The first edition of my online reading programme for ages 9 and 10 is here! For a while, I’ve had queries from parents about children who love reading but don’t know how to get started on their writing journeys. They want to write, but they don’t know what to do or how to go about it. I began mulling over it. Would a writing workshop help? Perhaps it would, but I felt that beginning on familiar ground – reading – would work better. And so, here it is – my first reading programme for this age-group.
What better way to begin than with a book by Asha Nehemiah? I began my first reading programme for younger children with her Trouble with Magic, and we loved it. The Mystery of the Secret Hair Oil Formula is similar in so many ways, but still entirely different.
Someone is trying to steal Malu Paati’s secret hair oil formula. It is a special formula indeed, one that requires knowledge of a special script and much interpretation and tweaking thereafter. When Maalu Paati is invited to a Herbologists’ convention, she must figure out how to keep her formula safe, even as she crosses treacherous waters full of people out to get her.
A delicious combination of hilarity and suspense, The Mystery of the Secret Hair Oil Formula has so much to offer to young writers!
Ideas to work with: Plotting, Humour and Character Creation
How do we keep readers engaged through a story? How can we figure out how much is too much? Are there any standard formulas to follow?
None of these questions has foolproof answers, but investigating ideas through the structure of a book like The Mystery of the Secret Hair Oil Formula promises to be fulfilling.
Discussing what we find funny is interesting too. While some children thoroughly enjoy silliness and humour, others find it pointless. How can we decide what and how to write?
This book is full of all kinds of crazy, enterprising characters. How do we create vivid characters that stand out?
Writing Activities and Prompts
The point of a workshop is to work together on a piece of writing. Though the scope of this programme is necessarily narrower than that of my writing programme, we will work on small written exercises linked to the book, creating new characters and attempting to flesh them out.
Please do note, however, that the participants will not be given access to the forum to share work and will not be engaging in long written exercises that require detailed feedback and edits.
Join a programme
Its very good .
Its very interesting.