Independent Reading Assignments (Memoir)

Image: Painting Title: Study for a Portrait of Van Gogh V 1957
Francis Bacon (Even great artists imitate other great artists.)

You must complete three out of five assignments. They are worth 20 points a piece. The meta-cognition will be worth 40 points—this is where you will be able to “explain a lot of your choices”, so develop all of your ideas completely.

1. Design a cover. You will be graded on the following items:

• 10 points: Your cover should show creativity, depth in thought, and visually represent important events, themes, or symbols throughout the book. The cover should look professionally and carefully constructed. You may draw or use the computer, but be careful not to commit the visual equivalence of plagiarism.
  If you use someone else’s images, change or collage them until they are your own.
  Make sure you have a front and back cover as well as a spine.
  Spelling the author’s name wrong would be about the worst thing you could do!
• 10 points: You should provide a 100 word description of the book on the back cover. WARNING: DO NOT PLAGIARIZE THIS!—you will risk a zero for an easy part of the requirements. Remember: the point of a 100 word description on the back of a book is to convince someone in a store to buy the book. Remember this when you write the blurb. Why should someone buy this?

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2. Write a “filler page”. In other words, write what happens in between two chapters or pages or rewrite a page.

• 10 points: The details and facts in your story are factually and contextually accurate in relation to the existing story. This includes the setting and historical time frame!
• 10 points: You successfully capture the tone and style of your author.[1]

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3. Rewrite a page, but include yourself. In other words, use the author’s style to write your own memoir.

• 20 points: You successfully capture the tone and style of your author.[2]

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4. Passage Explication Assignment

• 20 Points. Please refer to Passage Explication handout.

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5. Mix CD: The Memoir’s Soundtrack

• 20 Points . Choose 10 songs that you think best fit the memoir (explained in “meta”), whether a connection to lyrics, the tone of mood of the song, etc. Make sure you provide me with a CD.

If you have another creative idea, propose it to me with criteria on which you would like to be graded. I must approve this first.

[1] (which includes, but is not limited to: how author presents dialogue, appropriate word choice, symbols, etc.)

[2] (which includes, but is not limited to: how author presents dialogue, appropriate word choice, symbols, etc.)