I recently got to see these incredible one-pagers that Ms. Ostertag’s 5th grade students created after reading Caput Mundi, and it’s an understatement to say I was completely blown away. These were SO amazing!!
"The stench, the bugs, the ash..it had all become a part of his world."
There is something very special about seeing children read a story you wrote and then make connections you never could have anticipated. And I don’t mean just the surface-level ones. I mean the deep ones: themes of belonging, identity, hope, pollution, climate change, power, misguided anger, and even parallels between the Doubleyes and the world we live in today.
Here are just a few of the things her students had to say:
- "Using enarii in Caput Mundi is similar to people drawing in our world, in that we get to express our thoughts outside of us."
- "The stench, the bugs, the ash - it had all become a part of his world."
- "Creative! Fictional! Action Packed! SuspensFull!"
- "You are not what you're called, but what you answer to."
- "The Doubleyes and electus are similar to politicians and criminals today."
- "Development → Destruction and pollution." and "Hope, in small things."
It reminded me of something I think we sometimes forget: children are incredibly perceptive. They are paying attention to the world around them. They are thinking about big, complicated questions. They are forming connections between fiction and real life, and honestly, their observations blew me away.
We really need to give kids more credit!!
