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Greenwillow, 1992.
Summary: A birthday girl and book viewers work out each of 13 mysterious directions using a variety of clues. The reward is a happy ending to this almost wordless picture book.
Level: RL: 1 IL: K-3
Themes: Clues, birthdays, surprises, journals and diaries.
Before involving groups or a class with the activities for this book, it is suggestedthat the teacher or the librarian share it with the students. There are actually TWO sets of clues to follow. The audience is placed in a participant's role by always being in the position of the birthday girl, beyond the illustration. Therefore, the 13 birthday clues take on a personal challenge, for the audience IS the birthday girl, and has extra incentive to role play and figure out the clues. The second set of clues surrounds the mystery of the always off-page birthday person. On each page there are both obvious and subtle clues as to her sex and age, what she looks like, what her family is like, where she lives. For example, one clue in the attic is written with a computer cable. This family must have a computer! The umbrella stand in the hall contains 1 man's umbrella and two others. Brainstorming about these two sets of clues can be deeply revealing about the myriad approaches one can make with birthday clues, and about the world of the birthday girl. The group or class will then be prepared for the following activities.
Activities:
1. Write a list of the 13 birthday clues, and how the clues are presented. Write the story of the birthday to be read to or taped for a blind person. Try it out on other students before you conference with your teacher. Then arrange to tape it. Do lots of out-loud reading of your story to various audiences before you tape it, so you can be relaxed with a tape recorder and have perfected sound effects, and other voices. Now what can you do with your tape? How about a copy that circulates with the book from the library? How about a copy for the children's ward of the local hospital, so that children who can't read because they are too ill could enjoy the story? How about offering the tape to Maine's Read-To-Me radio program on public radio? What are some other things you can do with your tape?
2. Could you find your way back from the birthday party to the attic? Try thinking it through without the book. Listing the clues or drawing them might help you remember. Now draw a map and label it. Use a dotted line for the trail. Now look the book and check your map. If you need to make some changes, write some notes to yourself or mark your map, then re-do it. Plan some small illustrations to go with your labels. Make the illustrations as if you were looking down from a low-flying airplane. For example, you would see just the top of the apple tree, and whatever apples had fallen beyond the tree.
3. Review the list of party clues. Do you think the author thought of the trail to the party before making up the clues, or do you think the clues came first, and then the author thought of some places to put the clues? Create two short stories about a person finding a number of clues that lead to a pleasant surprise. One story should be made up with the trail coming first. The trail should pass through or by 3 or 4 different settings. Now sketch the settings, and create different clues. Each clue will take your person to the next setting. Don't forget a good beginning and a surprise at the end. Now for your second story, think of 3 or 4 new clue ideas. Use the clue ideas to think of settings they would go with. Do the illustrations, and put in the clues, and don't forget a beginning and a fun surprise at the end. Which story do you think is better? Explain. [One way to decide which is better is to try them out on other audiences and ask for feedback.] Which story was harder to create? Explain. What advice would you give to other authors making up "clue" stories? Before you begin this project, meet with your teacher and decide if this should be an independent or a group project, and at which points you need to conference and with whom.
[Some ideas for different clues: Write a message using fingerprints on a piece of clean glass or some other smooth surface.
- Leave a talcum powder shaker next to it or a shaker with cocoa powder and a note. [talcum powder should work better on dark surfaces, cocoa on light. Try it out first. Shake a little powder on the smooth surface, then blow the powder off or brush gently with a soft paintbrush. [The natural oil from your fingertips should absorb the powder and now show your message. This idea combines two ideas; one from Highlights Magazine, September 1992, page 31, and Angela Wilkes' Catching Crooks, Usborne 1979, pp 18, 19.]
- Use a tape recorder for a message. This idea came from Richard Fowler's Inspector Smart Gets the Message! unpaged.
- Use burrs from the burdock plant. Lock them together in the form of letters. Or take other seeds that clink and attach them to a piece of material in form of letters. I thought this idea up myself.]
4. The birthday girl's family in The 13th Clue doesn't mention her birthday at breakfast, and when she comes home from school, "no one is even home". The family is trying to make her party a total surprise, but right now she is not only confused, she is feeling sad and neglected. Collect a bunch of books where a party or something else pleasant is kept a secret. Write descriptions of how the secrets are kept. Does anyone feel hurt or sad? Explain. Country Bear's Surprise would be especially important to have in this group of books. The secret in this book is kept through bullying and rejection. People who keep a pleasant surprise secret often think, the ends justify the means. Have a supervised group or class discussion about this idea, beginning with the descriptions of how the secrets were kept. When the discussion is over, write some of your thoughts about it in your journal. You may wish to add to these thoughts from time to time. To complete this activity, have each member of your group or class think of ways the birthday girl's family could handle breakfast and when she comes home from school without confusing her or making her feel sad and neglected, yet still provide the fun of following the clues to her party. Write them down. For instance, a note on the house door could say some-thing about no one being home, so that she doesn't feel neglected. Now share the solutions and devise ways to combine those that seem to go together, or modify some, and finally select one or more alternatives to the beginning of The 13th Clue. Create substitute illustrations. Now what can you do with them? Should you send them to Ann Jonas and explain them to her? Should you write a school newspaper issue about ends justifying means, and include a number of your substitutions as part of one article? Should you make a folder for the library vertical file for the illustrations and put a note in the back of The 13th Clue and invite readers to explore the alternative beginnings? What else could you do?
5. Use the surprise books from the above collection, and list the clues used to move each story along toward the surprise. Compare the clues with those in The 13th Clue. Which kinds of clues did you enjoy the most? Research one or two kinds of clues and learn more about them, and perhaps some variations. Independently or with a group, think of a surprise story. Now plan some clues and put them together with your story and some illustrations. [See some extra clues in #3.]
6. Collect birthday books. How do authors use birthdays in stories? Ann Jonas used a birthday to have a girl follow 13 fun clues. Russell Hoban used a birthday to have Frances be jealous about someone else's birthday. Some birthday books are about getting presents for someone else. Write about how some authors use birthdays in stories. Now use one of these ideas to make up different birthday story, or use an idea none of these authors has used. It would be a good idea for the class to jointly make up a different birthday story before individuals or groups try it
7. One of the clues in The 13th Clue is a rebus. Find out what a rebus is; find the clue. Write a definition of a rebus, and an explanation of the rebus clue. Use two computer programs: Hypercard and its collections of graphics, or Kid Stuff or Children's Writing and Publishing Center, or Kid Pix.... or any programs that allow you to work with both graphics, numbers, and letters. Try creating rebuses with both programs. Try saving them and printing them out. Have other students react to them on screen, in print. Ask them to explain their reactions. Decide which program works best for you, and write your reasons. Which one is the favorite of your student reactors, and why? Write this out. Think about the programs and the results, then arrange for a conference with your teacher, and discuss how to make a decision of which program to use for a rebus activity. Should you find ways to make a program that other students like easier for you to use? Should you find ways to make a program that's good for you to use more interesting or easier to figure out for other students? After the conference, write out a report to yourself about its results and how you will implement your choice.
Now choose one of the options below or plan one of your own and get it checked.
- Make a rebus valentine. Put the words on the back of the valentine or a fold-out.
- Make a rebus poem or use a nursery rhyme, song or poem.
- Put the words on the back or a fold-out or a fold-up.
- Make a rebus story, with the word story connected in some way.
- Make a rebus story using pictures instead of some words.
- Make the same story using all the words, with the pictures placed just BEFORE the words they represent. [See Hightlights rebus stories; this is how they write rebuses.]
Now work with a group, or brainstorm with your class, how to test stories that are in these two formats. Here are some questions your class might want to answer. Does it help children learn to read certain words better? Which format is better for this use, or are they both the same? Which format do children like better? Does it matter what grade they are in? Decide on what you want to test, and how you will test it, and how you will score or evaluate the tests. With your teacher's help, organize a testing situation and conduct the tests. What were the results? What do the results mean? Write a short article about your rebus experiment, and send it and the rebuses to Highlights. Invite them to design an experiment for their readers to respond to.
8. Have your librarian create a set of clues for a library treasure hunt. For example, one clue could send you to a certain dictionary or fiction book and give you page numbers, column numbers, and the number of a word, until the message is complete to end you to another clue, perhaps on a globe or in an atlas or in the library catalog. [ Perhaps your librarian would like some ideas or help from a small group from your class.] When you and your group or class groups have finished the treasure hunt, discuss with the librarian how the clues were created. Can you think of some ways to improve some of the clues? If you were going to send some groups through the SCHOOL on a treasure hunt, where would be good places to send them to get clues, and what would the treasure be? What was the treasure in the library? And how would you orient the students who were going to look for the treasure? How did the librarian orient your groups so they would understand the library hunt? Plan a school treasure hunt and conference with your librarian and/or teacher before you actually create the clues and place them. If more than one group will be following the same trail of clues, be sure the clues are in order for the next group. If you are instructing hunters to dab some washing soda water on a paper to make the invisible writing [written with diluted iron sulfate] show up, be sure the bottle of diluted washing soda is there with a cotton ball, and that a fresh invisible message is ready for them. Conduct your treasure hunt, and have the hunters fill out a short questionnaire about the hunt. Later, write out how the treasure hunt went. What was the favorite clue? Which was the hardest? Use the questionnaires to advise the next treasure hunt planners how to improve upon this one, and which parts to do just the same.
9. Many books have visual clues that help you predict the answer to a question, the next part of the book, or a rhyming word. You may be able to see part of the clue through a hole in the page before it., as Eric Carle does in The Secret Birthday Message. He had the publishers cut out geometric shapes: triangles, circles, rectangles, among others. John Goodall and H. A. Rey design books with extra short pages or extra long pages folded back so you can move the parts to see what's inside something or behind or under something. Eric Hill does the same thing in a different way. He has the book's producers paste the top edge or side edge of an added piece of paper to a page. Then the reader can fold it back to see what had been covered. There are clues on the page to help you guess before you turn or lift to look. Sometimes the clue is on the right hand side of a page, perhaps it is just the tail of an animal. You guess what animal would have that kind of a tail, then turn the page. There is the REST of the animal! Try to look at books by some of these authors and examine the clues they put in their pictures, and how they help you guess the surprise you will find. Now plan a storybook with clues and surprises, and decide how you will conceal your surprises until the reader is ready for them. Write out your plan, conference, and create your storybook. Your teacher may wish to involve the art teacher and the librarian with this project.
10. Explore both informative and imaginative books that show you how animal tracks can be clues to something that happened. Create your own animal track story. Have a glossary of animal tracks in the beginning pages of your story, so they can help your readers figure out the story. Write the story out in words at the end, or in fold-ups. [This story could be in the form of a bulletin board. Each part of the written story could be covered with a 'lift-up' part showing the story in tracks.]
11. The 13th Clue begins and ends with a diary, or journal entry. Gather some books in which there are journal entries. Some entire stories are written as diaries. Books written as collections of letters are very similar to diary stories. A diary is a message you are writing to yourself. A letter is a message you are writing to someone else. Prepare a story in one of the following formats:
- All letters or postcards.
- All diary entries.
- Begin with a diary entry. Cut to a story. At the story's end, go back to the diary entry and add another entry. [Like The 13th Clue.]
- Write a story that has some diary entries sprinkled throughout.
Sources:
Books of clues to messages.
Albert, Burton. Top Secret! Codes to Crack. Whitman, 1987. Also Secret Codes for Kids.
Arnosky, Jim. Crinkleroot's Book of Animal Tracking. Bradbury, 1989.
Ashton, Christina. Codes and Ciphers. Betterway, 1993.
Caney, Steven. Steven Caney's Kids' America. Workman, 1978. [for Rebus dictionary]
Fowler, Richard. Inspector Smart Gets the Message. Thomas Allen, Ontario, 1982.
Highlights for Children. This magazine has a rebus-type story in almost every issue.
Kohn, Bernice. Secret Codes and Ciphers. Prentice-Hall, 1968.
Marzollo, Jean. The Rebus Treasury. Dial, 1986.
Peterson, John. How to Write Codes and Send Secret Messages. Four Winds, 1970.
Rebus Treasury. Bell, 1991. [A collection of rebuses from Highlights]
Reit, Seymour. The Rebus Bears. Bantam, 1989.
Rockwell, Ann. Root-a-toot toot. Macmillan, 1991.
Books whose text requires close observation of illustrations for comprehension, understanding of humor, solving mysteries or puzzles, uncovering parallel plots, or great richness or information.
Bourke, Linda. Eye Spy. Chronicle, 1991.
Brett, Jan. The Trouble with Trolls. Scholastic, 1992 and other books by this author.
Burningham, John. Time To Get Out of the Bath, Shirley. Crowell, 1978. Also, Come Away From the Water, Shirley.
Hutchins, Pat. 1 Hunter. Greenwillow, 1982.
Jeffers, Susan. Three Jovial Huntsmen. Bradbury, 1979.
Jonas, Ann. Books by this author.
Joyce, William. George Shrinks. Harper Row, 1985.
Mosel, Arlene. The Funny Little Woman. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.
Raskin, Ellen. Nothing Ever Happens on My Block. Atheneum, 1980. Also Spectacles.
Rey, H. A. See the Circus. Houghton Mifflin. Also Feed the Animals.
Tobias, Tobi. Jane, Wishing. Viking, 1977.
Wordless picture books.
Anno, Mitsumasa. Anno's Italy. Collins, 1978, and other books by this author.
Goodall, John S. The Story of an English Village. Atheneum, 1979.
Johnson, Crockett. Harold and the Purple Crayon. Harper & Row, 1955 and others by author.
Krahn, Fernando. The Creepy Thing, Clarion, 1982, and other books by this author.
Mayer, Mercer. A Boy, a Dog, a Frog and a Friend. Dial, 1971 and other books by this author.
Olschewski, Alfred. Winterbird. Houghton Mifflin, 1969.
Ormerod, Jan. Sunshine. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard. 1981, also Moonlight.
Tafuri, Nancy. Junglewalk. Greenwillow, 1988.
Birthday books and surprise books.
Brimmer, Larry. Country Bear's Surprise. Orchard, 1991.
Carle, Eric. The Secret Birthday Message. Crowell, 1972.
Cushman, Doug. The ABC Mystery. HarperCollins, 1993.
Gay, Michel. Bibi's Birthday Surprise. Morrow, 1985.
Hill, Eric. Spot's Birthday Party. Putnam, 1982.
Hoban, Russell. A Birthday for Frances. Harper, 1968.
Hurd, Thatcher. Little Moses' Birthday Cake. Harper Collins, 1992.
Hutchins, Pat. Happy Birthday, Sam. Greenwillow, 1978.
Kellogg, Steven. Won't Somebody play with me? Dial, 1972.
Merriam, Eve. The Birthday Door. Morrow, 1986.
Prepared by Audrey Conant, MEMA Board
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