Historical Fiction Picture Book

Introduction: As you listened to The Blue and the Gray, did you visualize the characters and setting? Did you notice what techniques the author used to bring the story to life? You will now get the opportunity to use your imagination to compose your own historical fiction picture book.

1. Research:
Choose a time period or an event to base your book on.
Research using at least two sources gathering information about the specifics of your event.
Record your information on your Historical Fiction Picture Book Research Sheet.

2. Composing:
Complete the Characterization worksheet.
Complete the story map.
Write your rough draft on notebook paper. As you are writing your rough draft, divide your story into pages. You may have between 30-50 words per page.
Create your illustrations. You should have at least one illustration for each page of your story. You may have up to three illustrations per page. If you have a lot of text on a page, you will need to make your illustration vertical. If you have less text, your picture may be horizontal.

3. Publishing:
Scan or take digital photos of your illustrations. Import the photos into iPhoto. Create a New Album in iPhoto. Drag your pictures from the library into your album.
Click on Book at the bottom of the screen and select Story Book as the theme.
Before you begin typing your story, go to edit and pull down to spelling. Slide across to check spelling as you type.
Insert title, author, and illustration onto your cover.
On the title page include title, author, illustrator, and an illustration.
If you plan to use a picture more than once in your book, duplicate the picture before dragging it into your book. To do this, click on the picture, go to photos, and down to duplicate.
Begin inserting your pictures into your story book. If you only want to include one picture per page, click on Page Type and select one. If you want two or three pictures on the page, then go to Page Type and choose the number of illustrations you want to use. If a yellow caution sign appears, don't worry, it means that the picture quality is not 100%.
Begin typing your story. If the caution sign appears in the text box, you will need to change the font. To do this, highlight your text, go to edit, pull down to font, slide across to show font, and change the size. If the yellow caution sign appears in the text box and you do not change the size of the font, some of your text may not appear when you publish your book.
If you need to add a page, click on add pages.

Polishing:
Review the rubric to make sure you have met the criteria to receive a 4 in each category.
Be sure to proofread your story for capitalization and punctuation mistakes.
When you are done, find another team that is finished and peer edit each others books.

Saving:
Go to File and Print, but YOU WILL NOT ACTUALLY PRINT THIS BOOK!
When the print window appears, go to PDF - Save as PDF.
Save As: Your names go here.
Where: Save to the desktop.
Go to file and quit iPhoto.
Your book should now appear on the desktop as a PDF.
Go to Homes.
Go to Faculty, then to the picture book folder.
Drag your PDF document into the Picture Book folder.

Presentation:
One student will operate the computer.
One or both students can read the text as the picture books are presented.
Before you present, be sure to look at the rubric to see what your presentation should include to get a 4.