Bookmarks: A Companion Text for Growing Up

Bookmarks is a series of companion textbooks that provides teachers with creative exercises and activities to supplement the teaching of a novel. Bookmarks are integrated reading-writing skills texts that address each of the seven intelligences identified by Howard Gardner: there are tasks/activities for the linguistically, logically-mathematical, kinesthetically, spatially, musically, interpersonally, and intrapersonally intelligent students. A Companion Text for Growing Up accompanies journalist Russell Baker's Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography. Growing Up (published by New American Library) traces Baker's coming of age during the 1930s and 1940s. Baker's memoir draws the reader into America between the world wars and describes the struggles of family, adolescence, and hardship that accompanied his journey to adulthood. Each of the six units in the companion texts begins with a preview of the reading and free-writing topics, followed by exercises that improve comprehension and vocabulary building. Students use response journals so as to think about their personal connection with the novel. The "Beyond the Novel" section in each textbook introduces factual background information from which students learn about history and other interesting material mentioned in the novels.