Brave Writer

• What is Brave Writer?
• Getting Started
• The Brave Writer Program

The Boomerang

Target audience:

• 7th to 9th grades (ages 12—advanced, 13-15)
• Transition to Ownership stage of growth
  (Chapter 14 in The Writer’s Jungle).

It takes approximately 24 hours to activate your year long subscription or your monthly subscription to the Boomerang. You will hear from us via email with your login credentials once we’ve created your account.

What is the Boomerang?

The Boomerang is a monthly digital downloadable product that features copywork and dictation passages from a specific read aloud novel. You may download a sample issue to view (and use!) by clicking on the “Download a Sample” button on the right.

It is the indispensable tool for Brave Writer parents who want to teach language arts in a natural, literature-bathed context, using copywork and dictation. It is a language arts resource that equips you, the homeschooling parent, to fulfill your best intentions related to:

• Spelling
• Punctuation
• Grammar
• Literary elements
• Quality living literature
• Literary analysis

The practices of copywork and dictation teach your children the fundamentals of written communication. These practices naturally facilitate the development of accurate mechanics in the context of quality literature (the best words, in the best style, accurately edited).

The Skinny

• Each month, the Boomerang features one classic novel to be read aloud by the student.

• Each week, it features a selected passage from that novel. The passages are accompanied by notes that detail spelling, punctuation, grammar and literary style elements found in the passage. These notes are designed to make it easy to pre-teach the passage (no advanced preparation necessary).

• Each issue also provides Think Piece Questions that provoke deeper investigation of the novel’s themes, plot and characters. These questions are meant for both written and oral responses to provide students with the beginning of thoughtful literary analysis.

• Each issue, students are reminded to keep a journal of favorite quotes from the novel. We call these Golden Lines. These are to be accompanied by thoughtful comments by the student.

The Boomerang introduces literary analysis through the practice of guided freewriting. Before we expect kids this age to marry formats to insight, we give them a chance to explore a variety of aspects of each novel in writing without the pressure of essay writing. If you want to give your students a chance to produce a specific writing product in response to some of our selected novels, we offer literary analysis classes.

You may subscribe to this school year’s Boomerang (new issues published on the 1st of each month), or buy them all at once (Complete Year Subscription for a reduced price) or you might like to buy them ala carte: Already Published Issues.

Scroll to the bottom of this page for a special discount in the month of June 2011!

Literary Analysis

Our literary analysis classes are designed for advanced 7th graders and 8th—10th graders. These classes will use the questions in the Boomerang to promote literary investigation, and the final weeks of class will be devoted to a creative writing response paper that will make use of the discussion material. The wonder of these literary analysis courses is that they offer a perfect bridge between elementary writing (which is much more free form and experience based) and high school writing (which is structured and governed by academic formats). The literary analysis classes will be guided by two of our instructors (Becky Parker and Susanne Barrett) and will offer your kids a safe environment to develop their insights while exploring how to convey them in writing appropriate to their ages.

The books slated (so far) for literary analysis classes are:

• The Hobbit
• Little Women
• Anne of Green Gables
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Don’t miss this chance to gradually introduce your junior high/early high school student (We’ll happily take 10th graders too, if they need to start at a slower pace than high school literary analysis) to the world of literature and writing. There’s nothing like it elsewhere. The class schedule will be posted soon!

How do I use the Boomerang?

You and your child will read the passage out loud to hear the musicality of the language, to notice the correct use of apostrophes or semi-colons, to note new vocabulary and tricky spellings, to pay attention to the grammatical structure or the special dialog punctuation. The Arrow supplies you with notes to help you notice what you might overlook in the passage. The Arrow helps you identify why the writing works and is enjoyable to read, as well as highlighting excellent uses of punctuation or alliteration or description.

After you’ve enjoyed the passage together, your child will either copy it into a copy book attempting to reproduce it exactly, paying close attention to all of the spelling and mechanical demands of the passage (copywork), or you will read the passage to your child and he or she will write it out onto a sheet of paper while listening to you, attempting to remember how to punctuate and spell the passage correctly (dictation). Copywork/dictation done about once a week over several years does more to increase your child’s ability to punctuate and spell correctly than any other practice I’ve ever run across.

The French swear by it and use dictation from Kindergarten all the way through lyceé (high school). I had to take dictation in college when I attended a French university! One other benefit to a steady diet of copywork and dictation is that eventually your kids will be able to take clear notes during lectures in high school and/or college. They will have developed an ear for really listening to the words and writing them quickly as well as accurately. This skill (writing accurately and quickly) is especially valuable in timed essay writing—college admissions tests as well as in-class essay exams.

Consistent copywork/dictation practice allows you, the home educator, to use quality literature to cover the aspects of writing that you care most about without the tedium of workbook sentences isolated from the context of real writing.

How it Works

The Boomerang is a digital product only. We post each month’s issue in a private folder for subscribers. When you sign up, you are granted access to the private folder where the Boomerang is housed. You may then open the folder, download the current issue and print it. You have a month to access and retrieve your issue of the Boomerang. It does not exist in hard copy format.

You can order the ten-issue, year-long subscription to the Boomerang for a reduced price (issues cost $7.90 rather than $9.95; though in June, you may purchase the entire year for $69.00). When you do, you have access to all the issues as they are posted throughout the year in that special online folder. What that means for you is that you can come back to the folder in January and re-download September’s issue if you’ve accidentally deleted the file off your computer. A wonderful bonus!

Every subscription to the Boomerang includes a Guide that teaches you how to execute copywork and dictation practice, as well as how to modify dictation based on the age and stage of your student. Download a sample Boomerang by clicking on the “Download a sample PDF” button in the upper righthand portion of this page.

Be sure to consider pairing The Writer’s Jungle with the Boomerang in our Platinum Package for a complete year’s worth of writing instruction. You won’t need anything else AND these two together will cover a range of ages and levels.

2011 - 2012 Boomerang Book List

(This new list is available for whole-year purchase now, in June, while the monthly subscription will be available at the end of July. All Writer’s Jungle Platinum orders in June will be subscribed to this new list with the release of the first issue on August 1, 2011.)

Caveat: Please remember that you’re the parent. If you have doubts about the content of a particular book, please check the reviews of the novel or read it for yourself first. You may order individual issues once that issue has been published. We’ll move it the following month to the “already published issues” where you can purchase a single issue. We don’t substitute issues when you order a year long subscription.

The ISBN numbers are only guidelines for locating the book. You are free to use a different edition for your homeschool.

August: The Hobbit; J.R.R. Tolkien
(ISBN-13: 978-0618260300)

The prequel to the famous Lord of the Rings series.

September: First Boy; Gary Schmidt
(ISBN-13: 978-0805078596)

The author tells a contemporary story about a parentless boy, rooted in the New Hampshire countryside, blending political farce with this boy’s search for “home.”

October: Anne of Green Gables; L.M. Montgomery
(ISBN-13: 978-0812979039)

Anne is one of the endearing heroine’s of youth fiction due to her overly active imagination and her personal resourcefulness.

November: Much Ado about Anne; Heather Vogel Frederick
(ISBN-13: 978-1416982692)

The story of a book club that reads the books by Lucy Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables).

December: Robin Hood; Howard Pyle
(ISBN-13: 978-1402712579)

This classic story is about the renegade Robin Hood and his merry band as they steal from the rich and give to the poor.

January: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Simon Armitage
(ISBN-13: 978-0393334159)

A member of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, Sir Gawain goes on an epic adventure.

February: Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry; Mildred D. Taylor
(ISBN-13: 978-0142401125)

The story of one African American family, fighting to stay together and strong in the face of brutal racist attacks, illness, poverty, and betrayal in the Deep South of the 1930s. (Amazon.com Review)

March: Little Women; Louisa May Alcott
(ISBN-13: 978-1613820513)

The classic American tale of four daughters as they navigate the transition from being a family during the Civil War, to their own young adulthood.

April: The Princess Bride; William Goldman
(ISBN-13: 978-0156035217)

A tale known for its use of irony as much as its high jinx among the fantastical characters. This book has it all, and the classic film is just as delightful.

May: The Lightening Thief; Rich Riordan
(ISBN-13: 978-1423134947)

A modern fantasy tale filled with Greek mythology colliding with modern life. Percy Jackson is a much loved protagonist!

How to Purchase the Boomerang

The Boomerang can be purchased as a monthly automatic payment starting at the end of July. Sign up using the Paypal button for subscribers on the upper right side of this page. Each individual issue is $9.95.

You may also purchase all ten issues at once for a reduced price: $79.00 for all ten issues. However, if you are purchasing the Boomerang in June, keep reading for a one time offer:

Use the payment button on the upper righthand side of this webpage to purchase your year long subscription through Paypal.

Or, send a check (made out to Brave Writer LLC) postmarked before June 30 to the following address:

Brave Writer LLC
7723 Tyler’s Place Blvd. Ste. 165
West Chester, OH 45069

Be sure to state that you want the Boomerang and include both an email address and phone number.

Refund Policy

The discounted, year long price is a non-refundable subscription. If you aren’t sure whether or not the Boomerang is for you, sign up for the monthly subscription at the end of July so that you can cancel if you choose to or download the sample issue so that you may try it out first.

The Brave Writer Program