Rebecca Stonehill's Blog, page 70

Identity Poetry

My greatest challenge I find when I’m doing creative writing and poetry workshops is the time element – trying to squeeze everything I’ve planned (which always includes fun warm up exercises and small group discussions) into the timeframe – not easy. This school I go to fortnightly in a suburb of Nairobi is such a joy – the children are enthusiastic and motivated to learn and I was hugely surprised when I turned up today and they said they wanted to recite a poem to me. The whole 25 of them stood up and chanted in unison a poem about terrorism, of all things, that one of the ten year old’s in the class had written. It was an amazing poem but sobering and I suppose these children are at the age now where parents can’t protect them so much from hearing about what’s going on in the world.

Inspired by the workshop I participated in at Storymoja last week, we did a session on identity today. The children talked about where their names come from and what they mean and then they drew round the outlines of each other’s hands in pairs before writing notes in the middle about their identity. It was interesting helping them to think about their identities on a deeper level i.e. not just where they were from, their names and height etc but also all the aspects that makes them unique. Next step: gathering together and filtering the ideas on their hands to start shaping this into a poem!

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Moon Man by Tomi Ungerer

‘On clear, starry nights the Moon Man can be seen curled up in his shimmering seat in space. Every night from his drifting sphere, the Moon Man was filled with envy as he watched the earth people dance. “If only once I could join the fun,” he thought. “Life up here is such a bore.” One night a shooting star flashed by. The Moon Man leaped just in time to catch the fiery tale of the comet.’

Ever since one of my children were given MOON MAN by Tomi Ungerer about five years ago, we were all hooked. Tomi Ungerer (from France but amazingly writes in French, German and English) is an award winning children’s author and illustrator as well as, in his words, an ‘archivist of human absurdity’. His story ‘Moon Man’ is a lyrical, sparsely worded, beautifully illustrated tale of the man in the moon’s descent to earth and his strange and wonderful misadventures there.

‘The Moon Man was thrown in jail while a special court conducted a criminal investigation. Poor Moon Man…his hopes of dancing among the merry crowds and bright lanterns were crushed.’

Whilst on earth, he spends a spell in jail until he wanes sufficiently to squeeze through the bars of his cell, discovers flowers and birds, dances with a merry crowd, is chased by the police and makes the acquaintance of an eccentric scientist who eventually helps him to return to the moon in a spacecraft he has created. Once safely back in his seat in space, Moon Man has satisfied his curiosity, happy to observe from afar once again.

This is a beautiful, timeless tale which will delight children of all ages. I was also very excited to discover that a ninety-minute film had been made which, I think, looks pretty good and I can’t wait to watch it with my children. Click on the trailer below to have a little look.

 

 

 

 

 

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Nairobi’s Storymoja Festival

I have just spent the past three out of five days at Nairobi’s Storymoja Literature Festival. It is an offshoot from the UK’s Hay Literature Festival and showcases literature, art and music from Kenya, other African countries and beyond as well as aiming to get more children in Kenya reading. It’s only been going for five years but I thought it was AMAZING (I missed it last year, as the tragic circumstances of the Westgate terrorist attacks cut it short). Amongst other things, I took part in a three hour poetry workshop on the theme of identity, watched some fabulous music (including a performance by the brilliant British hip-hop and spoken word artist Dizraeli) and went to some storytelling and puppetry sessions with my eight year old daughter. I loved feeling part of Nairobi’s vibrant arts scene and even battling through the traffic to get there from our far-flung suburb, it was definitely worth it. Can’t wait for next year!

One of the musicians performing at Storymoja

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Writing from Art

The Lunch by Diego Velazquez

A very enjoyable activity I did recently was to provide students with a piece of art and then ask them to form in their heads an idea of what had happened just before and just after the scene they are looking at. I chose Velazquez’s ‘The Lunch’, but this can work with any pictures at all (possibly made simpler by choosing pictures which have some visible motion in them). Once a few ideas have been discussed and/or roleplay of the characters, the students can then write a short story describing the events before, during and after the picture snapshot. I prefer to keep the writing in the present tense for this activity as it drives the writing in a more dynamic direction, keeping it fluid and compelling.

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Would you rather have a monkey to tickle or a bear to read to

John Burningham is such a brilliant illustrator and children’s writer. His drawings and prose are iconic and quirky and one of the things I love about his books is that they are left open-ended, loose ends fluttering in the breeze, just perfect for young enquiring minds. We had a fun end of year Magic Pencil club session yesterday where I read them Burningham’s ‘Would you rather’, a hilarious book where he throws up lots of weird and wonderful scenarios for the reader to choose from. I then asked the children to write and illustrate their own mini ‘Would you rather’ books which had them in gales of laughter. Always good to close the end of the academic year with a smile

John Burningham

 

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