The Mysteries of Harris Burdick - Short Story Genre Fiction
Grade 6-8

Inspired by Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, students will examine his exquisite illustrations and their mysterious captions to brainstorm, plan, and write a short story that fills in the missing pieces left by the illustrator. Using visual text analysis strategies, the class will discuss each illustration’s composition to make inferences about the story within. Then students will ideate the characters, plot, motivation, and details to create a compelling narrative. Afterwards, students will read what professional writers have made of these illustrations in the anthology The Chronicles of Harris Burdick (contributors include Stephen King, Lois Lowry, Gregory Maguire, Louis Sachar, and more). Students will get to see how their versions of the story stacked up to those of these beloved authors. During this course, students will learn to keep a writer’s notebook, make multiple revisions, participate in a writer’s workshop, provide feedback to others, and improve their writing using substantive feedback from the instructor and their classmates. At the end of the session, digital copies of the stories will be compiled as an anthology for others to enjoy. This course could be repeated in the second session in order to expand students’ writing portfolios.