What Allen has to Say...

We are beginning our exploration of author and illustrator, Allen Say.  Allen was born and raised in Japan.  At 12 years of age, Allen served as apprentice to his favorite cartoonist, Noro Shinpei. Allen moved to the United States at age 16, and was sent to military school.  He began work as a photographer before transitioning into illustrating children's books.  Ultimately, Allen began to write and illustrate his own books for children. Many of Allen's books are inspired by true events, both his own experiences and those of his family.  We will be studying Allen Say's work as the weeks progress; making connections and determining underlying themes.  Before we begin this study, we thought it might be helpful to build more background knowledge on this amazing man.  Click here for more information!

Allen with his pet cat.  Perhaps it was inspiration for his book, Allison.

Allen presenting inspiration for his illustrations.

Allen Say at his drawing table. "When a picture tells a story you don't have
 to write it.  This came to me as a great revelation."

Allen's 1994 Caldecott winning story, based on his grandfather's life.

True story, based on Allen's mother's move from California to Japan as a young girl.

Story depicting an event from Allen's childhood.

The Writing Process

In class, we spent a lot of time discussing writing as a process.  Many students asked why we need to take the time to write a second draft, before we make edits on our report.  We learned that it is very difficult to edit our sloppy copy because it is too SLOPPY.  Sloppy is a good thing, though.  We want our first drafts to look like this (see sample):

When our rough drafts look sloppy, we know we've taken the time to rev up our writing with a "check and change."  This means we have spent time rereading our draft and revising our ideas to make our words sing on the page.  It means we have added details and taken risks.  We can't edit these papers though because it's too hard to tell what's what.  It can help us to recopy the draft with all our revisions in place.  It is much easier to edit a second draft that looks like this (see sample):

A neat and tidy second draft makes editing less difficult.  We can spot errors easily and often times, we make some of the corrections without even thinking as we recopy the draft.  The more edits we make, the more the audience will be able to enjoy our report in the future.  We took our time to reread our drafts for different skills this week.  It was much easier to edit when we took the time to reread, and we used the copy-editing symbols we practiced in class.  Here are a few symbols in action (see sample):

How is your editing coming along?  Are you going to be ready to move on to organizing your timeline tomorrow?  Have you identified some of your strengths and weaknesses, using the purple editing checklist?  Let us know how it's going by leaving a comment.  Happy editing!