My Twelve Best "Mentor Texts" for Inspiring Writing...Four More I use for Teaching Teachers about Writing

I do love books, but I gave up the idea years ago that I could own every great mentor text out there. I depend on my public library to give me as many titles at my fingertips as Karen has. I was recently asked at a workshop, "What are the mentor texts you would purchase?" This page contains my answer.

NEW: Click here to open a PDF version of my Seven Elements workshop's PowerPoint on the three types of mentor texts. You can read about this training by clicking here.

A mentor text is--this is the definition I share during my Seven Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson Workshop--a published piece of writing whose idea, whose structure, or whose written craft can be used to inspire a student to write something original. I share these categories with the teachers I work with, and I ask them to think of mentor texts they already use that fit within these three categories. I find most teachers can easily think of idea and structure mentor texts they use, but their craft mentor text list is often quite short. As I workshop with teachers, one of my goals is to help them discover equal numbers of mentor texts in all three areas. The very best mentor texts, in my opinion, can be brought out multiple times throughout a school year to further inspiration. At the WritingFix website, I coordinate the Mentor Text of the Year Program, which explores mentor texts that deserve multiple sharings. A mentor text must be a published piece of writing, so it can be a picture book, an excerpt from a chapter book, a poem, a newspaper column, a magazine article, etc. I've used cookbooks, clothing catalogues, and letters to the editor as mentor texts in writing lessons.

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
by Chris Van Allsburg

A Picture Book Worth 10,000 Words: This is the book that will launch endless story ideas, even from your reluctant writers.

Van Allsburg provides you with an image, a title, and a sentence that could be inside a story, then invites you to create the whole story. My kids never grew tired of this book.

The first year I used this book, I let the students in on the secret: I told them there was no Harris Burdick...that Van Allsburg made up the story about the mysterious illustrator and story-writer found in the book's "Forward." The next year, I played along with the book's fictional premise, and the book seemed so much more magical to my writers.

I suggest you get the portfolio edition for your classroom. The pictures are huge, and there's even a bonus picture that isn't in the original picture book.

Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street
by Roni Schotter

Four ideas for improving writing: There's an Amazon book review that calls this story "long winded," which I kind of see. I would never read this book as a read-aloud at one sitting. We share this book in parts in my classroom. Start by sharing just the first ten or so pages; a student named Eva gets four suggestions from her neighbors on how to write better. Stop there...and talk about the four ideas she has received. Put the book away for a day.

Then...pass out Xeroxed pages from the book to small student groups--one page a day over the next week or two--and have student groups "find evidence of all four suggestions on each page." This activity becomes an amazing treasure hunt for my writers: it gets them to connect to the advice from the book's characters enough to use it themselves, and my students DO enjoy the story, even though it's presented in pieces.

Homer Price
by Robert McCloskey

Inventing original machines: As a kid, I checked out Homer Price several times a year--every year--from my elementary school's library. Like everyone else who loved this book, I mostly remember the chapter about the automatic doughnut-making machine.

Today, whenever I ask someone my own age who also read this book to remember the doughnut chapter, I am delighted to discover that most people remember a much more complex donut-making contraption than is actually presented by the author. I then discovered that my students, after sharing the chapter, loved to write about more complex and original doughnut machines. At WritingFix, I created a fun online assignment for this book which you can access by clicking here. After writing about donut machines, I was amazed at the energy my students showed when challenged to create and write about original machines...all inspired by Homer Price!

Love That Dog
by Sharon Creech

Finding original ideas in already-published poetry: Here's the mentor text to use if teaching students that writing poetry is not scary, that poetry is not just written by girls, and that poetry is about so much more than nature. Poetry is about reality and experience.

Here, Jack learns to show a little piece of his soul as he reluctantly journals while his teacher teaches a poetry unit. This mentor text contains Jack's journals and poems from his teacher's units.

Jack's teacher uses one of the most important techniques in helping students find their own voices and ideas: imitation. Jack imitates the formats of famous poems, and by doing so, he discovers a completely original piece of himself. His most important original poem in the book, "My Sky," is built from original ideas, but you can spot the influence of all the poems Jack has read with his teacher in the stanzas.

The Important Book
by Margaret Wise Brown

A simple structure that can become profound in young writers' hands: From simple things one can find deep ideas. That is the lesson I take with me from this book.

If you know this book's structure, you know how easy it is to teach students to mimic the simple formula as they describe things that are important to them. I have my students mimic the book's formula on their daily exit tickets.

I also love to teach perspective with this book. I tell my students that Margaret Wise Brown's perspective of her items (rain, wind, daisies) is that of a poet. I ask my students to write about the same items from many different perspectives, and the writing I get is profound. "What's the important thing about rain, according to a hurricane survivor?" "What's the important thing about the wind during the Great Depression?" "What's the important thing about daisies to a botanist or a bee?"

Amelia's Notebook
by Marissa Moss

A book that shows what a journal's structure can be: early on, my students hated keeping journals and writer's notebooks for my class. On the last day of school, when I handed them their journals and their portfolios to take with them, my students used to ask if they could throw their journals away.

That all changed when I started sharing from Amelia's journal early on. Marissa Moss is so clever to make Amelia's journal look like it was actually written in a composition book.

This book (and its sequels) gives your students permission to personalize their journals, to add artifacts to their journals, and to write about small topics in their journals. My students cherished their journals once they started keeping them like Amelia.

Max's Logbook (also by Moss) shows a love for journaling from a male perspective.

Because of Winn-Dixie
by Kate DiCamillo

The power of the decalogue : One of my best writing assignments is a decalogue, which is an old word for a list of ten personal beliefs. On day one of class, I ask my students to create a list of "Ten Things I Know about Myself as a Writer." These first-day decalogues are placed safely away in their portfolios, and during the last weeks of class, they make a new list on the same topic. A large percentage of my students' final grades depends on the conversation we have about the difference between their two lists.

I love Because of Winn Dixie because it contains a remarkable chapter (chapter 4) that has two characters discussing a very personal and beautifully written decalogue. When I share this chapter somewhere in the middle of the school year, we remember the decalogue we wrote on the first day of class, and we start writing decalogues from characters' perspectives we've been reading about. Click here to see my online lesson for chapter four of this wonderful book.

Caves
by Stephen Kramer

Starting with what isn't there first: I just love the writing assignment I do with this book, which is based on the simple structure found in its two-page introduction. Kramer wants us to experience the mood of a cave, so he creates a two-part introduction whose structure can be easily impersonated. In part one, he tells us what isn't in a cave: birdsong, light, the scent of wildflowers; this definitely sets up a mood. Then in part two, the lights come on, and we see an amazing setting by focusing on what is there. You can see my on-line setting lesson for this book by clicking here.

After having students imitate this book's two-part structure for a setting assignment, we begin applying it to other topics: characters sketches (what wouldn't the character ever do, followed by what they character would) and summary writing (what isn't important to remember about this topic followed by what is important).

What Kramer uses as a writing structure in his introduction can so easily become powerful and thoughtful writing in other contexts

All the Places to Love
by Patricia MacLachlan

The beauty of prepositional phrases: This is one of the most beautifully crafted pieces of writing I've ever found. It gives me shivers still, and I've read it aloud over a hundred times.

Here's how I use it: 1) assign your students a narrative writing prompt inspired by "Tell me about one of your most important days."; 2) let them create rough drafts; 3) have them share their rough drafts with a friend in class; 4) read this book aloud; 5) read just the first few pages aloud again, pointing on MacLachlan's beautiful use of prepositional phrases and series of nouns; 6) ask your students to re-write their rough draft's introduction so that it sounds like MacLachlan's first few sentences from this book; 7) read the whole book through again slowly, savoring the sentences that flow; 8) ask students to revise their rough drafts, and ask them to try and use more sentences that flow like MacLachlan's.

After finishing this lesson, should you notice that your students have started their rough drafts in typical and not-so-interesting ways, re-read them several pages from this poetry-as-prose book.

Owl Moon
by Jane Yolen

Varying sentence lengths and sentence beginnings: I know a lot of teachers who don't ever focus on the trait of sentence fluency. I am not one of those teachers; I see sentence fluency as a critical topic when showing students how to craft language during revision.

I believe that many teachers struggle with teaching revision. I know why this happens. When our writing assignments seem to be taking longer than we had planned (and when does this NOT happen?), the easy way to get back on schedule is to move through the revision stage quicker than we should. I convince teachers not to do this, and then I convince them to use more Jane Yolen books like Owl Moon, which is a perfect mentor text for showing students how to revise their sentence craft.

Yolen is a master of two sentence fluency tricks: 1) starting sentences with different words; 2) varying back and forth between long and short sentences. I read this book right before I ask students to revise for sentence fluency, pointing out these two tricks, and the text influences them to really revise for sentence craft.

Fox
by Margaret Wild

Series within sentences: If I can be less-than-humble for just a second: I read this picture book aloud really, really well, which is probably why I love it as much as I do. Shouldn't teachers all have a book that they just adore reading aloud to their students? This is that book for me.

The story here is haunting--evil and lovely at the same time. Add to that Margaret Wild's metaphor of the fox as a flame, and book is simply stunning.

But it's the book's sentence structure that I point out to students, and the almost-reckless way its text moves through the pages. I use this mentor text to show the power of a beautifully-crafted sentence, and I use it as an invitation to defy conventions and create final drafts that twist the reader's eyes. I highlight the thoughtful series of nouns, verb phrases, and prepositional phrases that twist through the sentences, making them complex and beautiful. No student writes sentences this good in a rough draft, and this book is excellent for showing your writers the power of reworking sentences so they sound this good.

Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid
by Ralph Fletcher

Crafting a narrative tale: I have always featured Ralph Fletcher's student-friendly advice books on my classroom bookshelf. Poetry Matters, A Writer's Notebook, and How to Write Your Life Story contain down-to-earth advice from a real writer that my students easily connect to.

My wife recently gave me Fletcher's own autobiography--Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid. The ideas captured in these short and marvelous chapters can inspire students to write something similar but original. The prose is beautifully crafted, and when read alongside How to Write Your Life Story, you see an author acting out his own advice.

If you have students who think their own lives aren't interesting enough to write about on paper, share with them from this book. Fletcher's stories are about being a kid, and he gives my students permission to write about being a kid too. Once your students have a rough draft of narrative writing, share from the book again, discussing the beauty of the language. Challenge them to find similar beauty during revision.

Reviser's Toolbox
by Barry Lane

My Teaching Revision & Editing in-service: Because so many teachers I work with find revision terribly hard to teach well, I created a new teacher inservice class for the 2009-10 school year that focused on authentic techniques for two distinct steps of the writing process: revision and editing. Each participant received a copy of the wonderful resource pictured above.

You can access many of the workshop's resources by visiting the Revision Homepage at the WritingFix website.

Why We Must Run With Scissors
by Gretchen Bernabei

My Persuasive Writing Across the Curriculum in-service: I am also creating a new teacher inservice class for the 2009-10 school year that will focus on teaching persuasive voice in all curricular areas. Participants will not only receive a copy of the book pictured above, but we will also design RAFT writing prompts and other persuasive formats that will make students think deeply about classroom content.

Lessons and resources created in this inservice will be posted at WritingFix's new Persuasive Writing Homepage.

How to Write Your Life Story
by Ralph Fletcher

The Improving Narrative and Memoir Writing in 3rd-12th Grade in-service: In March of 2009, my lovely wife and I co-designed a new inservice, where participants not only received the book pictured above, but they also received a copy of Fletcher's own life story: Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid. During the workshop, teachers designed resources and lessons that helped their students explore their own lives as topics for writing.

The class has now run several times since premiering in Spring 2009, and the workshop's resources can be found at WritingFix's Narrative Writing Homepage.

51 Wacky We-Search Reports
by Barry Lane

My Writing Across the Curriculum in-service: In 2008, I created a brand new inservice as part of my Writing Across the Curriculum Coordinator duties for the Northern Nevada Writing Project. Participants were thrill to receive not only the book pictured above, but they also received copies of the NNWP's Going Deep with Compare & Contrast Thinking Guide.

This class regularly runs in Northern Nevada twice a year. Recently, it became the Wacky We-Search Homepage at WritingFix, where many of the workshop's resources are featured..