Real Revision

Messner, a seventh-grade English teacher, is the award-winning author of The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. In this unique resource, she helps teachers lead middle-school students through the revision process by using techniques from 34 real-life authors of middle-grade titles such as The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, The Crossing, and the Babymouse series. Two-page spreads on each mentor author offer brief profiles, excerpts from interviews giving insight on how they edit and revise their work, and related student exercises on creating and deleting characters and scenes and making language more vivid, with reproducible worksheets provided in an appendix. Messner gives tips on creating a revision-friendly classroom and creating a space safe to talk about student writing, along with many ideas on brainstorming, planning, researching, and copyediting. She also offers notes on using Microsoft Word's editing features, such as the comment feature, and other technology tools such as author blogs, Skype chats, and classroom Twitter accounts. The mentor author pages are illustrated with b&w photos of the authors and their book jackets. The book also includes b&w classroom photos, as well as photos of Messner's own in-progress manuscripts from her novels. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)