For this month’s (parent-child literary analysis) book club selection, we read Mirette on the High Wire, a Caldecott Medal book written by Emily Arnold McCully.
Rather than discussing characters, setting, plot, conflict, and theme, however, we tried something new. We used part of the “invention” process from The Lost Tools of Writing. Invention is the first of Aristotle’s five canons of rhetoric. (The other four are arrangement, elocution, memory, and delivery.) (We didn’t delve yet into the five topics of invention, but you can read about them here if you are interested.)
We started by saying, “What questions can we ask about this story?” Once the kids got used to the idea that they got to ask the questions and we weren’t answering them (we just wrote them on the white board), they really embraced the spirit of the discussion and participated enthusiastically.
Our questions were:
Should Mirette have been eavesdropping? What did Mirette’s mom think? Should Bellini have trained Mirette? Why was Bellini scared? Why did the author name her Mirette? Did Mirette fall at the end? Is the story true? Why did Mirette want to learn how to walk the high wire? Where did they travel with their show? Should Mirette have gone up to join Bellini on the wire at the end of the story?
Why were Mirette’s feet unhappy on the ground?
Then we asked if we could change any more of the questions to “Should __(character)__ have__(action)__?”
We changed a few:
Should Bellini have been scared? Should Mirette have wanted to learn how to walk the high wire?
Should Mirette’s feet have been unhappy in the ground?
Then we voted on which “should” question we wanted to talk about. And we turned it into an “issue” to discuss.
“Whether Bellini should have trained Mirette” was the issue we settled on.
We set up our “ANI” (annie) chart with three columns on the white board:
A for Affirmative. N for Negative. I for Interesting.
We listed all reasons he should have trained her under “A.” All reasons he shouldn’t have trained her were listed under “N.” Any miscellaneous comments or questions were acknowledged and written under “I.”
I had no way of predicting the outcome of the discussion ahead of time (especially since it was my first time ever leading by this process). It was a smashing success. Everyone participated, and somehow we ended up with a perfectly even 13 reasons in each column.
A:
She could follow her dreams He could pass on his skills She could be happy She could inspire him He could train her correctly and safely (since she was trying it on her own in the beginning anyway) It’s fun She showed responsibility with her other duties She had passion and perseverance Friendship/partnership Learning to overcome difficulties Teaching children benefits adults She got a career/travel/adventure
She healed his fear
N:
She wasn’t ready to learn She might fall Her feet would never be happy again on the ground Not fun Dangerous He lacked confidence He needed to hide his fear He wanted to hide his identity Chance of fear or failure He didn’t have permission to train her He was a stranger
He didn’t want to waste his time teaching a kid
I:
(We ended up with a few more questions rather than comments.) Why didn’t she ask someone for help at the end? Was she lonely? Did she have a dad? Why did she want to walk on the high wire? Did her mom travel with her?
How old was she?
And that was it for this book club meeting. I’m looking forward to digging deeper into invention each month!