Margin Notes

What I Was Reading:

A Field Guide to the Heart by Georgia Heard and Rebecca Kai Dotlich is a compilation of poems written and collected by two friends discussing their experience during the pandemic through a reflection of life on the topics of love, comfort and hope.

As I was reading, I came across the poem “Flight” by Georgia Heard and was reminded of a video from Jason Reynold’s series “Write. Right. Rite.”  The website describes the series by saying “Reynolds shares his passion for storytelling while discussing topics like creativity, connection, and imagination. At the end of each video, Reynolds shares a prompt that encourages young people to work toward a specific idea.”

Here are the texts:

Tell the Story of Jason’s Tiny Neighborhood

Jason Reynolds, seventh National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, challenges kids to write about a tiny imagined neighborhood.

What Moves I Noticed:

• The author uses descriptive language such as “oval window” and “snaking green river”
• The author uses generic characters without detail such as “woman”, “man” and “teenage boy”
• The author uses figurative language such as “constellation of ceiling cracks” and “roar of a plane”
• The author uses a dash for punctuation
• There is repetition in the sentence structure in the beginning of the stanzas marked by the commas and locations of the people

Opportunities for Writers:

Read the poem and watch the video.

• Write whatever comes to mind
• Using the structure of the poem, write about what other characters could be doing in the tiny houses
• Use the beginning phrases of the poem but change the description of what they are doing. Try out some of your own figurative language!
• Write about what you imagine when you look at houses you walk by or look down upon in a plane.