Author Shows Maynard Public School
Students How to Connect with Readers
(Pictured above: Author Sigmund Brouwer shares the tale of a hockey player
who gave an opposing fan a wedgie during a Junior A game, much to the delight
of students at Maynard Public School.)
(Maynard) – Wedgies, boogers, cow gas and stinky pants.
If the thrilled reaction from a gym full of students at Maynard Public School was any indication, those topics are the secret “hooks” in any storyline guaranteed to engage young students.
Through his Rock and Roll Literacy presentation, award-winning Canadian author Sigmund Brouwer used tales about precisely those subjects Monday to demonstrate how a writer’s choice of the “right story, right time, and right audience for the right feeling” can lead to literary success with any audience.
Brouwer was a special guest at Maynard yesterday in the wake of Family Literacy Day. He was invited through the work of Learning Commons Informationist Lynn Heibein, to show students how an effective story is put together and to inspire students to find their voices and write their own stories for their teachers.
“Good stories make us feel something,” said the author of works such as Timberwolf Rivals and Rebel Glory. “I want to motivate these students to ‘mess with their teachers’ by making them feel something (through their stories).”
“If we can motivate them to put their stories on paper they will get better at writing.”
Through a lively presentation interspersed with inspirational classic rock, Brouwer demonstrated how real-life stories delivered to a receptive audience in a timely fashion can capture the imagination and provide fodder for quality fiction.
He recounted the unusual tale of how friend and former NHL player Mike Moller found something interesting on the ice while playing as a teen with the Rochester Americans in the American Hockey League. Moller spoke of being at a practice and seeing a young player come onto the ice and then frantically strip off all his equipment. What the team found out later was that the area where the player had hung his equipment was infested with cockroaches – which found their way into his equipment and were running all over his body under his jersey and hockey pants. After he stripped off his equipment, there were cockroaches all over the ice and players later began to shoot the bugs at the goaltender.
The story enthralled Brouwer and his hockey-loving buddies so much that Brouwer included a similar story in his book Rebel Glory – only the character in the story suffered the same fate in front of 6,000 fans.
Brouwer told another tale about hockey pal Peter Anholt, former coach of the Red Deer Rebels Junior-A hockey team in the Western Hockey League. As a young man, Anholt was playing for the Prince Albert Raiders in Saskatchewan when he was spat upon by an opposing fan from the stands. He responded by pulling the man over the glass and into the penalty box to take revenge. Unfortunately, the fan fell onto Anholt and pinned him down inside the penalty box. Unable to inflict justice in true hockey fashion, Anholt gave the offending fan a wedgie. The story resonated with Brouwer so much that the author fictionalized it for chapter one of his book Thunderbird Spirit, in which one of the characters doles out wedgie vengeance.
Brouwer drew similar reactions from the students by relating to their interests with stories on scientists who actually studied how much “cow gas” (flatulation), a dairy cow could produce per day, and of a person picking his nose so hard that “he’s pushing out his eyeball.”
“You’re saying enough already but you can’t look away because you’re so hooked,” Brouwer said to laughter.
To provide final inspiration to the students of what can be accomplished through writing to an audience, Brouwer finished the presentation by offering students access to $20 worth of e-books through his myrockandrollbooks.com Web site.
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For more information, please contact:
Lynn Heibein
Learning Commons Informationist
Maynard Public School
613-925-4291
Posted February 3, 2012