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JOIN US IN EXPLORING OTHERS' CRAFT AND BUILDING OUR OWN

A lot of people want to be allies, or seen as friendly and open to the idea of friendship across races, cultures and social strata. This idea of “just talk to each other” may seem like it’s wildly oversimplified, but it turns out that if you want to know someone, it really is that simple. You may be nothing like a diehard gardener or wide-eyed tween, but if you’re willing to see a potential connection between the two of you, it will be there.

The moose is meaningful to both Dad and Katie, and the movie creates additional layers of meaning through the old movies (flashbacks) and the way the moose moves from person to person. We know what the moose means, so we can imagine what the characters are feeling, and ultimately, we feel it too.

The primary purpose of a refrain, or a recurring line throughout a poetic work (or prose for that matter), is to draw attention to something important. Used effectively, it can heighten the emotional resonance of your story and make it feel more universal, and LaRocca uses hers to great effect.

Schmidt uses repetition throughout Orbiting Jupiter to evoke emotions in his readers.

craft review by Anne-Marie Strohman Gary Schmidt’s Orbiting Jupiter is a sparse text–a mere 181 pages–and it sits right between middle grade and YA, with its twelve-year-old narrator, Jack, and his fourteen-year-old foster brother, Joseph, at the center of the story. In tone and feel, it’s akin to Patricia MacLachlan’s The Poet’s Dog, an incredibly […]