Award-Winning Author Returns to Sparks Street
For the second year, the 2021 Margaret A. Edwards Award winner, Kekla Magoon, visited 8th-grade students at the Middle School. This year, Magoon once again discussed her book The Rock and the River, then engaged the students in a character-building workshop to help them pen short stories for their next unit.
Students delved into Magoon’s novel The Rock and the River as part of their English classes. The book tells the tale of a young Black man living during the Civil Rights Movement and explores a side of history that classrooms across the country usually omit. This story asks readers what part they would play if they were alive in the 1960s.
Following a Q&A session, Magoon led the students through an exercise to brainstorm how to create a character and a plot line for their upcoming short stories. To make a character, the writer must consider their likes and dislikes, who they live with, their desires, fears, and sources of conflict. From there, students can craft a story from the elements they imagined.
While meeting an award-winning author often takes years, sometimes all it takes is showing up to class on a Tuesday. Thank you to the Middle School Library Director, Christina Dominique-Pierre, for organizing this interactive author visit and, of course, to Kekla Magoon for returning to Sparks Street to share her expertise.
