The Fruit Bowl Project: Fifty Ways to Tell a Story

by Sarah Durkee

Call it six degrees of separation. The kids in 8th Grade Writer’s Workshop are awestruck when their teacher announces that through her husband’s cousin, she’s met rock superstar Nick Thompson and has invited him to their class. He’s come to talk about writing and he’s even cooler than they imagined. Nick, known for his music as well as his lyrics, tells the kids his A song is just a bowl of fruit–one must figure out how to paint it. Words are to a writer what paint is to a painter. How many ways can one arrange the fruit? An infinite number. There’s style, voice, genre, and much more to consider. Nick gives the kids two weeks to complete the assignment using seven seemingly ordinary elements. Each student must tell an interesting story, reflecting his or her style. And so The Fruit Bowl Project begins. Rap, poetry, monologue, screenplay, haiku, fairy tale–and more.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Middle Grade, Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Young Adult, School Stories

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Sarah Durkee has had success as a writer, lyricist, comedy writer, scriptwriter and poet. Currently, her songs, scripts and poetry are featured on the PBS reading show Between the Lions, as well as on Dora the Explorer, Arthur, and others. Her writing for grown-ups includes The Book of Sequels, a collection of literary parodies co-authored with fellow National Lampoon alumni Chris Cerf, Henry Beard, and Sean Kelly. She and her husband live in New York City and have two kids.

Reviews

[Emilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was my favorite book in middle school. i thought it was the most clever thing ever written. unfortunately, i lost my copy of it, and it went out of print before i could buy another one. this christmas my mother surprised me with a copy she found online and i finally got around to rereading it this week. honestly, i was relieved to find that it held up after all these years! reading this book was a bit like hearing a song you used to be obsessed with when you were younger and finding that you remembered all the lyrics. sure, it's a little optimistic to assume that 8th-graders could write this well, this creatively, but i'll give them the benefit of the doubt. it's funny, only a tiny bit trite, honest, and entertaining. what more could you want from a middle-grade book?

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A clever premise, but I could have done with several fewer examples and a bit more story. The first part of the story introduced us to some of the students and their stories but it was more or less all forgotten in the "fruit bowl" section of the book. As a middle school teacher myself, however, I would be astounded if even one of my students could write as well as the eighth graders that are supposedly writing the selections. The vocabulary and use of figurative language and nuance is well beyond the capabilities of most 13 year olds I know. Still, the book was worth reading if just to show how many different ways the same story can be told.

[Neel Daswani · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about school.THe first day of school was really terrible because the teacher had a lot of goof talkers. But the person that troubled the most was this girl named Katie. THe teacher did not know what punishment to give.So the teacher got an idea to calm them down. The teacher's idea was to tell her students that The famous Nick Thompson was her husband.


After several days the students were so exited that they didn't belive that Nick was the teacher's husband. So the teacher asked him if Nick could come to their school. The next day the famous Nick Thompsan came to school. The students couldn't belive their eyes. They promised to the teacher that they will behave well the next few days. But how long would it last?

Septembre 26 2014

Aftery reading 30 more pages a lot of of cool things happend.The behaivior got from good to bad because Nick Thompson made a kind of contest that would make people challenge there selves. The contest was about telling someone a joke and making them laugh so hard that milk would come out. So Katie the pro joker made a joke that made Nick Thompson laugh so hard that milk came out of his nose. Then the principal scram at him and he had to leave.

My 2 favorite parts of this are is one when Nick changed the behaivior because of a stupid contest. An example would when he challenged people to maake some kind of joke and they if they someone else or Nick milk fall of their nose. My second favorite part was when Katie the pro said the joke and made Nick Thompson the famous guy milk fall out of his nose. Then when Katie did that, people called her the queen.

October 9 2014

A lot of exciting things have happened since I read The Fruit Bowl Project.
The teacher gave everyone a punishment. The punishment was to make a rap about jokes. At first first students thought it would be fun, but when Katie presented her rap, she got humilliated.The rap was based on the joke Katie said to Nick Thompsen which made milk come out of their nose. After the last presentation the teacher was about to sign them another rap. But Katie and Jason appoligise to the teacher. Then the whole class did the same and the teacher didn't assign them home work.

What I liked about the past 50 pages was when the teacher assigned them a rap and everyone thoght it was fun. But after Katie's presentaion everyone knew how terrifying it was. I also think that the teacher wanted some revenge so that is why she assigned them a rap. Katie was the only one who did it in the first day but it didn't turn out well. It took Katie five secondes to realize that her friend's were making fun of her. Overall this book was great and fun to read.

[Madison Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just finished reading The Fruit Bowl Project by Sarah Durkee. Sarah is also a songwriter, television lyricist and a screenwriter.

This book is about an eighth grade teacher who starts off the new year with telling her students that her cousin’s husband is the famous Nick Thompson because her students were very talkative. She told them that if they were good that she would bring him to class. Her students were better than ever. Comes to find out she brought him to class to tell the students how important writing is but instead he told them a little secret. Nick tells the students “ A song is just like a bowl of fruit-- one must figure out how to paint it. Words are to a writer what paint is to a painter.” NIck tells the students that they have to make a rap, a poem, monologue, a screenplay, a fairy tale or a newspaper reflecting on what their style is.

I think Sarah wrote this book to show any and everybody that they have their own ways of doing things, or that everyone is different. The point of this book is to entertain the maybe anyone in middle school, to show some ideas of what they could do while in school.

I actually liked this book a lot. it was very interesting throughout the whole book! I like how at the halfway mark is shows the students projects. Some of them are actually really creative.

I would recommend this book to anyone. When I first saw it it was just sitting on the bookshelf and i liked the name of it so i picked it up and started reading! You don't really have to know anything before you start to read this book.

[Natalie Harvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A super-famous rockstar visits an eighth grade Writer's Workshop class and delivers an assignment later to be known as the Fruit Bowl Project. Each student will write a piece about the same basic facts that will make up a story - boy drops pencil, bumps girl, girl gets mad. boy tells joke to friend, friend spews milk out the nose. While the premise of the assignment is creative and sounds like something I'd love to try in an eighth grade English class myself, reading about it in this book is less exciting than I had hoped. There really is no story besides the one that the kids are writing - I didn't get to know them that deeply, not that I was all that interested to. And the majority of the book consists of the writing pieces that the students created. Nearly 50 versions of the same story. While they were rather creative (sonnets, limericks, Broadway musicals, letters, news reports, etc.), it felt simply like a writing exercise by the author. I would probably only recommend this book to middle school students who are interested in creative writing as it provides many examples. Not sure who else would like it, since I found myself skipping some of the stories.

[Jayda Johnson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was disappointing. When I read the synopsis, I envisioned a story about young kids creating original pieces of literature and getting those pieces published. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I felt as if I was too old to be reading this book. Surely it is children's literature, but as I read I continued to set it aside to donate. Every minute I read out of this novel, I lost one IQ point. Seriously, it was that young.
Also, I disliked the point of view from which it was written. I could hardly remember all of the different characters and their stories because the point of view changed after about two paragraphs. The actual "Fruit Bowl Project" took up about two-thirds of the book itself. Can you understand my frustration?
The only relevant sections of the entire novel were the very beginning (about the first eighteen pages) and the end (from page forty-seven to the very end). Everything in between is irrelevant and tiresome. I would give it to my little sister to read, but she would hate it too. All in all, I would not recommend this book to anyone, except maybe fourth graders who are just starting to read chapter books (because they don't have high standards yet).

[Carmine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mrs. Vallis teaches 8th grade creative writing, a young teacher with lots of enthusiasm who just happens to be cousin-in-law of the hottest rock star around (think Steven Tyler of Aerosmith or Mick Jagger). He agrees to come visit her class to talk about writing. He uses a bowl of fruit as analogy about style and that launches a creative writing project so compelling that kids who weren't even in that class end up contributing. A fun way to talk about style and point of view with budding writers. a quick read- the "story" is really only 46 pages long, the rest of the book is how 50 different 8th graders respond to the fruit bowl assignment. My favorites include the story from the "preschooler" perspective, the "Broadway Musical" version and, most hysterical, the story from the perspective of a chicken nugget.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story was recommended to me, and I am so glad I took the advice to read it! The story is about an eighth grade class who gets a visit from a classic rock star. Said rock star doesn't talk to them about being a rock star, but the importance of writing, and tasks them with "The Fruit Bowl Project". The students have to write a story about a series of established facts. The variable is how it is written - poetry, narrative, screenplay, lyric, IM/text speak, etc. 50 different versions were fun to read. It was uniquely written, with the reader learning a bit about the students before you read their inspired works. I enjoyed it, and it has given me the idea to see if I could do a modified version of this in my own classroom.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Fruit Bowl Project (NOT The Fruits Basket Project as I keep calling it in my head) doesn’t seem to have a lot of legs outside of the classroom. It’s a fine quick little read, but the first half of the book that’s set-up doesn’t really have that much connection to the meat of the premise, or the variations on a theme. It’s also fairly tedious to read through all the different versions of the story when they’re not terribly inventive (the crazy genres and the math versions worked better for me here than interminable POVs.) Read for the 48 Hour Book Challenge.

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty cool idea. I wish we had gotten to know the kids better before she put the Fruit Bowl Project compilation in. I felt like I was just getting to know the main characters and then we left them behind.

On a Writing Teacher's note: Awesome for teaching point of view, voice, style, and just about everything else. Just the fact that the teacher called her class Writing Workshop made me love this book from the get go!

[Noelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ha, ha, ha! 'do not feel sorry for nugget! Nugget have no brain! Nugget have no nervous system! Nugget inanamate object! Anomynous just think it fun to put Chicken nugget in book!' Ah... I loved that part. Ishowed it to my friends. We are still joking about it. I think Cassie wrote it. I compared the handwriting/font.

[Kim Maddin · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great concept. At first I thought it was a little slow, but you had to be introduced to all the characters and the reason for the project. When you get to read all the kids stories, it is amazing! The author found a way for you to get to kow each character through the story they have to write.

[Melanie Hetrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! I wish middle schoolers were really this creative; and maybe, somewhere in this world, they are. The book is a bit unrealistic. The way the rock star and teacher talk, and sometimes the students, is a bit kitschy for middle school. But the story told at the end, in so many different ways, is fabulous!

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really interesting way to give the kids a look at multiple genres representing different aspects of the same topic. I started reading it aloud and they were really into it. There is a small bit of crude humor at the end that is not appropriate for school, but the kids would really enjoy.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel was an interesting idea....writing from different points of view. The thought that went into the text and type of writing was really interesting to me. I liked the story line of the 8th graders preparing themselves within their writing workshop.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

great for L.A. teachers who are studying writing genres.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really interesting look at what a simple story would look like when told from a variety of viewpoints and genres. Great for a middle school English/writing class - or kids interested in writing.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The concept for this book is good. All the students in this class have the same characters and simple plot, but told from different points of view. I was just ok.

[Pineapple Girl]

Della is currently reading this and I was reading parts of it while she was doing math homework in advisory on Fridady. What I did read was hilarous!!

[Sheridan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the structure of this novel. There are several stories in one, and the way they are introduced is adorable! (more in-depth review coming soon!)

[Cath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever look at writing. Read it twice! Great for middle school writers.

[Laurie Williams · Rating 1 out of 5]

The idea of this book is better than the actual book. I was quite disappointed, especially the first section.

[Martie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok. I grew a bit bored reading the 50 varieties of the same story, but it is a creative book idea.

[Ms. Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice book about how to be inspired to write and writing from multiple genres and perspectives. Probably better fro middle school students.

[Jen]

A quirky story about writing with a collection of student writing in the end half. Quick read and funny!

[Saif · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was also ok