Craft your fiction with scene-by-scene flow, logic and readability. An imprisoned man receives an unexpected caller, after which "everything changed..." And the reader is hooked. But whether or not readers will stay on for the entire wild ride will depend on how well the writer structures the story, scene by scene. This book is your game plan for success. Using dozens of examples from his own work - including Dropshot,Tiebreaker and other popular novels - Jack M. Bickham will guide you in building a sturdy framework for your novel, whatever its form or length. You'll learn how to: • "worry" your readers into following your story to the end • prolong your main character's struggle while moving the story ahead • juggle cause and effect to serve your story action As you work on crafting compelling scenes that move the reader, moment by moment, toward the story's resolution, you'll see why... • believable fiction must make more sense than real life • every scene should end in disaster • some scenes should be condensed, and others built big Whatever your story, this book can help you arrive at a happy ending in the company of satisfied readers.

Filling a crucial need for K-6 teachers, this book provides practical strategies for using nonfiction trade books in language arts and content area instruction. Research-based, classroom-tested ideas are spelled out to help teachers: *Select from among the many wonderful nonfiction trade books available *Incorporate nonfiction into the classroom *Work with students to develop comprehension strategies for informational texts *Elicit responses to nonfiction through drama, writing, and discussion *Use nonfiction to promote content area learning and research skills Unique features of the book include teacher-created lesson plans, extensive lists of recommended books (including choices for reluctant readers), illustrative examples of student work, and suggestions for linking nonfiction reading to the use of the World Wide Web.

Would you give a mouse a cookie, a moose a muffin, or even a pig a pancake? This instructional guide for literature covers five different "If You Give " books, and students will enjoy completing the fun, challenging activities and lessons as they learn to analyze each story. These rigorous, cross-curricular lessons and activities work in conjunction with the text to teach students how to comprehend complex literature and help them understand the significance of each story. This resource is packed with tools to teach students how to analyze story elements in multiple ways, practice close reading and text-based vocabulary, determine meaning through text-dependent questions, and more. This is the perfect way to add rigor to your students' explorations of beginning literature.

Celebrate literacy every day! This book will help you create a culture of literacy at your school, from the classroom, to the lunchroom, to the hallways-a culture that encompasses students, teachers, administrators, families, and communities

Through a close-reading of the work of five prominent American postmodernist writers, this book re-evaluates the role of the past in recent American fiction, outlines the development of the postmodernist historical novel and considers the waning influence of postmodernism in contemporary American literature.

This study brings together a number of related critical issues, including the causal laws that attempt to govern fictional worlds, the reader's implication in the causal dilemmas that confront major characters, and the philosophical and ideological ascriptions of cause that are variously embodied, interrogated, or parodied. One of the most significant features of this study is its disclosure of just how fundamental and widespread causal issues are in complex narratives - and how insistently they are thematized in twentieth-century works.

Explains how to use picture books with middle school students to teach a variety of topics and introduce new concepts across the curriculum.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1: Theory of Mind Now and Then: Evolutionary and Historical Perspectives -- Theory of Mind and Theory of Minds in Literature Keith Oatley -- Social Minds in Little Dorrit Alan Palmer -- The Way We Imagine Mark Turner -- Theory of Mind and Fictions of Embodied Transparency Lisa Zunshine -- 2: Mind Reading and Literary Characterization -- Theory of the Murderous Mind: Understanding the Emotional Intensity of John Doyle's Interpretation of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd Diana Calderazzo -- Distraction as Liveliness of Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Characterization in Jane Austen Natalie Phillips -- Sancho Panza's Theory of Mind Howard Mancing -- Is Perceval Autistic?: Theory of Mind in the Conte del Graal Paula Leverage -- 3: Theory of Mind and Literary / Linguistic Structure -- Whose Mind's Eye? Free Indirect Discourse and the Covert Narrator in Marlene Streeruwitz's Nachwelt Jennifer Marston William -- Attractors, Trajectors, and Agents in Racine's "Récit de Théramène" Allen G. Wood -- The Importance of Deixis and Attributive Style for the Study of Theory of Mind: The Example of William Faulkner's Disturbed Characters Ineke Bockting -- 4: Alternate States of Mind -- Alternative Theory of Mind for Arti.cial Brains: A Logical Approach to Interpreting Alien Minds Orley K. Marron -- Reading Phantom Minds: Marie Darrieussecq's Naissance des fantômes and Ghosts' Body Language Mikko Keskinen -- Theory of Mind and Metamorphoses in Dreams: Jekyll & Hyde, and The Metamorphosis Richard Schweickert and Zhuangzhuang Xi -- Mother/Daughter Mind Reading and Ghostly Intervention in Toni Morrison's Beloved Klarina Priborkin -- 5: Theoretical, Philosophical, Political Approaches.