Hey Dave, how about a category for Kid’s Lit?
(Got this idea from your comment on Glutton’s story.)

I’m taking a writing course from the Institute of Children’s Literature.  It’s quite interesting trying to write for kids; there’s a surprising amount of discipline involved.  I didn’t sign up for the course specifically because I wanted to write for kids, but just because I wanted to force some structure into my writing habits, and it’s been (I think) really good for me.  You HAVE to pay attention to word count limits, you can’t use 40 dollar words, you don’t get to write black, depressing, “adult”, totally negative stuff.  You have to develop characters within the parameters of the age group you’re trying to write for. 

In short, it takes all the fun out of writing!  That’s why I’m, uh, late with my current assignment.
I’ve been hanging around Litmocracy too much…

But still, seriously, it might be something to consider, somehow. 

I’m going to check into the fridge magnets tonight… been really busy and when not, indulging self by surfing around and posting here.  Whee!  (heh heh)

It’s a good idea, and I want to take it somewhere.  The problem I run into is that there aren’t many people willing to buy something that requires several different perspectives to recognize the excellence in all that it contains.  What I mean is that excellent kids stuff will be underappreciated by philosophers, and excellent dark humor will be underappreciated by romantics, and excellent news will be underappreciated by kids, etc.  The answer, of course, is to focus on one of these genres.  But the value of the voting and participating here apples to all of them.

I guess I’d like to “focus” on each of them in turn, and I know I don’t have enough (mental) bandwidth for it all (allmost not for even just the one general publication we’re makkng now).  Anyway, what I was thinking about is making a category for each of several genre’s (duotrope has a nice array of genres I would use).  If I did that, it would make sense to create a publication from each category (I suppose some could be combined).  I have to mull this over for a while.

The sandwich paragraph writing strategy utilizes a concrete graphic organizer to help students learn to write a complete paragraph with a topic sentence, details, and a closing sentence. The sandwich visual helps students organize their thoughts by providing them with a formula for writing.

This strategy can be taught as a whole class writing lesson, a writing workshop mini-lesson, or as remediation for those who struggle with writing. The bread in the sandwich represents the topic and closing sentences, while the details are represented as the fillings. While using this strategy, students will construct and deconstruct paragraphs to examine and internalize the process of writing a complete paragraph.
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