Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Our "Mystery Stories"

We have been reading the picture book "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" by Chris Van Arlsberg. In the book, each page is a new story, with only a picture and a sentence of writing to tell the reader the story.

Here are some pictures from the book:






So we in Room 7 decided to take a page/story each, and fill in the missing parts! We have been writing our mystery stories for the last couple of weeks, and have recorded some of them on Vocaroo to share with each other. These can be found over on the "Class of 2011" blog.

We also plan to publish our stories on A3 paper and make a 'big book' called "Room 7's Big Book of Mysteries'. We will share the book with our buddy class when it is finished.

Other writers have been inspired by 'The Mysteries of HB" as well. In 1993, Stephen King published his solution to the mystery of The House on Maple Street in a story collection entitled Nightmares & Dreamscapes.

For those children who have LOVED writing their mystery stories, there is an official 'Mysteries of Harris Burdick" website for you to explore. It even shows what happens afterwards to the hovering Nun!

UPDATE: I recently found this website, where other children have written stories to solve 'The Mysteries of Harris Burdick'.