THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1994 TAG: 9406210166
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940622 LENGTH: SMITHFIELD
``So we thought the granddaughter could cut her hair and dress up like a boy and go to medical school anyway,'' said Jeremy Smart.
{REST} ``But we haven't decided that yet,'' Melody Baker said.
The time, place and characters - all of those decisions are yet to be made, next year when the seventh grade gifted and talented students at Smithfield Middle School write the second installment of ``Generations - Love, War and Tragedy.''
This year, they were sixth-graders, and this year they wrote the book that their teacher, Floydette Pitt, said she thought would never end.
``We finally had to say, `Stop, we've got to finish this by June,' '' Pitt said, laughing as her students discussed the continuing saga of the Scott family.
Each of Pitt's classes at Smithfield Middle School this year collaborated on a book, and all of them followed the same general guidelines, beginning with research. But the nine sixth-graders, Pitt said, produced the longest book - 62 pages, and they were one of the more enthusiastic classes when it came to the writing process.
The students started by reading, ``The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle,'' Pitt said, a story about a young girl's adventures on a sailing ship during the early 1800s. From there, they went on a field trip to Norfolk and went sailing on the schooner American Patriot that was docked at Waterside.
From there, Pitt said, it was off to the libraries, where they read and absorbed as much as they could to decide where and when their story would take place.
``We got in a group and decided what we wanted to do,'' Aubrey Anderson said. ``Some people wanted to do something around the time of Hitler. Melody wanted to write about the Civil War and the underground railroad.''
Michael Liles, another student in the class, helped sway the time and plot toward the Civil War when he told them about the small town in North Carolina where his grandfather still lives in an old home that was a hotel during the war.
``The house on the front cover is patterned after my grandfather's house,'' Liles said.
The book was illustrated by Wade Harrell.
Building the characters was probably the hardest part for the students, Pitt said. Each student was assigned a single character.
``I made them work out every detail,'' the teacher said. ``We had to know how tall they were, the color of their eyes, hair, their mannerisms.''
``We argued about the color of Amanda's hair for 20 minutes,'' Baker said.
And they argued over other details as well. The boys, the three girls in the class said, didn't want any of the characters kissing, and they didn't want anybody to get married.
``Mrs. Pitt told us her grandmother couldn't even be alone with a boy,'' Melody said. ``She said that just wouldn't have really happened.''
``She took most of the fun out of it,'' Thomas Mathews said. ``She wouldn't even let us have a lot of blood.''
The result of all the hard work was a novella based in Sunbury, N.C., during the Civil War. It's about a Southern family named Scott. The twist is that the family is sympathetic toward the North; they don't believe in slavery.
As the story begins, the father has just died, leaving his wife expecting another child, baby Charlotte Kay. The plot unfolds when the mother dies in childbirth and the eldest son in the family goes off to join the Union Army. The remaining children and a cousin from England continue working the family farm and eventually get involved in the underground railroad.
All of the students were writing different chapters at the same time, Pitt said. The girls probably wrote more than the boys. Melody Baker, the aspiring author, wrote four chapters. Amazingly, it all fit together.
Each student got a copy once the book was ``published.'' Copies went to the school library, the principal's office and the Isle of Wight County Museum. So far, the critics have been kind.
``I let my friend borrow it,'' Jeremy said. ``He said he loved it, that it was a great book.''
``I didn't know it ended so good until I read it all together,'' Aubrey said.
And, as with any great work, there has been a little negative criticism.
``My dad read the first two chapters,'' Carmen Stagg said. ``He said it was depressing.''
by CNB