Exploring Verse Novels in the Classroom

The following in an excerpt from an article about Verse Novels that I wrote for Caroline By Line

Novels in verse have become very popular with teens over the past few years and are a great way to engage students, including the sometimes hard to reach struggling reader. 

• Each poem encapsulates a complete concept so a student doesn’t have to struggle through an entire chapter before thinking about the main idea. 
• Sentences tend to be spare, rather than complex. 
• Punctuation encourages frequent pauses. 
• The amount of white space on the page is much less daunting than a dense text. 

Even so, these stories don’t come across as “easy readers.” Literary devices such as simile, metaphor, and personification abound. SBA tests frequently explore literary devices, yet these concepts and definitions are often abstract to students. They need numerous examples to recognize them, and verse novels often provide more examples of literary devices per page than other genres. 

To read the rest of the article visit Caroline's blog at Caroline By Line