LAL is a national reading promotion program of the Center for the Book

LAL 2009-2010

CONTEST UPDATE!

WHEW! This year we've received an amazing total of 68,700 letters!

Hi, readers! We know you are anxiously waiting to hear the results of this year's LAL writing competition.

One of our entrants sent us the following email, and we know she expresses what many of you may be thinking.

Sydney said we could share her Email message to us with all of you!

Hello Letters About Literature Faculty,

My name is Sydney Morrison. I am from Monticello, IL. I am in fourth grade and my letter to you was submitted by my lovely teacher Mrs. Katherine Sokolowski. I was wondering if you could possibly give me any additional information to the information that is posted on your site. Will I have any way of knowing if I am going to the state-level judges?? If you possibly could please, please, check. I am very nervous and I think about it every day. And possibly if you could send Aliyah Welter and Lauren Kepley both the information I just explained. That would be such an honor.

I love that you are doing this I think it is an excellent idea. And the inventors that thought of it must be quite intellegent human beings. Well thanks for having such a glorious idea, for us young readers and writers to tell someone about our books and the way we think of it. It is kind of like having an imaginary friend you can tell your opinions to. Thanks again and please email me back it will be greatly appreciated. And if it simply cannot be done I am perfectly okay with that too.

Thanks!

Your Friend,

Sydney Rae Morrison

P.S. I BOOKS!!

What was our answer to Sydney? Right now, we don't know if she and her friends advanced to round 3 judging, because we are still reading! But we should know in another week.

TEACHERS & LIBRARIANS, PLEASE NOTE: If you  did not receive an email to confirm that we received your class's entries, please contact us at lal@epix.net. It may be that your school mail system blocked our email to you as spam.

OR . . .  we misread your email address (a's and e's and u's and v's look mighty similar).Note: We do not send email confirmation to each individual student in the class who submitted a letter through their teacher. We contact the teacher.

TIMELINE to keep in MIND:

• MID-FEBRUARY: Round 3-state-level judging - begins.  Of tthe almost 69,000 letters we received, our team of judges for rounds 1 and 2 will have eliminated approximately 55,000. So advancing to round 3 is a pretty big deal!!
• MID-MARCH: State winners announced. Each affiliate state center for the book announces their state winners.
• MID-APRIL: National winners announced. Once we have the signed permission release forms from all our winning entrants, we'll post their names on our website. That usually happens in May.

BOOKMARK this website and visit us throughout January and February for contest updates!

What Teachers Are Telling Us

LAL challenges young readers to write a personal letter of reflection to an author whose work somehow inspired them or changed their view of the world or themselves.

Throughout the entire year we work on making personal connections to various texts, but making a personal connection to an author, another human being rather than an impersonal "text," really created the additional level of depth that was missing in some of their other writing.

 --Keith Sanzen, Scituate MS, Rhode Island

When your contest came across my desk, I thought, "Not another contest!' I then read the description and discovered its true worth. here was not a contest seeking to glorify an institution as is too often the case. Here is a contest that sks my students to connect to literature, tell how it has affect them Within a week, I ahd them discussing poems and children's books along with some of the great YA litearture out there.

--Tim Chaffee, Cisne High School, IL

Without the impetus of the LAL program, I probably wouldn't ask my students to reflect on the texts they read in such a personal manner. I'd prep them for their standardized testing, and be sure they could defend interpretations of literature using appropriate rhetorical strategies, and I might have a class of brilliant academic writers. What the LAL program does for my students is remind them that literature is, at its heart, an expression of the human condition, frequently an expression of things they may be feeling or have already felt.

-- Pat Marshall, PORTA HS, Petersburg, IL

But what is reflective writing

and how do you do it?

Reflective writing is when an individual looks back at a past experience or period of time and thinks about the meaning and significance of that experience or time. Reflection is personal. It is insightful.

Think of a mirror.  When you look into a mirror, what do you see?  Not just your own image but also the space around you and behind you.  That's kind of what you do when you write a reflective letter to an author. The author's work - the book - is the mirror. The letter you write should capture the image in the mirror - a little bit about yourself and your world, how you saw yourself reflected in the book.

Heere's the really interesting thing--no two readers quite see the same reflection in an author's work!

Reflective writing is NOT a book report.  It is not a fan letter or a how-to-do process report.  It is not a persuasive argument nor is it a literary analysis.  Rather, reflective writing is personal.  It is insightful.  It is an expression of your memories or your emotions or your ideas. The author just helped you to discover those things about yourself.

At first, we got off to a rocky start. I have focused so heavily on effective academic writing that the first drafts presented very 'well-supported' recounts of the books' plots and characters. While this proved to me that my lessons about textual support have hit home, I knew these were not the type of inspirational anecdotes LAL was seeking.

We went back to the drawing board. And then we went back again and again. The revision process was maximized here.

--Gillian Freebody, Pequannock Valley MS, NJ

. . . A 'letter' written on paper is a completely foreign entity. It is neither a text nor a tweet. It is permanent. It is real. It will be read, reread, and treasured.

--Kitty Drew, The Walker School, GA

What We Do

The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, in cooperation with affiliate state centers for the book and in partnership with Target Stores, invites readers in grades 4 through 12 to enter Letters About Literature, a national reading-writing contest.

To enter, readers write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre--fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, contemporary or classic--explaining how that author's work changed the student's way of thinking about the world or themselves.

There are three competition levels:

• Level I for children in grades 4 through 6;
  

• Level II for grades 7 and 8, 

• Level III, grades 9 - 12. 

State winners, announced in March each year, receive cash awards. National winners, announce in late April, receive additional prizes and earn for their school or community library LAL Reading Promotion Grants valued at thousands of dollars!

LAL focuses on reader response and reflective writing. We provide free teaching materials, including lesson plans, writing samples, assessment checklists, and teacher tips--all downloadable through this site.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS FOR TEACHERS, LITERACY COACHES, & LIBARIANS

Interested in your school district/library hosting a professional development workshop on Reader Response and Reflective Writing? Contact LAL national project director Catherine Gourley for more information at 570-675-3305 or via email at lal@epix.net.

LAL supports educational standards established for reading and language arts as recommended by the International Reading Association and the National Council for the Teaching of English.

Theresa Donohue from Commack MS, NY, wrote to us: 

Before you read these letters try to remember when you were an 8th grade student. You were young, innocent, moody, self-absorbed, and on the brink of your teenage years. The wonderful children I have the pleasure of spending most of my days with are precisely at this point. I love my job and my students. Many  worked diligently on these letters. They may not be award-winning letters, but my students are proud of what they wrote, and I am very  proud of each of them.

Theresa, we, too, are proud of the almost 69,000 young readers who sent us letters. We especially love their honesty and  willingness to share their personal stories and thoughts with us!  

Although we're still reading, we'd like to share SOME EXCERPTS from this year's letters:

YOU MADE US SMILE!

• I would rather wash dishes than read a book outside of school.  . . . When I read Tiger, the first book in The Five Ancestors Series, I suddenly got a knack for reading. (honestly written by John from San Juan Capistrano to author Jeff Stone) 

• Hello. My name is Jared. You made me who I am today. Prepare to be praised. (to the author of The Princess Bride, William Goldman)  

• When I first read Eragon, I thought to myself, “Wow, this guy must have been writing forever to be this good!” (written by Adam in Choteau, Montana) 

• I didn’t see the end coming because I didn’t check how many pages I had left. (to Stephenie Meyer, author of New Moon, by 8^th grader Juliet from Montana) 

• The future has always been a blur to me. (written by Adrianna, Houston, TX) 

• Most people meet new friends outside. All you meet if you stay inside all day is a pair of glasses. (Tyler’s comments in a letter to Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days) 

• The next day, I opened the book, ready but scared. I was trembling and I felt like Jello. (Emma, a 4^th grader from Silverdale, WA, wrote to Marion Dane Bauer, author of the suspenseful novel The Double-Digit Club)

SOMETIMES YOU CONFUSED US!

• Through a combination of contrasting parental influences, early maturation, and a curious mind, I found myself being thrown into a hurricane of confusion and on a desperate search for stability as I approach my double digits. (from a letter to Richard Bach, author of Jonathon Livingston Seagull)  

• Your book was very eye-gluing. (Adda to Erin Hunter, author of Bluestar’s Prophecy)

BUT MOSTLY . . .

YOU WOWED US!

• Skin. It’s the first thing people use to evaluate you in this world. What I saw in the mirror made me wonder . . . Do people treat me a certain way because of my skin color? What causes people to look at me in a strange manner? Am I different in some manner not explained? Or is it me? Just like Maleeka, I, too, questioned why my skin was the way it was. When I started reading your story, I really didn’t want to read it, because I knew Maleeka, in a way, was me. I didn’t want to read something that reminded me of myself.   (from a letter written by a 8^th grade student at St. Angela School, Chicago, IL, to Sharon  Flake, author of The Skin I'm In)  

• I’ve been having problems like Shug with my best friend. She just seems like she’s growing up and I’m not. I like being a kid like Shug. (to Jenny Han, author of Shug, from a letter written written by Kate, Washington JHS, Naperville, IL) 

• I was baptized Roman Catholic. I do not believe animals rise ot heave or descend. I will never truly see my dog again, but through your novel, Cynthia, you have brought her back. Through the experiences in your book, treasured memories I had banished from my mind have arisen again. I welcome these now.  (From a letter written written by Ryan from Naperville, IL to Cynthia Kadohata, author of Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam) 

• I’m an earth freak. I yell when people throw away paper. I tear up when I see things about sea animals getting killed by pollution and careless boaters. I cringe when I see forests being torn down so more buildings can be built; like there already aren’t enough. Sometimes I get teased about being so sensitive when it comes to being ‘green’ by the kids at school. My release at first was just to tell myself that they’re just cold-hearted and that I was the better person. But sometimes it was hard to convince myself of this.  (written to Carl Hiaasen, author of Hoot, from  12-year-old letter writer Val) 

• My personality doesn’t match Lily’s, but my heart does. I am a junior high school Christian girl It sometimes seems to be me that no one else is as close to religion as I am. I have lots of friends who go to church, but hardly any of them go EVERY Sunday. I also, like Lily, journal about the Bible. None of my friends do that. It was a relief for me to know that what I did wasn’t just something crazy and weird. Once I realized how close Lily and I were, I started making other connections between us.  (to Nancy Rue, author of the Lily series of books, written by seventh grader Julia)

Creative Imagery! 

Today's fun figurative language example:

Your book showed me that even if your life is a bowl of tangled noodles, you will eventually find a meatball!

--Crystal, Mansfield, TX, Level 2

NOTE: This column has become so popular that we're creating a page just devoted to your students' efforts at using figurative language. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, enjoy these beow: 

I have a tendency to stumble around with my eyes screwdrivered shut. 

More often, though, their  attempts are a little less polished and not quite as effective. Still, they are way fun to read. And LAL is willing to bet that, Keaton, and Kyle had fun creating these similes for their LAL submissions last year:

The slish-slosh of the sleet was as loud as someone singing.  --5th grade student from Dallas, TX

Your book Slam tossed my brain around like a shirt in a clothes dryer.  --Marshall, 12, writing to Walter Dean Myers

This book hit me like a herd of buffalo fleeing wolves.  --Keaton from Kansas

Your book unlocked the ancient titanium steel doors of my eyes to see in a new perspective animal cruelty.  --Kyle, grade 6, GA

Budding writers have to start somewhere and we think these “starts” are fun to read (and probably were a whole lot of fun for the writers to think up, too!) Enjoy!

• My great grandma and I were closer than buttons on a sweater. My great grandpa and I were closer than a fishing hook and a fishing line. We were tight like needle and thread.--Jessica, age 11, NJ

• When I heard James was trying to hunt down Bella and wouldn't stop, Jack Frost flew down my spine. --Kane, age 11, writing to Stephenie Meyer

• our thick words just seemed to run off the page like molasses running off a knife. --Lindsey, age 13, TX, writing to Sharon Creech

• Your book, To Be a Slave, unlike so many others, stretched, chewed, tossed, and extended my brain to the full extent as if it was a wad of taffy. --Ursula, age 12, to Julius Lester

• My tears were out of control. They slipped out of my eyes like sand through my fingers. --Patrick from Washington, writing to Kate DiCamillo  

• Where the Red Fern Grows captured me like a dragon trapping a princess in the tallest tower. --Chelsie from Kansas 

• I slam the cover of the book shut as warm tears rush down my face, similar to the way a raging river cascades over the rocky ledge of a dangerous waterfall.      --Sage from ME, writing to Jodi Picoult