Reading a piece of writing that has no voice is like vacationing in your backyard—it's not quite the exciting excursion you were expecting. On the other hand, when you read text infused with the writer's voice, the words on the page melt away; suddenly you are there, in the writer's world, listening as a real person talks, explains, cajoles, admonishes, encourages, informs, entertains you. 

Voice is vital. However, unlike teaching, say, punctuation, teaching voice can be a much more complex process. As Schrecengost notes in the introduction, "Because voice is not so much something a writer does as it is an expression of who he is, voice, per se, cannot be taught. Voice is."

So what's a teacher to do? Discovery activities, says Schrecengost. She offers twenty-four well-thought-out and inspring activities. She divides these into sections built around a central idea.

Section One is titled "Voice in Other's Writing.  Schrecengost notes that students first need to be able to identify voice the writing of others. This section contains five discovery activities that allow students to do just that. The activities range from "Author's Voice" to "Voice in Picture Books." Each activity is divided into "Teacher Discovery," "Students Discovery," and "Classroom Discovery."

Section Two is titled, "Personal Writing Voice," Section Three concerns "Voices for Different Audiences and Genres," and Section Four deals with "Personalizing Write-on-Demand to Express Voice."

The activities mentioned above, which comprise the first four sections, are set up in the same manner. Schrenengost begins with a brief introduction then moves into "Teacher Discovery." These are designed to allow you to explore your own writing voice.  The author then provides "Student Discovery Activities." As the name implies, here the students gain practice in finding and using their own voices. Schrenengost explains that these "are not meant to be rigid 'cookbook recipes,' but are rather a collection of choices" from which you may choose. "Classroom Discovery," activities include suggested

In Section Five, Schrenengost offers twelve classroom-tested strategies for enriching student's vocabularies. 

Voice Whizadry is a wonderful source of practical and powerful ideas for teaching voice. When we used the activities in an eighth-grade classroom, we found them to be extremely well-developed and interesting to the students. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by the Education Oasis Staff