Monday, April 06, 2009

Discussion questions

The American Indians In Children's Literature blog has a revised discussion guide based on the official discussion guide for Gerald McDermott's Arrow to the Sun. The wholesale copying for purposes of dissection and critique at the blog is unproblematic. Here's what interests me:

After Reading Activities

... Stage a dramatic presentation of Arrow to the Sun. Choose two to three students to be narrators. Rewrite the text for beginner readers or help them memorize their parts of the text. Some students can be actors and the rest can play instruments and provide other sound effects and music. Rehearse the production and present it to other classes and parents.
So: (1) Do teachers and schools have a license from Scholastic to create and publicly perform derivative works of Arrow to the Sun? What if they rewrote the text in light of the blog's critique: would that be within the scope of any such license? (2) Do you think that Scholastic's contract with McDermott allowing audiovisual adaptations extends to Scholastic's invitation here? (3) What sort of contract language would you draft to cover the situation if you were Scholastic?

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