Setting up your Daybook:

• Keep a glue stick and some multicolored sticky notes handy.
• Write your name on the front cover.
• Make an author identification page. Be as creative as you like, but include contact information in case you misplace your daybook.
• After your author identification page, make a Big Ideas and Deep Thoughts page. Record here the questions that keep you up at night and guide your thinking.
• Number each page at the top corner. Use both front and back.
• Date the beginning of each entry.
• Save the last four pages for a table of contents. Record the important ideas that you want to access, and then add page numbers for all instances of those ideas.
• One page before the table of contents, keep a list of possible topic ideas for papers or research projects. Add to it whenever you think of something.
• Optional for teachers: Two pages before your topics page, start a Teaching Ideas page—jot down quick ideas for teaching particular texts or features of texts.
• Four pages back from the topics page, create a Proofreader’s Guide. Here, collect examples from your own papers that were marked as errors. Analyze your common errors, fix them, and identify patterns that you need to look for in the future.
• Count fifteen pages back from the Proofreader’s Guide, and create a Vocabulary section. Collect words from readings, note where they were from, copy the sentence in which you found them, and write a definition.
• Five pages back from the Vocabulary section, keep a “favorite lines” section. Record quotations that you’ve read or heard that you want to remember and think about.
• Mark your sections with sticky notes.
• Don’t worry if things get messy. If you can find what you need, it’s organized.

Although I encourage you to use your daybook for your entire life, I have some specific assignments that I would like you to include for the texts in this class. I will go over these in class, but here are reminders in case you miss.

For instance:

1) When you get your papers back: Go through your paper and locate the marked errors. Look for patterns. For instance, you might have several comma errors marked. In the section of your daybook labeled Proofreader's Guide, write down your errors, copying out one representative sentence for each different type of error. Then, using a handbook or a punctuation guide such as The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed, by Karen Elizabeth Gordon, or Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss, find and copy the rule that applies in the situation. (If you don't have a punctuation guide such as those listed, do get one. They make great bathroom reading, and your future professors, students, and editors will thank you.)

2) Make a page titled "Emblematic Features and Quotations from YA Literature." Use this page to write down the common motifs, conflicts, concerns, and preoccupations of YA literature as we discuss these in class or as you notice them in your own reading. 

3) Assignments for individual books/films for 375:

Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: Junior has to confront his ideas about who he is and what he wants as they conflict with what his friends expect him to be as an Indian. What components of your own identity are at odds with the various expectations others have of you because of your gender, your social or economic class, your religion, your ethnicity, or even your age group?

Smoke Signals: As you watch this film, keep notes on commonalities you find between the movie and Absolutely True Diary. What themes, symbols, and concerns does it share with the book?

Mexican Whiteboy: Compare and contrast this book with Absolutely True Diary. What insights do you find when you consider the books together?

Flygirl: Here is a list of formal characteristics of African-American literature. Here is a list of formal characteristics of good historical fiction. In your daybook, write down examples of each of the characteristics from the texts as you find them. Your lists needn't be exhaustive, but try to be thorough.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks: Journal about whether or not you think Frankie is a feminist. This will require that you give some thought to what you think a feminist is.

Bend it Like Beckham: Fold two facing pages lengthwise to give you four columns across your open daybook. Label the columns: Body Image, Culture, Relationships, Conflict between Family and Individual Desires. While watching the film, jot down problems, scenes, quotations that seem to fit in each of the categories.

The Arrival: What are the significant transitions in this book for the protagonists--places where he feels especially lost, gains new insights, or becomes more comfortable in his new surroundings? How does the artwork signal these moments?

Beowulf: Do a reader response entry for this treatment of Beowulf. How does it compare to others you have encountered? What new insights, if any, does this form bring to the story?

The Realm of Possibility: To be announced.

You Don't Know about Me: If you have read the original Twain, make a list of all the ways in which this book responds to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. If not, make a list of all the things in this book that might be considered controversial. Include arguments from the right and the left (that is, what would more conservative or traditional readers object to, and what would more progressive or liberal readers object to?).

Thirsty: How does this book compare with Absolutely True Diary and Mexican Whiteboy? What insights or social commentary does it offer regarding contemporary attitudes toward teenage sexuality?

The Spectacular Now: What are your impressions of the character of Sutter? Do you know this guy? What do you think of his ethics?

Revolution: There is a lot going on here, but I want you to focus for this entry on music. How does the author use music to position characters, as a metaphor, and as a real facet of Andi's recovery?

Slice of Cherry: Who would you kill if you couldn't get caught? JUST KIDDING!!!! What is the function of darkly humorous and/or disturbing books like this for teens? What psychological needs do they meet?

Beauty Queens: Do you consider this an effective satire for teens? Why or why not? What are some of the more serious messages that lurk behind the humor?

Merchants of Cool: The kinds of shows that this documentary references have largely been replaced by "reality" TV. How can you extend the messages to what is offered for teens today as part of their feedback loop?