Thursday, May 3, 2012

C is for Cooking Calamari

I read quite a few alphabiography drafts today, and perhaps my number one suggestion to my young writers was to add details. One student wrote that, "if you see someone cooking it, it's nasty, but calamari is delicious to eat." We talked a little about the piece, and then I asked him if he minded if I used it as an example, and he agreed.

"Do you know what's yucky about cooking calamari from this passage?" I asked, and all the students acknowledged that they did not. As a former cook who has cleaned and cooked quite a bit of squid, I was only too happy to fill them in on the details of grasping those eight slippery legs and two trailing tentacles, tearing them from the slimy water balloon-shaped mantle, scooping out the snotty purple guts of the animal, and throwing them away along with the milky eyes that stare at you with blank accusation as you amputate them from their body.

"EW!" someone said. "That's disgusting!"

"Exactly," I answered.

Life Lesson: "I get it! I get it!" another student raised his hand. "The writer has to use enough details so that it's the reader who says, 'Nasty!' Right?"

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