love chatting with the Mixed-Up Files! The Curse of Willow Cove is the second book in my upper middle grade series aimed at tweens and teens ages 10 and up. I call it a standalone sequel to book one, The Witches of Willow Cove, because it’s intended as an accessible entry point for anyone discovering the series for the first time.

School Library Journal says that the Willow Cove books “may be written for middle grade, but the exciting narrative could appeal to young adults,” and that’s exactly what I was going for—stories that can be enjoyed by a lot of different age groups.

The Witches of Willow Cove and The Curse of Willow Cove are both set in a small New England town with a secret history dating back to the Salem Witch Trials. In the first book, a 13-year-old girl named Abby Shepherd learns that she and several of her seventh grade classmates are witches—with all the spell casting powers and flying broomsticks that come with it. Working together with a group of non-magical friends from their middle school, the young witches must solve a mystery from their town’s distant past before it can threaten the lives of everyone living in the present.

In The Curse of Willow Cove, Abby and her coven are all now 14 years old and they have a year of witchcraft under their belt. Things seem to be going well, until some of their classmates begin to vanish in the night… only to come back as something dangerous and different. Just as the first book in the series pulls from the real history of the Salem Witch Trials, The Curse of Willow Cove leans into another mysterious episode from the past called the Great New England Vampire Panic.

Lisa: Did you always plan to write a sequel to THE WITCHES OF WILLOW COVE? If yes, did you always know where you wanted to go with the story?

Josh: Yes and yes. From the beginning, I envisioned The Witches of Willow Cove as a series, and my publisher encouraged me to think of it that way, too. Although the first book is a standalone novel with a beginning, middle, and end, I was able to plant certain seeds for the sequel in it so that the second book feels very much like a natural continuation, even though it can be read on its own without having read the first book. Of course, things change when you sit down to write. Once I really dug into the story, not everything I’d planned for the second book made sense to me anymore, or new ideas came along, or certain characters began to demand more page time than I’d initially planned… but that’s one of the things that keeps it fun as an author.

I would say that The Curse of Willow Cove ends exactly where I always planned for it to end, but the route we took to get there changed quite a bit from my initial notes.

Lisa: What kind of research did you do while writing books about witches?

Josh: As a lifelong New Englander, I was already very familiar with the history of the Salem Witch Trials in particular. But “familiar with” and “an expert on” are two very different things, so for book one I did a lot of research into the real history of the period and then tried to weave a plausible secret history around those events while remaining respectful to the real historical victims. For The Curse of Willow Cove, almost all of my research went into understanding the Great New England Vampire Panic of the late 19 th century when farmers and townspeople all across the region were literally digging up their dead relatives because they believed they’d come back as vampires. The Curse of Willow Cove began with the question, “What if they were actually right about the vampires?”

Lisa: Do you think there are real witches with magical abilities?

Josh: Living so close to Salem and its modern witch culture, I would never be foolish enough to deny the existence of real witches!

Lisa: Do you base characters on people you know? If yes, spill the beans! (Translation: Do you know a witch?)

Josh: That’s a really good question. I don’t think I’ve ever set out to intentionally base a character on someone I know, at least not entirely, but without a doubt there are certain personality traits and habits I’ve borrowed from people in my life. It’s always fun to see if they recognize themselves in those characters. There’s one character in particular that reminds me of my wife when she was around the same age (we met when we were young teenagers) and so she’s obviously a favorite character of mine.

Lisa: How much of your real-life experiences play a role in the stories you tell?

Josh: Growing up in Massachusetts, I became fascinated by the fact that not only were there accused witches all across the state—including one in my hometown—but also that the witch trials did not actually occur in modern day Salem. I think there’s even a line in one of my books that basically amounts to “Salem gets all the tourists, but the real witch history happened elsewhere.” For the purposes of my story, that “elsewhere” is my invented town of Willow Cove, and it’s based off of the places I’ve lived all my life. So while Willow Cove isn’t literally a real place, it’s real to me because it feels like I’ve walked every inch of it at one time or another.

In terms of the characters I write, The Witches of Willow Cove series has a big and diverse cast, but I think it’s safe to say that there’s a little bit of my personality in each and every one of them—the witches and non-witches alike.

Lisa: What books did you like to read when you were a kid? Do those books influence your writing?

Josh: I loved everything by Lloyd Alexander, but especially The Prydain Chronicles. Those were the first books I ever fell in love with, and also the first to make me sad when I reached the end because it meant I’d never get spend more time in that world with those characters again. I think you can see the influence of those books in my writing most clearly when you look at the kinds of characters I’m drawn to write. The main female character in The Prydain Chronicles is a girl called Eilonwy, who is smart, strong-willed, sharp-tongued, brave, and (at times) sensitive. I think that describes most of the girls in The Witches of Willow Cove series, too.

Lisa: What advice would you give twelve-year-old Josh?

Josh: When I was younger, I wasted a lot of years believing I wasn’t talented enough to write a book because the words never came out the way I hoped they would on the first try. I wish I’d understood that writing is a journey and no one starts out perfect at it. You have to work hard, and you have to keep working hard even when it gets frustrating—or maybe especially when it gets frustrating.

I came from a family of readers, but no one else I knew ever wanted to write like I did. That made it hard for me to understand that writing is not something you’re expected to be instantly good at. So in short, I’d tell twelve-year-old Josh to keep writing and trust the process. If we’re being honest, sometimes I still need to be reminded of this!

Lisa: If you could cast one spell, what would it be?

Josh: I would conjure up the one thing every writer dreams of and that we all know doesn’t exist… a perfect first draft!

Lisa: Last, but most important . . . What are you working on now?

I’ve got a lot going on! My big focus right now is a young adult historical fantasy called Victoria Dare and the Blood of Kings, which I pitched as Indiana Jones meets The Diviners. It comes out in 2026 and follows the adventures of 16-year-old Victoria Dare, who accompanies her father on an excavation to uncover a lost Egyptian tomb and gets drawn into a plot involving Nazi occultists, Bolshevik assassins, and a mysterious figure her psychic friend calls “The Shrouded Man.” It’s everything I’ve ever loved all rolled into one story. If you’re interested, you can add it on Goodreads to get notified when it comes out. I’m also doing some early work on the next book in The Witches of Willow Cove series, which is already under contract and tentatively called The Haunting of Willow Cove. I have so many ideas for where the story will go and I can’t wait to get back to these characters again.

Josh Roberts is the author of The Witches of Willow Cove series for tweens and teens, and the forthcoming Victoria Dare series for young adults. His debut novel received starred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal, and was a Massachusetts Book Awards Must-Read, a Kirkus Book of the Month, and A Mighty Girl Book of the Year.

 

 

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