Category: Social Justice
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The F Words: Following the F Words
It stands to reason that, before I sat down to write a YA novel titled The F Words — in which a teen who tags his high school wall with the F word is required to write two poems a week, each about a word that starts with the letter F — I would make […]
Barbara Gregorich
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The F Words: The Gift of Fire
After the 5,000-year-old body of the Iceman (later named Otzi) was discovered preserved in a glacier in the Alps in 1991, scientists began examining everything they could about this person — in order to better understand the past and its importance to the present. Among the many things they discovered about the Iceman was this: […]
Barbara Gregorich
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The F Words: Bilingualism
Not counting the US, approximately 65-75% of the world’s population is bilingual. In the US in 1980 only 10% of the population was bilingual. Today that number has risen to 20%, possibly to 25%, primarily through immigrants, largely Spanish-speaking. Many different cultures have positive proverbs about knowing more than one language. An old Persian proverb […]
Barbara Gregorich
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The F Words: The Writing
For well over a year now I’ve been blogging about various aspects of The F Words, but one thing I haven’t talked about is the actual steps of writing the novel. Writers and readers are often interested in how writing takes place. So, for those who might want to know, I will try to recount […]
Barbara Gregorich
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The F Words: The Hate U Give
I love Angie Thomas’s YA novel, The Hate U Give. I read it when it was published and felt as if I had been living in a stuffy room and now, at last, somebody opened the windows and let the light and the fresh air in — somebody was talking about the truths of racism, […]
Barbara Gregorich
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The F Words: Educator Guide
This blog first appeared as an article in the SCBWI-Illinois journal, Prairie Wind. * * * During the 1980s and into the 1990s I used to write educational materials: activity sheets, teacher guides, parent guides, flashcards, scripts for audio how-to instructions, and teacher guides and parent guides. At one point I […]
Barbara Gregorich
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The F Words: A Stranger Comes to Town
In literature the stranger-comes-to-town motif is quite common. In films, for example, there’s In the Heat of the Night. There’s Shane. There’s The Brother from Another Planet. Stranger-comes-to-town is a type of plot, just as seeking revenge is a type, and going on a journey is a type. It’s the skeletal structure on which a […]
Barbara Gregorich
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The F Words: English Teacher Hero
In my high school, Brookfield High (Brookfield, Ohio), my favorite teacher was my English teacher, Mrs. Dorothy Drummond. I was fortunate enough to have her as my teacher for two years rather than one. She influenced me greatly with her love of learning, her wide range of knowledge, her understanding of the human condition as […]
Barbara Gregorich
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The F Words: Conflict
Conflict is at the heart of all good fiction. The main character is in conflict with something: another person; society; himself/herself; the forces of nature. The attempts of the main character to achieve his or her goals results in conflicts, some small, some large. Conflict engages reader interest. Conflict helps the main character grow. Without conflict, […]
Barbara Gregorich
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The F Words: Setting
I’m a person who loves setting. I enjoy reading books in which setting has been developed by the author. Conversely, I don’t enjoy books which, when I’m reading them, feel as if they could “be” anywhere: any city, any time. So, because setting is so important to my enjoyment of a book, I am always […]
Barbara Gregorich
Barbara Gregorich 