Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

As an English and literature teacher for nearly 20 years, I have coached (and in some cases, coaxed) middle schoolers on essay writing, including the use of descriptive writing, more specifically the use of adjectives and adverbs. One method I used was to read with them an example of good descriptive writing, starting with Chapter 5, “Untying the Knot” from Annie Dillard’s Pulitzer Prize winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, where Dillard discovers an abandoned snake skin that has been inexplicably turned inside out and tied into a knot. We then would move on to one of my favorite books of all times, Laurie Colwin’s two-book series of essays, Home Cooking and More Home Cooking, where Colwin invites the reader into her kitchen to smell, listen, watch, taste, and touch the scrumptious things she cooks there. My favorite essay is in book two, “Lemons and Limes,” where Colwin takes the reader through her day cooking, sipping, baking, and yes, even cleaning, with lemons. My classes each year would uniformly be reading along, lips puckering as Colwin squeezed lemon juice onto a piece of fish or onto freshly fried chicken. The chapter includes a reference to a British recipe for Lemon Rice Pudding which Colwin describes as wickedly good. Along with teaching vocabulary, this was my favorite unit to teach!

Did my 7th and 8th graders suddenly become Pulitzer Prize winning writers? No, but through modeling what really good descriptive writing looks like and sounds like, they had a good sense of how to improve their own writing.

If I were still teaching full-time, I would bring into my classroom this new children’s picture book, A Chest Full of Words, that was given to me via NetGalley by NorthSouth Books Inc. It is beautifully illustrated and through the 25 page story of Oscar and the treasure chest he dug up and pried open, we learn how to use descriptive writing effectively. Oscar begins by throwing his new words at everything he encounters, a hedgehog, an oak tree, and even, a beetle, which backfires as the word monstrous turns the beetle into something akin to the scary creature that Gregor Samsa turns into in The Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka!

Oscar uses up all his newly found words and then goes on a hunt to find more. When he stumbles upon Louise, outside watering her garden, she teaches him how to use the new words she gifts him, by telling him “it’s like painting a picture with words.” This is exactly what I used to tell my students, paint a picture with your words, and that will bring your writing to life!

I truly adored this book, and upon its publication date I will be gifting a copy to my school’s library, with a recommendation to the teacher who replaced me upon my retirement to give it a try when teaching descriptive writing!

Thank you to NetGalley and NorthSouth Books Inc. for the ARC ebook, and thank you to the creative team of Gugger and Rothlisberger for such a delightful book!