into Interpretation
The aim of this part is to teach children that when we read, we want to collect all of our thinking about our characters and begin to name what we think these characters are really all about. This means that our ideas cease to live on one page, in one scene, or even in one book, and instead spread to as much of the series as possible. It is when a club progresses to the second book in a series that your instruction, too, can turn a bend. You might alert readers to this specifically, saying: “Starting our second book in a series allows us to ask ourselves, ‘What changes across these books and what remains the same?’” Readers will come to understand that readers and clubs might make a list of ways in which the same character grows or changes in this sec- ond book. After their Post-it sorting, talking, and notebook writing, children will come to this second book in the series with working theories about the kind of peo- ple the characters are in their books. The work is now to help children carry those ideas into a second book in a series, and to allow themselves to think flexibly to revise or confirm their initial theories. Children may look at their initial theories about a character to ask, “Was I right about Lucas?” or “Is Lucas still the same person he was in the last book or are there ways in which he has changed?” Most books in a series have characters who fit a type (class clown, smart kid, supporting girls) and plots that are formulaic. In many ways, therefore, the second book will reinforce the patterns set in the first.
To notice patterns in the series (a character trait that is repeated or a plot structure that is constant across books) and then to consider the effects of these patterns is sophisti- cated work. Your kids may need more support during conferences and reminders dur- ing club reading time, to move beyond noticing and naming to thinking about what this pattern helps them understand or predict about the characters or story lines. For exam- ple, Amelia Bedelia is always messing things up—this pattern is easy to recognize. But a critical third-grade reader, even when reading a series like this that is below grade level, can push himself to ask: “What does this repeated character trait make me think about Amelia?” At this point, readers can debate their interpretations. Some may think this makes the reader think less of Amelia, that she’s not very bright—others may think
that this is just the author’s way of creating funny scenes that leave you laughing. Each interpretation will demand examples from the text to provide support.
To support readers in this interpretive work, you will want to teach them to consider more than just the current problem the characters are facing. They may begin to think about how a new problem connects to other similar obstacles the character has faced in past stories, how a current goal goes with goals in previous books. Readers may begin to ask ourselves: “What resources does the character draw upon, from deep inside, to meet the challenges and reach their goals?” (Session XVI of Following Characters into Meaningtalks about these questions at greater length.) The beauty of these questions is that they apply no matter what the story because, after all, stories are built on a prob- lem/resolution structure. All characters long for something. All characters face obsta- cles. All characters respond in some way. And all characters rely on something in themselves when they face their challenges. Understanding this narrative structure and learning to look at characters through this lens will set children on the path to getting at the heart of any character they encounter, in any book. And asking these questions leads any of us to rich understandings not only of characters, but of a book’s messages, of life lessons.
As children begin to move from inferences about characters to theories about char- acters, they may stop short at times, pronouncing a single idea to be the idea. They may, for example, stall on something such as “Rob is a wimp” and declare their interpretive work done. You’ll want to teach them ways to keep themselves going, producing more thinking, more ideas, more writing. One easy way to get kids to elaborate is to set them up with conversational prompts they can use as they talk in partnerships. We can go back to the prompts we have been using with children during partner work and dur- ing our writing about reading work, lifting the level of the work we are prompting for toward more synthesis and interpretation.
■ Perhaps it’s because . . . ■ Or maybe it’s . . .
■ Another thing it could be . . . ■ This connects to earlier when . . . ■ That reminds me of . . .
■ A stronger word to describe that is . . . ■ This seems significant because . . .
There are additional prompts in the chart “Conversation Prompts to Keep Partner Talk Going . . .” on page 158 of Following Characters into Meaning. You’ll of course have your own ideas for prompts or other ways to get children to grow their thinking even bigger—and children will have ideas, too! Bring them in on the decision making so that they feel ownership in this big important work. Always, we want to encourage independence in a workshop, and there’s no better way than to issue an invitation to children to author their own reading or writing work.
As you teach young readers to grow ideas in book clubs, you will want to build from the bands of text-difficulty work you did in the character unit, and use that to inform your whole-class and small-group teaching. For example, readers who are working with K/L/M texts will probably find that those texts feature one or two main characters, each of whom is characterized by a couple of dominant character traits, which are usu- ally very much related to the story line. For example, in the series Pinky and Rex, Pinky is a character who likes more traditionally “girl” things like the color pink and stuffed animals, while his best friend Rex is a character who likes more “boy” things like dinosaurs. It will not require a lot of inference for readers of these texts to deduce what their characters are like as people. These characters won’t tend to change, either, although their feelings will. As readers move to the second book in a series, what changes are the situations the character experiences—dealing with a bully and learn- ing the importance of being yourself, getting a new baby brother and learning that your parents have room to love you both. Readers can be taught to notice the main events in the stories and how those main events affect the main characters, but readers should not, however, be taught to talk about major character change across the course of the series because that won’t exist.
Meanwhile, once readers are reading texts in the N/O/P/Q band of text difficulty, characters will become more contradictory. They’ll feel one thing and something con- trary to that as well. Readers will often find that the text comes right out and tells them about this emotional complexity. For example, in the Amber Brownseries, Amber deals with a different situation in each book. In one, Amber Brown Is Not a Crayon, she learns to accept that her best friend, Justin, is moving away. We see several sides of her per- sonality across the course of the book—the loyal friend, the hurt little girl who acts cruel, the child who is still comforted by a talk with her mom, the child who accepts life’s hardships and learns to grow from them. At this band of text difficulty, it is com- mon for a character to change by the end of the story, and readers can be taught to think about this.
You will be able to introduce many different strategies for comparing characters, such as: readers can think about how the same character may act similarly or differently across a book or across books in a series (character change); about how one character acts one way with one set of characters and another with a different set of characters; or about how the same issue (like Amber’s mom’s divorce) affects different characters in similar or different ways. In each of these scenarios, you can teach clubs a variety of ways to think and speak comparatively. For example, you may introduce some com- parative sentence starters to get the ball rolling: “This character seems more/less ______ than the other characters. I see this when ______. I think the reason for this is ______.” You may also remind students of comparative endings (-erand -est). You may use addi- tional prompts with clubs to get them to fill in both sides of a comparison: if Mrs. Sweetly (in Willimena Rules! How to Lose Your Class Pet) seems nicer at the end of the book, it’s important to talk about how kind she is to Willimena at the end, but also to carry it through and discuss how she seemed frightening in the beginning of the book, and to put forth possible reasons for this difference.
Aside from just character work, there are other ways in which club members might compare and contrast the two books within the series, as the Common Core State Standards suggest. Much in the way that adults addicted to a series may debate which single book is the best in the series, children can also decide which of the two books was more exciting or funny and why. They may pay particular attention to any new secondary character who emerges. They may discuss the author’s craft across the two books, noting, for example, whether the author uses the same techniques in each to make the reader laugh, whether it feels like the “same person” wrote the second book and why. Remember that reading the second (or nth) book in a series is children’s chance at experiencing the second (or nth) book by the same author. This increases their ability to recognize this author’s specific craft moves, writing style, and general voice. (For example, Gertrude Warner, though she created the Boxcar Children, wrote only nineteen of the hundred-plus books in the Boxcar Childrenseries. Readers might pick up that writing styles vary across the books in the series as they become accustomed to “hearing” that each author has a distinct writing voice.) Your young readers will not only come to love a series, they will also come to love the author behind them. You may decide to urge the children in your club to visit this author’s fan page or to write to this author with their observations and/or suggestions.
You will want readers to be aware of and to look out for the plot lines that con- tinue from one text to another. In many cases, the struggles the characters face in a series are not entirely resolved in neat and tidy ways. Instead, these struggles are transformed or carried from one book to the next. If you have an advanced book club in the room that will benefit from instruction and discussions around themes, you might teach them to identify how a particular theme runs through multiple books within a series. In the Shilohseries, for instance, some of the struggles Marty’s fam- ily faces are related to their poverty. The theme of poverty is carried across the series, and readers need to attend to this issue across the series. Teaching readers to carry the information from one book in a series into the next (and the next and the next) will set them up to synthesize greater amounts of text and ultimately to read increas- ingly longer and more complex texts.
In simpler children’s series, main characters tend to remain the same age across all the books (e.g., Pinky and Rex) while series at slightly higher reading levels have char- acters who mature quite distinctly across successive books—for example, Junie B. Jones graduates to the next grade across the series, and Cleary’s Ramona may be followed in her growth from a pesky four-year-old to a sensitive fourth grader. This is another chance to differentiate instruction between clubs. Higher-level readers may be encour- aged to track ways in which their character matures as he or she grows older while you’ll coach your lower-level readers (whose books will tend to be more formulaic to scaffold comprehension) to note the pattern of how each book in a series “tends to go.” Regardless, all readers will be able to talk about their characters in more nuanced ways as they head into their third book in a series, which will help them to choose words and phrases for effect when they are thinking, speaking, and writing about their books as expected in the Common Core State Standards. Furthermore, after reading multiple
books in a series, you can invite readers to distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator or those of the characters, as expected in the Common Core State Standards.
In many ways, your readers are interpreting now—holding onto one big idea about a character and seeking out both corroborating evidence and contradictions that they must address. However, at this point in the unit, kids are most likely doing this work on their character’s traits (albeit in sophisticated and beautiful ways), and perhaps how they see their character changing in the books they are reading. You can push your readers further by asking them to focus on not only new ideas they have about their characters, but also by looking at what lessons the character is learning in this story. Readers can ask themselves, “What does Amber Brown learn about friendship?” or “How does Amber learn to deal with loss?” and by standing on their strong inferences, readers can begin to think about big lessons the author might want us to learn. In doing this thinking work, readers will be very close to studying themes.
For example, you can demonstrate how to do this work by looking at the very same Post-its you used earlier in the part:
■ Amber is upset that her best friend Justin is moving.
■ Amber’s mom helped console her when she felt bad about Justin moving. ■ Amber played a made-up basketball game with Justin. This part shows how
long she and Justin have been friends.
■ Amber said she was going to miss Justin after they make up.
And now you can look at these Post-its, asking yourself, “What lessons does the charac- ter learn about these people, problems, or ideas?” By doing this, we may begin to gener- ate even bigger thoughts about our books. You might say, for instance, “Amber learns that it’s hard to have friends move away,” or “Amber learns not to take friends for granted, because they may not be in our lives forever.” Sometimes it helps to first name the prob- lems that a character faces in a book, and then to ask ourselves, “What lessons does the character learn about ______ (the problem).” Of course, as kids begin this harder thematic work, they may go back to simpler ideas, such as “Amber learns that friends are impor- tant.” While for some children this may be a great goal to attain, for others you may want to go back now to the prompts and partnerships that have helped students to think in bigger, better, more complex ways from the beginning of the unit. “Amber learns that her friendship means too much to not make up with Justin before he leaves,” or “Amber learns that it’s part of life to have people you love move away.”
Below are some more examples of Post-its from the Skinny-Bonesseries that can help you model this interpretive work:
■ Alex enjoys being the center of attention and making people laugh. ■ Alex is jealous of T.J. Stoner because T.J. is better at sports.
And now you can look at these Post-its, asking yourself, “What lessons does the char- acter learn about these people, problems, or ideas?” By doing this, we may begin to generate even bigger thoughts about our books. You might say, for instance, “Alex learns that he has something to be proud of when he wins the Kitty Fritters TV Contest.” Sometimes it helps to first name the problems that a character faces in a book, and then to ask ourselves, “What lessons does the character learn about ______ (the prob- lem)?” And then we might push ourselves to answer: “Alex learns to accept himself for who he is.” Of course, as kids begin this harder thematic work, they may hearken back to simpler ideas, such as: “While for some students this may be a great place to get to, for others we will want to go back now to the prompts and partnerships that have helped our students to think in bigger, better, more complex ways from the beginning of the unit. “Alex learns that everyone is unique and talented at something; sometimes it just takes a while to find what we are good at.”
Previously, you taught children to talk more accountably by citing or pointing to spe- cific passages in their books as they discussed or wrote about a character theory. As clubs mature, they’ll have severaltexts—several books in a series—that they will refer- ence during a group discussion. Continue to nudge children into making intertextual connections and to citing specific instances or examples from a particular text as they make a claim about a character. Model how a club member might “prepare” for raising a particular point in a club conversation by marking beforehand the specific spots in the twoor threetexts that support this point. Show children also that they may directly quote a line from the text to support or negate a point. The aim is to allow your readers to