Library of Congress : Letters about Literature

Today's post is another great find at the Library of Congress website.  Letters about Literature is a contest sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.  The contest is open to students from 4-12 grades.  Students write a letter to the author of his or her favorite book or a book that changed his or her life. The winners of the contest receive national recognition and a prize for their school library. 

The concept of this contest would easily translate into a project for an English class.  Rather than write a book report, students write letters to the author in which they explain what they liked (or disliked) about the book, why they felt this way, and how the book has (or has not) made an impact.  Writing a letter can make the students' experience with the book more personal and give them a way to be a little more creative with reporting on the material.

An excerpt from a winning letter:

  

Dear Rudyard Kipling,

My dad is a six-foot tall, deep-voiced, husky eastern European rock of a man. In fact, all the men on my dad’s side of the family are a bunch of Romanian macho hunks with bulging biceps and visages as stony and solemn as a statue. Genetically, I have these same features yet, because of my mother’s influence, I am much softer on the inside...

Your poem was so much more than just a simple list of guidelines or morals that some see it as; it really changed my life and my relationship with my dad. Because of “If,” I am able to walk with my chest pushed out like a man not because of bulging pectoral muscles but because of the heart under them.

With admiration and thanks,

Joshua Tiprigan