The Ink Splat is our monthly activity letter filled with inspiration sparking challenges and resources guaranteed to inspire your creativity. In this Ink Splat, the book and author spotlighted is Oggie Cooder by Sarah Weeks along with an author interview! Submit a response to a challenge and you may have a chance to be published online! What are you waiting for?
The Challenge: From Way Down Here
Make a list of five activities you enjoy doing outdoors. Next time you have spare time go do one activity. Try describing the activity in writing from a different perspective than your own, perhaps from an ant crawling by.
Try using this new word in your writing:
Do you know what a whim is? A whim is noun meaning an impulse or a sudden idea! For example: John had a sudden whim to take a midnight walk in the forest.
Share your completed writing challenge by submitting HERE!
Published Submissions:
By M. Bailey
I flew overhead and saw two girls rolling in a fresh and green backyard. Then, like one of them had had a sudden whim, she changed direction and crashed into the other girl. I came back the next day and saw the same girl climbing a tree and trying to reach the highest branch. Every day I flew over the house with the big backyard and I saw the girl collecting moss and trying to grow seeds in it, having a picnic with her friends, or playing hide and seek when it was pitch black outside. I couldn’t wait to find out what she would do next.
Oggie Cooder by Sarah Weeks
Oggie Cooder is a chapter book for kids ages 9-12. Oggie is an unusual kid who suddenly becomes an unlikely hero based on his talent for “charving” (carving cheese with his teeth). Read the book and leave a comment below! Why do you think having an unlikely hero is appealing to readers?
An interview with author Sarah Weeks:
“The two Oggie books have been a lot of fun to work on. Oggie is such a great character to climb inside of. He’s strange for sure, but he’s got a big heart and in the end that’s what you really look for in a friend, isn’t it?”
“Kids always ask me why I wanted to write about someone like Oggie and I always say that unusual people are a lot more interesting to work with, than ordinary people. An ordinary person uses ordinary words and has ordinary thoughts but not Oggie. He’s full of “prrrrips” and “yeppers” and you never know what he might do next.”
“As for Donnica Perfecto – I think we’ve all known somebody like her at some point. I thought back to my school days and tried to take the most annoying characteristics I’d ever seen in a person and put them all into her character. She’s a real stinker!”
Thanks Sarah Weeks!
For more about the author and her books visit http://www.sarahweeks.com/index2.htm
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