Customer Reviews

Blending Genre, Altering Style : Writing Multigenre Papers

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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This latest book by Romano provides yet another way to incorporate writing into the classroom. He briefly touched upon the mulit-genre paper in his Writing with Passion book, but fully expands the ideas in this book. This book is helpful for those who have not used the mulit-genre paper. (Sharon Draper's Tears of a Tiger is a great example of a multi-genre book.) Included in the back of the book is a reference list of teachers who teach the multi-genre paper with ways to get in touch with those teachers. If you are looking for a way to get your students thinking while they're writing, get this book. You can't go wrong with the examples that are included or the many contacts provided.

This book gives many examples of an emerging style of writing, the blended genre book. Originally designed for classroom teachers, this book explores the concept of writing a collection of short pieces on a related theme or topic, and allowing the subject matter of each piece to determine the appropriate genre of presentation for the material. The book offers many examples of college level work that are appropriate for high school Students. The elementary and middle school examples are average or low-level responses that may or may not encourage your students to do their best work. I used this book successfully with my seniors last year on a final project that resulted from a preliminary research assignment as an alternative to a second major research paper for the year.

For authors that are interested in writing in this style, it explains the concept of the multigenre text and refers repeatedly to Michael Ondjatte's work "The Life and Times of Billy the Kid." If you can find this book, it is a great example of a Multigenre work.

The one area that is less than five star quality is the explanation given for the concept of "the repetend." Tom Romano's explanation of the repetend, or the unifying element that ties all of the separate genre pieces together, is slippery at best. Romano's explanation does not make this concept any clearer for the writer or the teacher.

I love this book and have decided to base my Masters Project on this concept. Tom Romano gives such clear and concise examples and information that this book is such an easy, but very imformative read. There are several whole multigenre papers that are printed in their original form in the book that I found very helpful in explaining what forms these papers might take.

This is an excellent introduction to multigenre papers, and Romano is kind of the multigenre guru, so it's a great source. This book is relatively short, it offers 4-5 excellent and varied examples of multigenre papers, it offers lots of genre ideas and strategies for practicing them, and it offers an overview of the multigenre philosophy. I'd say this is a must for anyone asking students to create multigenre projects, but it's a good book about writing even if you're not using it specifically for multigenre.

As a middle school teacher interested in assigning a multigenre writing project for the first time, I was told that Tom Romano's BLENDING GENRE, ALTERING STYLE was the go-to book for such writings. Overall, I wasn't disappointed. Romano provides explanations of various genres he teaches and examples of actual papers. Although I am pleased with the book, I wish it provided slightly more on two fronts:

1.) I hoped for more coverage of the many genres that could be used for such projects. Although Romano dedicated pages to the more-popular choices, he could have devoted a chapter to many other genres, even if he included a dozen or more and devoted only a paragraph to each one.

2.) The complete examples, while appreciated, are geared to high school and college-aged audiences. I hoped that the high school example might be suitable for middle school as an exemplar, but it examines race and the young author uses a frank tone on a tough topic. And while there is an example by a 7th grader, it looks and reads a bit "young" as it is handwritten and replete with drawings of dinosaurs (the common thread, in this case).

Still, I think Romano's text is worth purchasing as there are not many books on this topic and the whole idea has obvious merit. One highlight is the inclusion of advice from teachers who have already gone down this path. They share thoughts on how many genres, how much time, whether research should be an included component, and so forth. These asides are an excellent addition to the book.

I love the way this book redesigns the creative sense of writing. To think that a college paper can utilize 6-12 different genres to represent one wholistic them is brilliant!

The book arrived quickly after ordering and was in the condition listed. I was very pleased.