Potomac's eighth grade English students read and discuss The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The book is a series of short vignettes that together capture the characters, setting, and stories of a particular neighborhood in Chicago. The vignettes are written from the perspective of a fictional narrator and are based loosely on Cisneros's own experiences as well as those of her students. Some of the vignettes are humorous or action-packed; some are heart-wrenching or shocking. All are deliberate in their use of figurative language, poetic elements, grammar conventions, and pacing.

Each eighth grader composed at least one vignette for inclusion in this digital collection. They wrote in the style of Sandra Cisneros, as they interpreted it based on their notes and our class discussions, yet they set it in a time and place of their own choosing. While some of these vignettes are based on the author's personal experience, many of them are purely fiction, an imagining of characters and circumstances that seemed ripe for this assignment. Students also used this assignment to experiment with new vocabulary words and techniques involving punctuation and sentence structure.

We encourage you to leave comments below vignettes that strike you in some way. Please keep your comments positive and specific; this is not the place for critiques or suggestions. Enjoy the creativity and vibrancy of these students' literary efforts.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

The House Next Door

The house next door to mine has always been very sketchy. It is a small, one story, white and blue house. By the looks of it from the outside, It was very overdue for a re-painting. There are no permanent residents living in that house. Every so often, there is always someone new living in that house. I have never met any of them. With all of the different people that live there, there have been some crazy ones. There were those who were up outside at three in the morning,

partying…

howling….

screaming…

There were those who had big dogs who would bark non stop.

Literally. Nonstop.

There were those who had kids who would hop the fence to our yard to play on our swingset.

Most of the people there have kept me up at night. I hope that they build a new house there sometime soon.

One day however, new neighbors moved in, and they were peaceful and quiet. They weren’t anyone who would annoy us in any way. I could finally sleep. I hope that they stay forever. That is very unlikely.

Something is wrong with that house.

~ Dillon W.

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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2016 at 8:26 AM

    I like the short sentence length. It built suspense.
    EC

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2016 at 8:33 AM

    I liked how you used the 1 word lines. They really made the words and ideas stand out as important. DA

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2016 at 8:36 AM

    I liked the sentence length and I liked how descriptive it was. SS

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2016 at 8:50 AM

    I like how you use short sentences to build suspense.

    JTF

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJanuary 7, 2016 at 1:41 PM

    I like how you described you dislike for the house.

    ReplyDelete

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