I read Misfit Madhu about a month ago, and I’ve been mulling over it ever since, wondering whether it would work for my book club. It’s longer and slightly more complex than the books we usually read, but I enjoyed the story and especially as my regulars love coding, I think this is a book they’ll enjoy.
Madhu makes an app that goes viral. At first, she can’t quite believe it, but soon, she begins to bask in the attention. Things quickly go wrong, though, and Madhu must decide between what she wants and what’s right. Here’s what we’ll do as we read the book!
Apps
When we read Cricket for the Crocodile, we did an activity where we made our own games. One child made a rudimentary online game, which made me wonder: what apps do children feel they need? While we won’t create an app (I know nothing about coding!), we will try to design one, coming up with a name, a purpose and details of what the app can do, no matter how farfetched.
What would you do if ...?
What would you do if you were in Madhu’s place? What about if you were in her best friend Noor’s place?
Misfit Madhu sparks all kinds of conversation topics from the meaning of friendship to doing what is right. At several stages in the story, we’ll stop and reflect on what we would do if we were in the characters’ places. Giving the children similar situations, we’ll engage in a little role play too.
Story-Based Games
As writing is an important component of Read, Write, Explore, we’ll explore a different kind of story – something that could work as a story-based game. We have just one class to work with writing, so we’ll begin with each child discussing a story-based game they enjoy playing, bringing the idea down to setting, characters, plot and structure. Following that, we will try to change the characters and setting and see whether we can create the rough outline of a story-based game of our own.
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