Thursday! Wow! I can’t believe how fast this week has gone. We started the day with some word games on the stage—everybody loves onomatopoeia ! After thinking up some of our favorite onomatopoeia words, we split up into groups to write a paragraph full of them!
People came up with some wild stories! Frogs went splat and gymnasts boomed.
Then it was time for our guest author, Sonia Manzano. Sonia’s book, The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano, has yet to be released, so our campers are a lucky few! Sonia is also famous for playing the character of Maria on Sesame Street! Her novel is set in the El Barrio neighborhood ofManhattan during the political unrest of 1969. She talked to us about the real historical events that take place in the book and spoke of how her personal experience of living in that neighborhood informed the novel. Fascinating and inspiring. She then gave us a writing prompt in which we were to write a “Story of Protest” or a piece about a “Crazy Relative” (there are many crazy relatives featured in the novel). The campers had a lot of fun with this, We heard about an aunt who is queen of the mermaids, and a daring occupation of a school headmaster’s office to protest homework! Andrea Pinkney, Sonia’s editor, also visited us and talked about her role as Sonia’s editor — and gave us some very complimentary feedback on our writing!
After lunch inCentral Park, we headed back to the camp room. Newly inspired by Andrea’s words, we tried our hand at editing and publishing. We split into groups and wrote our own book jacket copy, (the blurb on the back of a book meant to hook the reader) for a story of our imagination. Then we traded our jacket copy with another group and tried to make a book cover that would make their imaginary story super appealing. Everyone was very creative!
See you mañana!
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I really liked meeting Sonia and hearing her inspiration for The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano. I hadn’t thought that research could be so fun and interesting! I hope there is a teen camp next year. I loved this camp! The counselors and authors were great.