Category: Englishlanguage-arts

Move Over, Marco Polo!

1/19/2023

Jim Whiting

The Running Encyclopedia

Ibn Buttuta

You’ve probably heard of Marco Polo, who left his hometown of Venice, Italy in 1271 as a teenager and traveled for the next 24 years. He spent most of his time in China, where he became an advisor to the country’s ruler Kublai Khan. He published The Travels of Marco Polo in 1300 and it became an instant best-seller.

Four years later Ibn Battuta, who became known as the “Muslim Marco Polo,” was born in Tangier, Morocco.

When he was about 21 he undertook the hajj, the trip to the Muslim holy city of Mecca in the Arabian Peninsula. During the month he stayed there following a two-year journey, he heard fascinating tales of far-flung lands from his fellow pilgrims. Rather than returning home to the career as a lawyer that awaited him, Ibn Battuta decided to see those lands.

He joined a camel caravan to Persia. From there he went to Africa, then to Asia. He crossed hot deserts and snow-covered mountain passes. He survived bandit attacks and voyages on stormy and pirate-infested seas. He enjoyed long periods of living in luxury, as well as other periods of soul-crushing poverty.

He finally returned home to discover that his parents were dead. So he crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to visit the remnants of Islamic Spain. Then, at the “request” of the sultan of Morocco, who wanted to establish trade relations with the mighty Muslim empire of Mali, West Africa, Ibn Battuta toured that region for nearly three years. He came back to Morocco for good in 1354, ending 29 years of traveling. During that time, he covered about 75,000 miles. By contrast, Marco Polo’s journeys encompassed roughly 15,000 miles over a 24-year period.

Like Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta published an account of his travels, A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling, more commonly called the Rihla (or “Journey”). He spent his remaining years before his death in 1368 as a judge—finally involved with the legal career he had avoided so many years earlier.

Ibn Battuta started on his travels when he was 21 years old in 1325. He traveled about 29 years, covering about 75,000 miles and visiting the equivalent of 44 modern countries. This map shows Battuta's travels compared to those of his famous contemporary, Marco Polo.

Ibn Battuta in Egypt, an illustration by Léon Benett from a book by Jules Verne published in 1878.

Ibn Battuta visiting the steppes -- the grassy lands of the nomadic Golden Horde. (When Genghis Khan died he divided the Mongol Empire into four "khanates" for his sons and grandsons. The Golden Horde was the northwestern khanate, including much of Eastern Europe and Russia). Picture Source: “Ibn Battuta, Prince of Travelers” National Geographic Magazine, Dec. 1991.

If you would like to learn a lot more about Ibn Battuta, click here to go to a website that includes student activities.
And, if you would like to learn more about author Jim Whiting, click here to go to his website. He has a great new series on the NFL Today, with a book about each of the teams.

MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "Move Over, Marco Polo." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 3 Nov. 2017.

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How Do You Become a Writer? Ask Charles Dickens

11/10/2022

4 Comments

Andrea Warren
Giving Voice to Children in History

If you yearn and burn to be a writer, how can you make that a reality? From the time I was a teenager, I wanted writing to be my life’s work. But even though I loved to write, how to become a writer stumped me. I thought education must be the answer and had master’s degrees in both English and journalism before I realized that the only one who could harness and develop my inner writer—my writing soul—was me. Like most writers before me, I had to mostly teach myself what I needed to know. I have since published hundreds of articles and a dozen books.

    While writing a book about Charles Dickens, I was surprised to learn that even he—one of the greatest writers of all—also had to teach himself. Because of family circumstances, he had only two years of formal schooling, so he learned the fine points of grammar and style on his own. Beginning at age fifteen, he worked upward through a series of jobs until, based solely on his writing ability, he became a newspaper reporter. In his spare time he wrote stories, articles, sketches, essays, editorials, theatre reviews, and plays. Gradually he began getting published in a monthly magazine. It didn’t pay him, but he was honing his craft, finding and training his voice as a writer. Then a publisher who liked his magazine stories gave him the opportunity to write his first novel—and the rest is history.

    My advice to you is Dickens’ advice to you: don’t wait for someone to give you permission to be a writer or to teach you how. Give yourself permission. Teach yourself. Just write. Do it every day. Write about what you see, what you feel, what you dream. Make up stories. Observe people closely: what they wear, how they speak, what they do, how they feel and why. Learn how to write articles and essays. Study your favorite authors and pattern your work after theirs. Don’t worry that you are mimicking them, for you will find your own style. Trust me on this. Draw from the wisdom and skill of writers who have gone before you, because everything you need to know, you can learn from them. When you’re ready, publication will follow.

        Read, read, read. Write, write, write.

    If you want to become a writer, start now.

        Be a writer.

Charles Dickens at age 37

Andrea Warren often teaches writing classes, and she often talks about Charles Dickens and how writing ultimately comes down to teaching yourself. Warren talks more about the writing process on her website, And to learn more about Charles Dickens and his quest to become a writer, check out her book, "Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London."

Andrea Warren is also a member of Authors on Call. Bring her into your classroom via interactive video conferencing. Here’s where you can learn more about her and her programs.

MLA 8 Citation
Warren, Andrea. "How Do You Become a Writer? Ask Charles Dickens." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 21 Sept. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/how-do-you-become-a-writer-ask-charles-dickens.

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Baking with Bugs: How to Write a Recipe

11/9/2022

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Peggy Thomas
Curiosity queen; writing science, history,
and everything in between

Writing a recipe is harder than it looks. I found this out when a children’s magazine editor asked me to add a recipe to my article about eating insects.

First, I thumbed through my recipe file mentally substituting bugs for a vital ingredient. Mushrooms stuffed with millipedes was out. (Most kids don’t like mushrooms.) I nixed beetle sausage, also. (Too much chopping and frying in a hot skillet.) Flipping to desserts, I chose toffee. I could substitute bugs for nuts.

After my trip to the grocery store for butter, sugar and chocolate chips, I visited the pet shop, and asked for a cup of mealworms, which are fly larvae (also known as maggots, but that’s not very appetizing). The man handed me a little carton that looked like a Skippy cup of ice cream. I wrote that down because I would need to pass that information on to readers who, like me, had no clue how to purchase creepy-crawlies.

With all the ingredients on the counter I recorded each step:

Separate mealworms from packing material. I tried several methods. Blowing on it worked, but when I blew too hard I got a face full of bran and mealworms. (I’d recommend a blow dryer set on low and cool.)
Wash mealworms. Use a strainer with very small holes, and pat dry.
Spread mealworms on cooking tray (one with sides so they don’t crawl off). Preheat oven to 200 degrees. (I’d have to add a note about parent supervision for young readers.) Roast until dry and crunchy.

After that, I was on familiar ground blending butter and sugar, and sprinkling chocolate chips.

I called my concoction Toffee Surprise, and taste-tested it in a large group setting where peer pressure encouraged full participation -- my mother’s birthday party! The verdict: The toffee was yummy, crunchy, and sweet with a subtle earthy aftertaste.

Although I don’t plan on cooking more edible vermin, I did learn some important rules for writing a recipe: Choose a food that is reader-friendly; be aware of your readers’ abilities and safety issues; record every step in order; pay attention to even the smallest details; and prepare it yourself so you can work out the bugs (no pun intended).

Peggy Thomas is the co-author of Anatomy of Nonfiction, the only writer's guide for children's nonfiction. To find out more about Peggy, visit her website. She also has a blog for writers, based on the book.

Peggy Thomas is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through FieldTripZoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Thomas, Peggy. “How to Take an Elephant’s Temperature.” Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 7 Nov. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/baking-with-bugs;-how-to-write-a-recipe.

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Rot Rocks!

10/31/2022

1 Comment

David M. Schwartz
The amazing, engaging, math exponent

'Tis the season. The rotting season.

You thought Halloween was full of ghosts, goblins and ghouls? Well, wait until the post-Halloween season. This is when your Jack O' Lantern begins its ghoulish decline. It starts as a pumpkin and it ends as a heap of goo. This is scary!

Now is when your Halloween pumpkin begins to rot. Don't get me wrong. Rot is not gross. It is a beautiful thing—beautiful in its own deliciously disgusting way.

You start with a proud Jack, a plump, shiny-skinned pumpkin. Halloween is over so you leave it on your porch, or inside by the window, or maybe you toss it into the garden or onto the compost heap.

It attracts some visitors. A squirrel. A pair of mice. A scurry of sow bugs. They chew the skin of the pumpkin, leaving moist, rough surfaces, just perfect for the next wave of invaders: the molds and fungi and bacteria that start to grow. There are dozens, even hundreds, of types of organisms waiting to sink their "teeth" into pumpkin flesh as soon as the conditions are right. One kind of invader changes the conditions of the flesh to make it perfect for the next one. Meanwhile, the poor pumpkin is looking less and less like a pumpkin. Its skin turns to shades of black, gray and white, with only a few patches of dull orange. Its shape collapses into a heap, then a pile of mush, and then . . . well, no shape at all.

Do you think rot rots? Imagine what your life would be like if things didn't rot. You'd be tripping over all the old pumpkins, not to mention mice, eagles, tomato plants, oak trees and everything else that ever walked, flew, swam or grew upon the earth. Their dead bodies simply wouldn't go away! Worse, their nutrients would be locked forever inside. The energy in the molecules they are made of would be unavailable to any other living things. Rot, properly known as "decomposition," releases all those good vitamins, sugars, proteins, carbohydrates and energy so that they can be used by next year's pumpkin, which will grow from the seeds of last year's pumpkin. Mice and eagles, tomatoes and the trees in a nearby forest can grow and reproduce because nutrients and energy pass through complex food webs from plants to the animals that eat those plants, to other animals that eat those animals.

It's all possible because of rot. So you see, rot doesn't rot. Rot rocks!

Going....

...going...

...gone!

David is the author of > 50 books on math and science, including his newest, rottenest title, Rotten Pumpkin. For more information, click here.

David is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Schwartz, David M. "Rot Rocks!" Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 2 Nov. 2017.

1 Comment

Mary Makes a Monster

10/28/2022

1 Comment

Cheryl Harness
She’s historical!

You know how it is: old campfire stories, interesting things you’re doing or seeing or hearing about—they get all mixed up in your dreams and your stories. That’s how it was for Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. One night in 1816, in Switzerland, when there wasn’t anything on TV (because it wasn’t invented yet), she and her friends decided they’d each write a horror story. By combining her knowledge with the idea what if, 18-year-old Mary made up one about a monster. It’d turn out to be one of the most famous monsters ever.

These were some of the ideas that influenced Mary’s thinking:

She’d read the Greek mythological story of Prometheus, who got in BAD trouble with the gods for stealing their powerful, amazing FIRE. In fact, Mary’s dreamy poet boyfriend, Percy Shelley, whom she’d marry later on, was writing about Prometheus. Their handsome poet-friend George Gordon, known as Lord Byron had been writing about him too. What if Mary wrote about a scientist who stole God’s power of making LIFE?
People had been talking about this Italian scientist, Luigi Galvani, who’d been doing exciting experiments with electrical sparks: They made animals’ muscles move – even if they were dead!
In her travels in Germany, Mary had seen the medieval Castle Frankenstein.

Hmmm…I’ll bet you can guess now what story Mary wrote! In it, her character, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, gathered parts of dead people’s bodies in his laboratory. His experiment? He’d make a perfect person then bring it to LIFE with the power of lightning – and it worked! But – oh no! Dr. Frankenstein accidentally created a MONSTER! And then a lot of horrible things happened!

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which was first published in 1818, never got very good reviews, but never mind. In the almost two centuries since she wrote it, Mary’s monster story has sparked the imaginations of playwrights, moviemakers, cartoonists, musicians, and Halloween costume-makers again and again and again.

It kind of makes you wonder about your own ideas and memories. What if you put them together in your imagination? You could spark a story into LIFE!

English actor Boris Karloff, as the monster in Universal’s Frankenstein (1931) Wikimedia commons

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, some years after writing her story.

Cheryl Harness is not only a nonfiction author and an illustrator, but she has also written a novel called Just for You to Know. If you would like to read an excerpt from her book, click here.

MLA 8 Citation
Harness, Cheryl. "Mary Makes a Monster." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 30 Oct. 2017.

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Move Over, Marco Polo!

How Do You Become a Writer? Ask Charles Dickens

Baking with Bugs: How to Write a Recipe

Rot Rocks!

Mary Makes a Monster

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