Journey to the Center of a Story

As part of our Geology unit I read aloud Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. I had never read the book before but had seen film adaptations and heard all the hype about Jules Verne being the "father of science fiction" and thus expected a good read. Ugh. We hated this book. It was a chore to finish (the kids didn't even want to) but I was determined to read every word for the sake of doing it. Painful. Mostly we detested the characters (one insane and irritable, one hysterical and whiny, and one so calm and collect as to not be human). What must have seemed adventurous to 19th century readers was seriously lacking to us, and we didn't care for the writing style and overuse of the same big, descriptive words again and again.

After finishing the book we watched two films of the same title, and then we compared them to each other and to the original book. The kids liked both film versions better, and not because they were movies. My kids are addicted readers and love a good book; changes made in plots and characters and even settings in the films made for much better stories. It was interesting that normally we are a family that appreciates original books to film adaptations (we've read and seen many) but in this case it was the complete opposite.

Here are our Venn diagrams for comparing/contrasting. The kids also made charts explaining what they did and didn't like about each version.

After all the reading, watching, and comparing each child wrote their own "Journey to the Center of..." story. We had "Journey to the Center of Mount Everest" and "Journey to the Center of Mount Olympus" and "Journey to the Center of the Moon."

The kids also made postcards of their favorite scene in whichever book/movie version they liked best. The front was was a hand-drawn and colored picture with the phrase "Wish you were here." The back was addressed and written to whomever they wanted regarding the scene.

We learned about Jules Verne with this episode of Biography and these clips of Science Channel. (You do have to give the guy props for his research and eye for the future, but he wasn't a good family man.) Then we used this simple template for a biographical notebooking page.

This is just one example of how to include Language Arts in a science-based unit.