By: Mark Twain Madison, Savannah, and Payton “Bakers Bluejay Yarn” By: Mark Twain Madison, Savannah, and Payton

Mark Twain Mark Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Mark Twain is his pen name, his real name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. When he was 11, his father died. This forced him to find a job and support his family. In 1865, Twain published his first short story, called “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” In 1870, he married and settled in Hartford, Connecticut. There he wrote “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Mark Twain was born in 1835 and died in 1910.

Vocabulary Commonplace: ordinary, not original or interesting. Ex: Waffle House is a commonplace in Fairhope. Principal: A basic law, truth or belief. Ex: In life you have to follow certain principals to avoid going to jail. Signify: To represent or mean, to indicate. Ex: A stop sign signifies the driver to stop. Gratification: The condition of being pleased or satisfied. Ex: You could see his gratification after he received his reward. Absurdity: Something that is ridiculous, A piece of nonsense. Ex: In most teenagers lives, homework tends to be an absurdity.

Theme The theme of the story is to be aware of your surrounding because it can determine the situation that your faced with. Before you start something, you need to take a step back and observe everything that your going to be dealing with. If not you may be stuck in situations where you misunderstand why something is happening.

Elements of the story’s plot Characters: Jim Baker, the blue jay, and other blue jays. Setting: Woods and mountains of California in a log house. Theme: Dreams and reality. Basic Situation: The nuts aren’t filling up the hole. Internal Conflict: Whether or not the bluejay should keep filling up the hole. External Conflict: The bluejay can’t fill up the hole in the roof. Complications: The hole in the roof won’t fill up. Climax: When one bluejay figures out the nuts are falling in the house. Resolution: When the bird flies into the house and figures out why the nuts wouldn’t show. Protagonist: The bluejay. Antagonist: The house. Dynamic: The bluejay. Static: Jim Baker. Point of view: Third person omniscient.

Literary Elements Persona- A narrator or character created by an author to tell a story. The author’s personality is different from the personality of the persona. The persona is another way the author can talk in an alternate form or way by using outrageous, funny, or rude comments that they would never say themselves.

Dig Deeper Our insight in this story; before you begin a project you need to take time and observe your surroundings, and make sure everything is working properly, before you put all your time and effort into something you want to do well on. Our theory in this story; that Mark Twain had a problem where he didn’t understand the situation, so he had to use his surroundings and the people around him to make better observations and fix his dilemma.