2. Identify and sort

First, make sure you are done your first post. 
If you are not - go back to the instructions found in the blog archive to the right and finish it. You always have one week (Friday to Friday) to complete your blogging for the week.

This week, begin your post by identifying the book or books you would like to address for today's post. Use the MLA format taught last week to create a properly formatted MLA citation. You may also choose to include an image of the book cover to add further visual interest to your blog (use the 'add image' icon found on the tool bar at the top of your 'new post' page).

Today you will be identifying and sorting.

1. First, identify five main elements of your novel. Use your note "Elements of the Short Story" as a reference. (NOTE: Because this hand out is talking about good fiction - we can transfer our understanding of short fiction to longer pieces like novels.)

2. Then, sort these elements according to their importance for your engagement in your reading. Put the most important element to you at the beginning of your sorting list.

3. Once you have identified the most important element for your enjoyment, describe how this element has been used (or is lacking) in your novel.

4. Use a direct quotation from a section of your book as evidence. Be sure to include a properly formatted MLA style citation following your direct quotation. Do not leave the quotation standing on its own - make sure that you explain its significance to the element you have selected as your top engagement feature. 

AS A REMINDER USE THIS MLA STYLE IN TEXT CITATION: (Author, Title page)

A sample student entry of the third and fourth activity for this week is below:

Imagery

     This element is used quite often in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. Imagery is the use of visual, auditory or tactile descriptions to help you understand a place better while using your senses. I think imagery is the most important element in this book because it projects a vivid impression of what is being described: a hollow within which lies a flesh-eating soulless creature. The imagery helps the reader to really imagine themselves in the scene with the characters: "A vast, lunar bog stretched away into the mist from either side of the path, just brown grass and tea-colored water as far as I could see, featureless but for the occasional mount of piled-up stones. It ended abruptly at a forest of skeletal trees, branches spindling up like the tips of wet paintbrushes, and for a while the path became so lost beneath fallen trunks and carpets of ivy that navigating it was a matter of faith." (Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children  78). Even if I didn't want to imagine this bog, I couldn't help it after reading this excerpt. This is one of the less gag-inducing parts that I could have chosen. But it's true, sometimes you are happy to imagine a place of beauty and peace. But you might be forced to imagine a dreary bog, or a spine tingling creature. That's the best part about imagery, it's like real life because you can't choose what you want to see or how long that image lasts in your mind.

Riggs, Ransom, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Philadelphia, PA: Quirk, 2011. Print.