Mary Sues

[teleidoplex]

Neil Gaiman linked to this, but I think it's a brilliant idea for a class project. I'm especially interested in what the teacher notes about the whitening of texts. It makes me think about all the Blaise Zabini stories where Blaise was white...or a girl...or both...

http://www.hbook.com/publications/magazine/articles/nov06_almagor.asp

Comments

[dillochan.livejournal.com]

fantastic article. and it's very true, students rarely see themselves as the problem, or other than absolutely perfect in their own writing.

I'm doing a project now that ties into the book Night by Elie Wiesel. It's a webquest that requires the students to imagine they are an out-of-work vet of WWI in Germany at the rise of the Nazi's and what they will do.

They all want to say, "I would never have joined the Nazi's."

then they have to do research and gain info and what a lot of them find is that they would have joined, at least at first.

Ultimately, their character ends up as a guard at Auschwitz with orders to complete, "The Final Solution" and they have to decide if they would have gone through with it or not.

Very strong stuff.

http://www.geocities.com/lindseybard2/NIGHT_WEBQUEST.htm

if you want to see it.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing that. That is brilliant.

[(Anonymous)]

you're welcome. I admit that I only put on my sight so that I could update the links that had broken, I did not make it myself or come up with the idea.

But a good teacher knows when to steal from a great teacher.

;)

[drydem.livejournal.com]

it kind of reminds me of a project I had in like 7th grade to write a new chapter to the hobbit. I wrote one that had absolutely no dialogue. I never really had the hang of it.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

That is an intensely cool project. Thanks for the link. I would love to use that one day.