A couple weeks ago in Language Arts we finished the book, The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. This book is about Petra Peña who is a 12 year old girl who dreams of carrying along stories through the future. Along with her family and a few hundred others, they leave Earth to continue the future of humans. But along the way something goes wrong! One part of the story that really stood out to me was her push to keep stories going.
“The stories we tell ourselves make us who we are.” – Donna Barbara Higuera, The Last Cuentista.
This quote symbolizes to me that without stories we would not know ourselves. Without the story telling means that I always wait until the last minute; I will not know how to improve the next time.
Another thing that we did in Language Arts this year that stood out to me was the Ideal World Project. In this project we were asked to think about the world you would love to live on. The planet I directly thought of was based on a book I read The Selection By Kiera Cass. This book is about a prince who comes of age to find a wife, about 36 eligible women are chosen to come and compete for the crown and the prince. The name of my planet is named Sovereignty, My planet would be basically like France in the 1700s (dirt roads, castles). I would have a monarchy as my government system. I believe that this is the easiest government system to run because the rules and rulers are known. The rulers can dictate what is wrong and what is right, what the laws are. All the landscapes would be filled to the brim with lavender, lavender scent, and the color. Even though there is a lot of lavender, all the houses are brown and gray rock with green and brown metal roofs. To add, all the castles are grand and have quite the flower gardens that are about an acre long. When common people travel around they travel with horses, but royals love to travel in white carriages with purple details.
After we finished our ideal world projects, we took it to the next level. We made books about our ideal world. These books were not like normal chapter books or normal picture books. These books had four pages in a row on the inside. The two center ones were cut out so you can see into a portal. The farthest two pages for the center had your stories on them. And for these books, we got to work with an amazing artist Peg Gignoux. She’s very talented and if I ever got an opportunity to work with her again, it would be amazing. One thing, very different about our ideal world books was that it was only made of Akua ink collages. My favorite moment was when I cut my portal on my book.
Language Arts class this year has been one of the most enjoyable and the classes where I learned most about myself. The last Cuentista put me out of my comfort zone, writing my ideal world, made me think about what I want, and making books told me that anything can become what you want it to.
