Craft Moves

Intended for elementary school educators, this is a guide to using picture books as mentor texts during writing workshops. While the book assumes some familiarity with this concept, its brief introduction gives a preliminary overview and serves to explain the author's basic approach. In the chapters that follow, Shubitz advocates for the use of picture books in the classroom and shares her selecting process. She then offers ideas for establishing routines and procedures for a successful writing workshop model and suggests instructional strategies for working with students in small groups. The bulk of the volume lies in its final two chapters, in which Shubitz presents 184 lessons based on 20 mentor texts, 10 fiction and 10 nonfiction. Each is introduced with a brief summary from the publisher, followed by a series of brief lessons focusing on specific writing skills ("craft moves") evident in the example. For each lesson, Shubitz identifies a skill, explains why authors use it, and provides a step-by step procedure, complete with page numbers, for using the picture book as a model with students. A glossary defines each of the craft moves discussed.