Light Up Your Child's Mind by Joseph S. Renzulli & Sally M. Reis & Andrea Thompson

Author:Joseph S. Renzulli & Sally M. Reis & Andrea Thompson [RENZULLI, JOSEPH S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: EDU000000
ISBN: 9780316053143
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

“What ever happened to the Neanderthals?”

“I would like to learn where butterflies live.”

“I want to know if regular people can make machines that work or only professional scientists.”

“I plan to know more about the greatest moments in sports history.”

“Why are Alexander Calder’s mobiles special? Why do so many people like them?”

If a Project Management Plan might sound entirely too official or perhaps even too “homework-like” to your child, don’t call it that.

The uncle of one fourteen-year-old boy described several conversations he had had with his nephew. They illustrate the idea that helping a youngster to start thinking of a plan to organize and professionalize his work can take an informal tone and still achieve results.

“Eddie and I have bonded for a long time,” the uncle said. “He loves cartoons, especially Gary Larson’s The Far Side. I gave him a Far Side cartoon-a-day calendar and he started making his own cartoons, very imitative of this Larson style. They all revolved around things going on in our lives, like when I put new tires on my car and when Eddie had his bedroom painted at home. I was getting these in the mail from him like once a week. They were good, the drawings more so than the captions. They had that same kind of off-beat, weird sense of humor, pretty clever for a fourteen-year-old.

“So I thought, I could just let this kid keep sending me his cartoons and keep telling him I got a big kick out of them, but he should get some validation from other people than me. The next time we got together, I asked him if he was thinking about being a cartoonist when he grew up. Eddie said it was really tough to be a professional cartoonist, get a regular strip. That’s undoubtedly true, I told him, but you’re jumping the gun here. Let’s imagine you wanted to show your stuff to some newspaper guy who might hire you to do a strip. Or somebody who publishes comic books. What would you need?”

He should have about two dozen sample cartoons, Eddie thought. But then: Should these be a random assortment, à la The Far Side, or should there be one main character, like Dagwood or Beetle Bailey? How does a cartoonist create a character or a plot? How could Eddie develop a distinctive style, something that didn’t look like he was imitating other people? How can you tell if a cartoon about changing tires on the car is going to make sense or be funny to somebody who maybe doesn’t have a car? Should you start with a caption and draw a picture to fit it, or the other way around?

“The upshot of all this talk,” said Eddie’s uncle, “was that the boy really wanted to do something with his cartoons, and we mapped out a number of steps he could take. Get some books about drawing. Try to research the careers of cartoonists, how they got started, find the answers to some of these questions about developing a style and writing captions.

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