Author Study: Working Under the Influence Katie Wood Ray, author of Wondrous Words and About the Authors--as well as numerous other books about writing, recommends beginning with a simple premise. Learn to read like a writer. Learn to notice the choices that authors make in constructing texts--word choice, sentence structure, familiar patterns, interesting word play, unusual sentence patterns or places were rules are intentionally bent. Working under the influence of authors requires reading and rereading, savoring and noticing that goes beyond understanding the text. Writers learn to see texts as mentors--as teachers. They borrow craft, play with structures and make it uniquely their own. Most often, the texts used in modeling have been previously presented to the students. They have been read and appreciated, perhaps even studied. The teacher models how to make connections as a writer to structure, word choice and craft. In Wondrous Words, Katie Wood Ray describes how she might use Cynthia Rylant’s book When the Relatives Come (1985) to show children all that she appreciates as a writer. Structure She writes it so that it makes a circle (leaving Virginia, returning to Virginia). Ways with Words She uses commas a lot. She puts periods at the ends of words that aren’t sentences (Missing them.). She uses “funny” words together like hugging time. She uses dashes. She uses the same words a lot (hugging, breathing, etc.). Author study involves going beyond one book, to look at a body of author work but the noticing stays the same. A study of Robert Munsch might reveal his love of humor and of repetition, among other things. I’ve been think about how this would work with older readers. Recently I have pretty much fallen in love with Billy Collin’s poetry. There is very little that he writes that I don’t like. Keene and Zimmerman used a poem that was new to me to introduce a chapter in the latest revision of Mosaic of Thought. The poem, ‘Books’, spoke so directly to me that I had to stop reading and find a copy I could respond to. Structure He doesn’t use rhyme in his poetry. He uses lines and stanzas of different lengths. Ways with Words He uses lots of word that lead to sensory imagery (I can hear, I picture, I watch). He uses commas at the ends of some lines, but he also uses them inside lines. He uses long, long sentences in his poetry and he ends them with periods. He uses semi colons sometimes to connect these long sentences. He writes about things he is passionate about (he has written several poems about reading). He repeats words (walls within walls, paragraph to paragraph). He uses metaphors ( the line of words becomes a trail of crumbs, gigantic chord of language). He uses really interesting words (evacuated, murmured, saturates). Teachers can show students how their own writing is influenced by the mentor authors, those places where they stand on the shoulders of those they admire. Combining author and craft study allows children to learn language through an apprentice relationship with a body of work. Suggested Resources for Author Study: Wondrous Words The Big Book of Picture Book Katie Wood Ray Authors & Illustrators James Preller About the Authors Katie Wood Ray Lisa Cleaveland    http://www.webenglishteacher.com/grimes.htmlhttp://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=906../Literacy/Welcome.html