MightyWriters

Here’s one possibility:

Winner: Young Adult Division
“Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice”
by Phillip M. Hoose
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
$19.95

“When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to
get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a
stand and say, ‘This is not right.’”

—Claudette Colvin

On March 2, 1955, an impassioned 15-year-old, fed
up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation,
refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segre-
gated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

But instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be
nine months later, Claudette Colvin, 15, found herself
shunned by her classmates and dismissed by leaders.

Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segrega-
tion again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the land-
mark case that struck down the segregation laws of
Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of
the Jim Crow South.

Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and others, Hoose’s book is the first serious account of the largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.

When Mr. Hoose won the National Book Awards recently, he brought Ms. Colvin onto the stage to accept the award. “My job was to pull someone who was about to disappear under history’s rug,” he said.

More on Claudette Colvin here.

And Publishers Weekly’s best kid books of 2009 here.

“Blue Christmas,” Elvis Presley, 1968

Mighty Writers is closed today (Sunday). Still digging out. We’ll be back tomorrow, Mighty as usual.

Listen Up!: Blog Writing
Workshop for students 12-16
Sundays 1-3pm
January 24 to March 17
Learn how to create your own blog and more. Write about what interests you: cars, hoops, video games, fashion or politics. Attract a target audience and share your opinions with the world.
Workshop limited to 12 students.

Fun with Words
Workshop for students aged 5-9
Sundays 3-4pm
January 17 to February 21
Playing detective, we’ll find words inside other words. What’s inside of ARITHMETIC, DICTIONARY, or ENCYCLOPEDIA? Come find out! Next up: Fun with homonyms! If you talked to a BOAR… would he be a BORE? If you sat on a STAIR…. would you sit and STARE? If you waited for DAYS… would you be in a DAZE? If you waited a WEEK… would you be very WEAK?
Workshop limited to 12 students.

Science Fiction
Workshop for students aged 12-16
Tues. and Thurs. 6-8pm
January 19 to February 11
Science fiction explores the “what if?” question in creative and unusual ways. Using inspiration from popular sci-fi movies, we’ll create our own stories, imagining otherworldly elements and creatures walking the streets and yards of Philadelphia.
Workshop limited to 12 students.

Graphic Memoirs
Workshop for students aged 14-18
Wednesdays 6-8pm
January 20 to February 24
We’ll use Philadelphia’s 2010 One Book, “The Complete Persepolis” as inspiration to create graphic memoirs of our own. In addition to discovering how graphic narratives are built, we’ll learn the basics of illustration and what it takes to give shape to our own characters and stories. All participating students will receive a free copy of the book.
Workshop limited to 12 students.

Story and Image
Workshop for students aged 10-13
Mondays 6-8pm
January 18 to February 22
We’ll borrow images from Part 1 of “The Complete Persepolis,” figure out the hidden meanings and use these images and others to tell stories of our own in graphic form. All students will receive a free copy of the book.
Workshop limited to 12 students.

Sign up for any of the above free writing workshops by stopping by Mighty Writers, or calling or emailing Program Director Rachel Loeper.

Mighty Writers
1501 Christian St.
Philadelphia, PA 19146
267.239.0899
rloeper@mightywriters.org

www.mightywriters.org

… is Danielle Moné Truitt, above.

Well, kind of.

The “Princess and the Frog,” which will be
released Dec. 8, is an animated film. Truitt,
28, was the “video reference” for the movie.

“I did all the body movements and facial
references for the cartoon,” Truitt told the LA
Times. “I got dressed in costume, and they
videotaped me doing the scenes that were
going to be in the film.”

Story about Truitt’s unorthodox role in the
making of the movie here.

Below, the trailer for “Princess and the Frog.”

Update: “With the black community abuzz over the Lee Daniels drama Precious, the nightmarish tale of a poor, dark-skinned, 350-pound 16-year-old who is physically and sexually abused by her mother and impregnated by her father—a film that presents every bottled-up urban pathology there is—the uplifting images and message of The Princess and the Frog come at just the right time.” Rest of Annette John-Hall’s Inquirer column here.

“Writing Real Life,” a series of workshops focusing on the invaluable nuts and bolts of writing, concluded this past Saturday with a happy surprise—a book for each student written and personally signed by their workshop leader, Ben Yagoda.

(Ben’s new book is titled “Memoir: A History,” Riverhead, $25.95.)

Among the many pointers Ben emphasized to MW students over a series of Saturday afternoon sessions:

• Real writers publish. (Get away from journal writing and submit your work.)

• Revise. (The best writing goes through a number of drafts.)

• Read stories that have been edited. (Read a lot, but choose carefully. Editors invariably make stories better.)

• Carry a pad and pencil with you at all times. (It’s important to jot down ideas immediately before you forget them.)

• Avoid clichés at all cost. (Go through your stories carefully and delete any easy metaphors or analogies.)

“Green Onions,” Booker T & the MG’s