entry 4: the journal genre
Some of my younger brother's favorite books growing up were the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books by Jeff Kinney. I also enjoyed reading these books, but I personally preferred the Dork Diaries series by Rachel Renée Russell. I remember reading the books from this particular series all the time in elementary school! I remember being able to really feel like I could connect to the main character, Nikki. I believe these books would fall under Tompkins' personal journals classification: "students keep personal journals in which they recount the events in their lives and write about topics they choose themselves" (Tompkins, 2012, p. 109).
When reading the Dork Diaries series, I remember feeling like I never wanted to put these books down! I was always so interested in what was happening in Nikki's life with her friends and in school. I went through these books pretty quickly because they were such an easy and fun read for me as a kid. I had the opportunity to look at the Dork Diaries: Tales from a NOT-SO-Popular Party Girl book in class last week, and I was able to remember what I loved about these books. Nikki uses the term "CCP" (meaning Cute, Cool, and Popular) to describe a particular girl in her class that she does not get along with (Russell, 2010, p. 9). Nikki also uses the word "thunk" in her writing instead of the word thought, which allows you to connect to her as a young girl and how she still might use words improperly (Russell, 2010, p. 11).
Throughout her "journal," Nikki uses different sized writing or fonts, she draws pictures, and she makes you laugh! I love how easy it was for me to reread a few pages of one of these books as a 22-year-old and remember exactly why I loved reading these books. I think the journal genre is such a fun genre to read. I also think it is interesting that not only can you read books within the journal genre for entertainment, but there are also books within this genre that are very informational. For example, Anne Frank: The diary of a young girl would be a great informational text within the journal genre.
I think the three books/series I have mentioned in this blog post also have the potential to be great mentor texts for the journal genre. I think for this genre in particular, it would be important to have mentor texts that are purely for entertainment purposes as well as texts that are informational to demonstrate to students the many different ways their writing could fall within the journal genre.
References
Russell, R. R. (2010). Dork Diaries: Tales from a not-so-popular party girl. New York, NY: Aladdin
Sam, you provided a rich review here of a specific mentor text. In these entries though, remember that you want to be sure to always focus on how you teach the genre. So, if you were to imagine the future students you wish to teach, what would be the mentor texts you would be most likely to select? And what traits of the journal genre would you want to be sure to focus on so they would be better able to comprehend these texts when they read them as well as better able to compose them when they wrote them.
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