Creating a Multigenre Presentation on the Issues Presented in a Chosen Children's Book

Overview and Goal

Your assignment is to create a multigenre presentation about the issues presented in your chosen children’s book.

Overview and GOAL of the project: you are making a point about the issue to show the reader a specific way to interpret or understand it. However, this point will not be made through a traditional paper. You will be using different genres to present those points. Instead of writing a paper, you might do an advertisement, or a poem, or anything! There is a list of genre definitions posted. Look through them. You will generate your OWN genres.

There are two submissions:

1. Step One: The prospectus

2. Step Two: The Project

Step One: The Prospectus: In order to write the prospectus, you will need to do some planning and some careful thinking. This is a separate submission and should contain:

1. Identify the issue you are analyzing and why you have chosen it.

2. The research question you are asking about the work and the tentative answer/dummy thesis statement (this answer becomes your thesis statement)

a. As part of this component, you should have a list of at least five questions that will guide your project initially

3. A tentative list of the genres you will be including

4. An explanation of how you might integrate your genres so that your project becomes a cohesive whole – in other words, how do the different genres overlap?

5. A defined audience for your paper: ie. Is it folks who listen to NPR; is it lawyers who practice nonprofit, civil rights law? Is it immigrants? Who are you talking to? This identification should drive every single decision you make!!

6. A dummy theme statement: what point/message are you making to your audience

What Components Must the Literature-Based MGP Contain?

· Cover Sheet/Title Page – BE CREATIVE! This will set the tone (don’t call it MGP)

· Introduction/Preface/Dear Reader

· Table of Contents

· Visual elements that connect all the components – this has to do with overall aesthetics

· The Body: the genres – you must use at least SIX other genres

Include in your paper all bulleted items. But you’ll need to write more genres than these to create a fully realized MGP. Range as widely as you want in creating this paper.

The introduction/Dear Reader:  helping us understand the issue you’re addressing, offering us insight about why you chose the genres you chose, etc.  The intro is your chance to help us understand why this topic is important, how we should “read” your documents, etc.  The intro may be written as a letter to readers, a magazine article, an editorial, etc.

The Body: This consists of the different genres. You can repeat genres only after you have complete the initial genres required. Remember to present your work in an aesthetically pleasing manner – presentation matters – This is an electronic portfolio, so how it looks matters. Some of your pieces will be written, some visual and some a combination. It is important that they are a logical order.  Aim for a good balance of genres, and be sure that at least four of your documents directly use the sources you’ve gathered from your library research.

By writing a brochure that utilizes your research sources, a chart or other visual, a story drawing from the information you’ve gathered, a quiz based on researched sources, etc.—by approaching your research findings in a creative way, your MGP helps an audience understand many different perspectives about your topic.  Some of the documents you’ll include may be more time-intensive than others.  But the documents that make up the body of your MGP should show your knowledge, creativity, and ability to persuade your audience(s) toward your central claim.