Mockingbird

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

Activity: “The Wonderful World of Color(s)”

In this activity, students exchange and color in black-and-white compositions to explore color’s relationship to emotion and empathy.

The novel tracks how Caitlin, a promising artist, comes to engage a world of color. In the beginning of the novel, she enjoys sketching things but only with her charcoal pencil. She avoids colors because they are confusing. In the end, however, she embraces colors and prepares to draw with crayons—a change that marks her broader emotional evolution.

• Create a picture using only black and white. Chose a subject in nature or maybe a city neighborhood with people and buildings. Make the sketch as careful and as detailed as you can, but do not use colors. Pretend for a moment you are Caitlin and look at the drawing you have completed. How would you describe that world of black and white? What does it share with a viewer? What does it lack?
• As a class, collect the sketches and then distribute them so that everyone ends up with someone else’s drawing. Study the sketch you’ve ended up with and decide where colors go and which colors go where.