Writing Workshop: Modern Fantasy

Writing Workshop: Modern Fantasy is a Baby CTY course where students examine classic and modern fantasies for their writing. Its course code is MFAN. This course is offered at:

First Session Only: Brooklandville, La Jolla Sandy Spring and San Mateo.

Second Session Only: Alexandria

Both Sessions: Los Angeles (Windward) and New York

Course Description

From the CTY Summer Catalog:

Novelist Caroline Gordon once said, “A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.” Readers of modern fantasy are transported into magical worlds where people, places, and things are often not what they appear to be. Animals speak, toys come to life, and eccentric characters perform seemingly impossible feats. Worlds turn upside down, and the familiar becomes the unknown.

Using classic and contemporary texts, students learn to identify the traits that characterize modern fantasy. They venture into extraordinary places such as Narnia in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and witness battles between good and evil like those that take place in Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone. Students may also read Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart and experience what might take place if characters sprang from the pages of a book.

The course’s workshop approach affords many opportunities to engage in close reading, participate in informed discussion, and reflect upon what these fantastic worlds tell us about our own. In addition, students respond to modern fantasy texts in a variety of written assignments, including literary analysis and reflective writing. Armed with their newly developed understanding of the genre and an appreciation of its nuances, students then craft original pieces of fantasy.

Students must have completed grade: 4 or 5