Bookmarks: Fluency through Novels

Janet Giannotti

Bookmarks is a series of companion textbooks that provides teachers with creative exercises and activities to supplement the teaching of a novel. Bookmarks are integrated reading-writing skills texts that address each of the seven intelligences identified by Howard Gardner: there are tasks/activities for the linguistically, logically-mathematical, kinesthetically, spatially, musically, interpersonally, and intrapersonally intelligent students.

Each of the six units begins with a preview of the reading and free writing topics, followed by exercises that improve comprehension and vocabulary building. Students use response journals so as to think about their personal connection with the novel. The "Beyond the Novel" section in each unit introduces factual background information in which students learn about history and other interesting material mentioned in the novels.

A Companion Text for Kindred

A Companion Text for Kindred is designed to be used along with the novel by Octavia Butler (published by Beacon Press), which tells the story of a young black woman who disappears from her home in 1970s California to save the life of her white slave-owner ancestor in the early 19th century.

A Companion Text for Like Water for Chocolate

A Companion Text for Like Water for Chocolate provides exercises and activities for ESL students who are reading the English translation of the novel by Laura Esquivel (published by Doubleday). Set during the late-19th and early-20th centuries, Like Water for Chocolate is a story about an extended Mexican family and what happens when one daughter is not permitted to marry the man she loves. Cooking and food are central to the storyline and help thread the story together.

A Companion Text for Growing Up

A Companion Text for Growing Up accompanies journalist Russell Baker's Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography. Growing Up (published by N A L) traces Baker's coming of age during the 1930s and 1940s. Baker's memoir draws the reader into America between the world wars and describes the struggles of family, adolescence, and hardship that accompanied his journey to adulthood.

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