• Mentor Texts for Writers and Character Post

    Mentor Texts for Writers Recently I had the privilege of doing a workshop in Northern Virginia for a group of writers. The lovely and amazing Dianna Aston spoke in the morning about the stories behind her books. I spoke in the afternoon on using mentor texts to become a better…

  • Nonfiction Picture Books about Virginia History as Writing Mentor Texts

    We all know that students need to become more comfortable reading and writing non-fiction. Last fall, I did a post on 10 of my favorite fiction picture book writing mentor texts. For this post, I’m focusing on some non-fiction mentor texts–with a bent toward history, specifically American history, as…