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National Geographic Society, 1998
Greenwillow Books, 1992
Summary: Ten-year-old Blaze is fearful, sad, and lonely, grieving over the death of his mother. Joselle is boisterous and bitter, trying to make up for her mother's rejection. When they meet, they act out their unhappiness, and each of their lives is changed.
Level: RL: 4-5 IL: 4-8
Themes:
fear
the grieving process
friendship
Activities:
* = 'time to check with your teacher or librarian"
1A. Blaze's father Glenn has a definite style of painting and uses this style in each of his pictures. He also uses repetitive subjects and works with a general size. Imagine what one of these pictures might look like, then draw or paint it. Be sure you use a size Glenn might use. Discuss your work with an art teacher.
B. A good class or group project for students who had shared the book would be to first discuss Blaze's painting. Some students could then create their version of what Blaze's picture might look like. Other students could create a picture that reflected the important people in their own lives in the symbolic style that Blaze used
C. Another alternative would be to create a picture using watercolors. Now create that same picture using oils. Create another replica using acrylics. (Blaze's father uses oils, and Blaze uses watercolors and acrylics.) Present your works to a pre-selected audience or display your works with a paragraph below each with the strengths and weaknesses of each medium as you experienced it. A final paragraph should reflect your preference of mediums for the kind of picture you created. If these 3 mediums are unavailable, 3 other mediums could be used: pastels, charcoal, colored pencil, poster paint, for example.
[Display of personal art work or sharing personal insights with others is at the discretion of the students and teachers. This decision should be negotiated before such a project is begun.]
2. Blaze's feelings about Joselle change a number of times during the course of Words of Stone. What causes him to like her and dislike her? Make two timelines, one of Joselle's behavior that Blaze responds to positively, and one that causes Blaze to feel negatively toward her. Now merge the two timelines and color code the result or create some other way to indicate Blaze's ambivalent feelings in a striking manner. Examine the three timelines carefully and describe what you can tell about Joselle, about Blaze, and about their interaction, from such an analysis. [An easy way to create such timelines would be to use a computer program such as Timeliner.] Present your timelines and your conclusions to a panel.
3. In a group, compare how Words of Stone is written with the way Morning Girl is written. [Or compare with Little Little by M. E. Kerr, Harper Row 1981 or The Bus People by Rachel Anderson, Henry Holt 1989.] Do NOT compare the content, just the format and style and structure. (Hints: tense, person, chapter titles, alternating chapter formats, among other things.) What is the same and what is different? What are the results of the differences? Of the similarities? Group plan and write a four chapter story using the structure of Words of Stone. Now ask for the Morning Girl first person stories file (if anyone in your school did this activity from Maine Sampler III.) Read two of the student stories. Discuss with your group how the different styles impact you. Make two group lists: the kinds of stories you might write in the style of Words of Stone and the kinds of stories you might write in the style of one of the other stories listed above. Now sign up for a group conference with your teacher and/or librarian.
4. List the fears that haunt Blaze. Share these and other children's fears with a group. Combine the lists and brainstorm ways that these fears might be categorized or explored. Be sure to include causes and solutions in your discussions. Organize three or more of these ways in chart form.* Group-design a short questionnaire about fears for a selected age group, examining your categories and charts as helping tools.* List a number of ways surveys and questionnaires are administered. Discuss how each of these ways would work with your particular topic, taking into account the age of your chosen respondents and the nature of the questions. Which seems to be the best?* Now think of the ways your group could communicate the results, and who would be interested. How does that affect the way you might administer the questionnaire? Go over each section of this assignment and decide what information you want to collect and how you will collect it, how you will study it, and how you will communicate the information and your conclusions.* Now go for it! (* indicates a checkpoint with librarian or classroom teacher.) [If you will be videotaping your questionnaire, you may wish to view some that have been taped on Reading Rainbow.]
5. Blaze gets a new imaginary playmate each year on July 4. Are imaginary playmates very common? And why are they called 'playmates'? What relationship do they have to daydreaming? Write a description of Blaze's 'playmates' and develop some additional questions about the phenomenon. Research these and write what you found that refers to the combined questions.* Find some other fiction books or stories that include imaginary playmates and create a bibliography.* [You may wish to begin this search before you investigate your earlier questions, as your librarian will probably need extra time to locate and acquire such a fiction collection.] Go over the books you have collected and choose one that would make an interesting comparison with Blaze's situation. Discuss your choice and your reasons with your librarian.* Read the book. Plan a presentation for your class that includes a comparison of the playmate situations and that applies what you have learned in your research to the playmate situations. Conference with your teacher or librarian about the content and the format of your plan before you finish developing it and present it.
6A. Blaze and Joselle were each unhappy. Write a statement about why each one is unhappy and how realistic or unrealistic that unhappiness is. Can we truly understand what makes someone else unhappy?
How did Blaze and Joselle act as a result of their unhappiness? Give three examples of each. Were these acts constructive or destructive? To whom?
psychology
B. Write how the adults in Blaze's family or in Joselle's family reacted to their youngster's behavior. Did they seem to understand the reasons for such negative behaviors or for such unhappiness? What did they do in order to alleviate or to cure this unhappiness or such negative behavior? Be specific and give page numbers. What worked and what didn't work?
What kind of advice would you give to Joselle's mother that would help the situation? To Floy, her grandmother? [If you chose Joselle.] To Blaze's grandmother Nova? His father, Glenn? To Glenn's girlfriend Claire? [If you chose Blaze.]
Share these ideas within a group supervised by a teacher or librarian or in a class panel. [Both A and B responses can be discussed together.]
7. Joselle tried to imagine her mother and Rick driving from Kenosha Wisconsin to the Pacific ocean. She used a road atlas [pp 71-73] to follow the roads they might travel all the way to Route 101 on the California coast. She vacillated between imagining them lost, stranded, having car trouble, and picturing them enjoying a safe trip.
With a group, locate a U.S. road atlas, a travel guide to the U.S. or a set of state information books, and collect information about our country's national and state parks. You will also need expert information on various types of car problems and repairs. Plan Vicki and Rick's trip to Route 101 as Joselle might imagine it, complete with high spots as well as problems. If possible, create an interactive hypercard or Hyperstudio stack of this trip. One plan might be to create buttons on a map that indicate the end of each day's travel. The buttons could take the viewer to a diagram of a car problem and how it was solved, to a scanned view or meeting or adventure appropriate to the location. Or the buttons could depict these happenings through simulated postcards Joselle imagines her mother sending to her. You could use animation to have their route move to the end of the next day. Plan the route carefully: how many miles might the couple travel in a day? Where would they be likely to stop? What would they be likely to do there? How long would it take?
[Use Stringbean's Trip to the Shining Sea by Vera Williams or Anni's Diary of France by Anni Axworthy to get some ideas.] Present your stack to a pre-selected audience. Include in your presentation tips your team learned in accessing information, how you figured the miles per day, hypercard skills you learned. At the end of your presentation give each member of your audience a handout. One side should include your accessing tips and a bibliography of your sources. The other side should have a description of your favorite hypercard tips that your group used in this stack. Have each member of your team contribute at least one tip. Use the Hypercard assessment tool in the back of this Sampler to understand how a stack is evaluated and what makes a good stack. [Appendix 1]
If you cannot create a stack, make a giant U.S. wall map and mark Vicki's route on it. Use an icon of some kind to indicate the end of each day's travel. Use yarn or other colored strips from each icon to above and below the map where you can place diagrams, postcards, illustrations, and descriptions of that day's journey. [A booklet, perhaps with some see-through overlay pages, is another alternative.] Your presentation can include tips for constructing the format you used as well as some of your research strategies.
Prepared by Audrey Conant, MEMA
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