From the Mouths of Monsters

It’s a Real Monster.

Legendary Creatures• Familiar faces:– griffins– dragons– unicorns– fairies– Greek monsters – trolls and ogres– creatures of urban

legend

– Which other legendary creatures are popular in our culture?

Across the Pacific pond…Yōkai ( 妖怪 ) are

legendary creatures from Japan. They are a strange collection of mischievous and sometimes cruel spirits and monsters.

- Many of them are humanoid, with animal features.

- Some are inanimate objects brought to life

Above: Kappa

Which should we look into?

• On your COWS, visit www.obakemono.com• Choose two youkai to research and write

about.

di-a-logue (a real monster)-Dialogue is conversation

between two or more characters as a feature of a book, play, or movie.

“Writing dialogue should become a habit!” the teacher cried, flailing her arms. “For serious, you guys!”

- If you aren’t writing a play, you need to use the following:

- quotation marks- capitalization- taking turns

Write it Out!• The comic to the right

is full of dialogue, but it’s trapped in speech bubbles. How would we write this out in a story?

• Words instead of “said”: cried, shouted, hollered, grumbled, groaned, whimpered, sang, called, whined, murmured.

Left to right: Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, Smiley.

“Why is Smiley wearing a cow suit?” asked Fone Bone.

“I’m not Smiley!” shouted Smiley. “I’m a real cow!”

“My world is crumbling around me,” grumbled Phoney.

“Moo!” hollered Smiley.

• On pg. ______ of your Writer’s Notebook, write a conversation between your two monsters. This should be an exchange of at least 10 parts ( if your monsters take turns talking, they should each talk 5 times!)

• Here’s your prompt: – What would your two legendary creatures talk

about if they had to sit next to each other at lunch? Write most of your response as dialogue.

Get Creative.

The Lady and the Fox1.“Geeze-Louise,” grumbled Futakuchi-onna. “Some

people have no table manners!”2.“What do you mean?” asked Kitsune.3.“I mean, you’re an animal and you’re sitting at the

table.”4.“Look, I’m one-hundred years old,” said Kitsune.

“Soon I might turn into a human!” 5.“Well, until then, you’re being rude.”6.“You want to talk about rude?” grumbled the fox

spirit. “At least I eat with my paws and not my hair.”

7.“Yuck. I’m not hungry anymore.” Futakuchi stood up, but her second mouth whimpered. Her tummy grumbled.

8. Kitsune felt a little bad. “Are you sure? You can have some of my carrot sticks.”

9. “Thank you.” Futakuchi sat back down. 10. Kitsune smiled. “You’re welcome.”