Charlotte's Writes: Clare and the Seven Witches

For narrative writing this week, Room 8 kids were given a book cover. They were then told to work with a friend or on their own to write a narrative using the book cover. Here is Charlotte's one. See if you can find her orientation, problem and resolution.

Clare and the Seven Witches

Once there were seven witches. They lived in a small cottage far away in the jungle. The witches were mean witches, but they were nice to each other because they all knew they had to stick together or die in the terrible jungle.

One day, a little girl passed their cottage. Her name was Clare. In the window Clare saw a pizza and she felt really hungry, so she went into the house to take a bite. Clare didn't know that the witches were hiding in the little cottage. They were hiding up on the roof. When they saw her take a bite of the pizza, they jumped down the chimney behind her. They reached out and grabbed her. "Oh no," she said. "It's a trap."

The next day she woke up in a cage. Then she saw one of the wicked witches and the witch said, "ha ha, you have to do our cleaning for the rest of your life." "Oh no," said Clare. "I don't want to be here the rest of my life."

Clare had to wash the dishes, the floor, the walls and everything else in the house. It was hard work. Two days later she was still cleaning without a break. She was so hungry and tired of all the world. She started to think of a plan for running away. She said to herself, "I am going to try to get away tomorrow." So all night she washed, did the dishes and cleaned until it was almost the morning. Then she checked to see if the witches were still asleep. They were!

Her first job was to find the key to their bedroom so that she could lock them in and then to find the front door key. She looked in the wardrobe and found a marvelous gold key. It said "bedroom" on it. She kept it in her hand and very silently she looked in the bookcase to find the other key. At the end of the shelf was a hollow book shaped like a diamond. Inside she found a very clean silver key that said "front door."

Quietly she went to the witches bedroom and locked the door. Then she went to the front door, which was locked. She got the silver key and unlocked the front door. She crept through the door silently, locked it again and then raced away, chucking the key into the bushes on her way. She sprinted all the way home and into her own house. When she got there, she thought, "well I guess I learned my lesson about stealing." After that, she lived safe and happy in her house, never doing the dishes again.