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

Never Even Happened

It was another warm summer's day in the country. The cicadas buzzing- the birds chirping-the cows mooing and the the noise of the breeze blowing the trees. The day was so calm, and it felt like nothing was going to interrupt it. The humidity made me feel like I was in a jungle. I decided to jump in the pool and go for a swim.

Boom. Crash. Bang. I jumped out of the pool and ran over to where I heard the noise. I saw two cars squished together with smoke coming from both of their engines. My dad jumped off his tractor and hurried in the house to call 911.

Not long after I heard a loud siren coming over the hill. The paramedics ran over to the car and they had to use the jaws of life to get the drivers out. I heard a whirring noise and looked up and saw a helicopter landing in our cow field. They put the drivers on stretchers and loaded them in the helicopter.

As soon as the helicopter lifted off, one of the cars ignited in flames and one of the firemen was caught of guard and almost got struck by the flames. The fire men then rushed to extinguish the fire before the fire might do any more damage. One of the cars was so mangled the front looked like an accordion; the other car looked like charcoal.

A couple of tow trucks showed up and took the cars away. It was almost like the accident never even happened.

~ Will D.

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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2016 at 10:18 AM

    I really enjoyed your vignette because you make it sound very realistic. I like how at the beginning you started off with a lot of detail. It makes the reader feel he or she is part of the vignette. - K.C.

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2016 at 10:25 AM

    The start was very well described and detailed, it felt very real. You had a few grammatical errors in the 2nd last paragraph. Good work.

    JH

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2016 at 10:28 AM

    One aspect of your vignette that I liked was how realistic it was, and especially how you described the remains of the cars.
    -L.O.

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2016 at 1:35 PM

    Was this inspired by your country house? Also I really enjoyed it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJanuary 7, 2016 at 11:05 AM

    It was very descriptive and surreal; when I was reading it I felt as though I was actually there as these events occurred.

    ReplyDelete

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