The Boy on the Wooden Crate Slide Doc

For my slidedoc, I wanted to create a product I could use in my classroom next year.  The Boy on the Wooden Crate is a book on next year's Virginia Readers' Choice book list.  Do you feel the gray font color choice is too dark? I wanted to keep the colors dull on purpose so the yellow star would pop, since it's a central story telling element of my design.  In my title, I chose the blue font because it was opposite the yellow star on the color wheel.  I tied the color of my graph with my title.   I am not sure how to include my citations on my doc.  Do they have to appear on the slide doc itself or can we attach a second sheet with our resources? If it has to be on this doc, can I place them as footnotes on the bottom?  Any feedback on my graphic, reflection, or citations would be greatly appreciated! I am a born and bread MLA girl, and this is my first time having to use APA.  I not sure if I am creating my citations correctly.

Reflection

For my slidedoc, I created a graphic I could share with my students advertising a book from the 2015 Virginia Reader’s Choice book list.  I used restraint by only including two photographs to tell the story: the yellow Star of David and a black white photograph of a barbed wire fence.  In combination, viewers should know this will be a holocaust story while still preserving enough white space to avoid being cluttered (Reynolds, 2014, p. 15).  I also attempted to create harmony in my color choices. The gray background and color scheme were storytelling choices; they represent the mood and tone of the novel. My blue title complements the yellow star; the two colors are opposite of each other on the color wheel (Reynolds, 2014, p.73).  Since I used a photograph for my background, I placed my text inside solid boxes to increase legibility (Reynolds, 2014, p. 50).

My font choices for my title and subtitle are very effective.  I wanted to call attention to my title, so I used a serif font, American Typewriter.  This title is also similar to the type of font that might have actually appeared on Schindler’s List, so I was able to tie in this detail to help me tell the story.  I used the same font for my subtitle and for my body text.  I used Futura, which is a sans serif font. Using this helps my reader more easily read my text.  The font color matches the gray in the background photograph.  In my graph, I used the same blue in my title, which draws the reader’s eye, but I also wanted to emphasize the author’s remarkable survival by making a direct connection between the data and the title.

The photos of the yellow star and barbed wire fence are a little cliche.  Holocaust literature is very prevalent among middle school libraries, and I am not sure there is enough here to show how this particular story is different from the others.  I didn’t have permission to use the book cover or photographs of the author, so my Creative Commons photos are a little broad where I would prefer to be more specific.  To improve this, I could use other photos that relate to the plot, such as a type written list, a crate, or even boxcars.

Citations

Naniantero (Photographer). Flickr Creative Commons (7 August 2010). Stutthof Concentration Camp [Web Photo]. CC BY-NC 2.0 (unchanged).

Thirty Six Questions About the Holocaust. (1997). Retrieved June 13, 2015.

Ullrich, Daniel (Photographer). Wikimedia Commons (8 February 2015). Judenstern JMW [Web Photo]. CC-by-sa-2.0-de (unchanged).