Can Evelyn help with the specific novel my school assigned?

Yes, for widely taught 9th and 10th grade titles. Sessions work best when the learner has the book on hand and can read a passage aloud or name a chapter and scene, since the analysis is built from the actual text rather than from a summary.

My teenager understands the book but gets low marks on the essays. What's usually the problem?

Most often it is one of three things: a thesis that states a topic instead of an argument, quotations dropped in without introduction or follow-up commentary, or body paragraphs that summarise rather than analyse. Sessions can diagnose which pattern is showing up by working through a returned essay with the teacher's comments.

Is this the same as help with reading comprehension?

No. Comprehension work asks what a text says; this focuses on how and why an author built it that way — narration, structure, diction, tone — and on writing an argument about it. If a learner is still struggling to follow plot and character in grade-level fiction, that groundwork comes first.

How does a voice-based session handle Shakespeare?

Reading verse aloud is genuinely useful for it. A session might involve the learner reading a speech, paraphrasing it line by line, sorting out inverted word order and unfamiliar vocabulary, and then discussing what the language reveals about the character at that moment in the play.

Literature (Fiction)

High School (9-10) · English Language Arts

One-on-one voice sessions on reading and analysing fiction at the 9th and 10th grade level: short stories, novels, and dramatic texts such as Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, or To Kill a Mockingbird. The work centres on moving past plot recall to close reading — tracking how an author's choices about narration, structure, diction, and imagery build character and theme — and on writing analytical paragraphs and essays that argue a claim about a text with quoted evidence. Sessions are conversational: the learner reads a passage aloud or describes it, and Evelyn asks the kind of follow-up questions that force a vague reaction into a defensible reading.

Start a session on Literature (Fiction)

What this covers

Stating a theme as a full arguable claim about what a text says regarding an idea, not a one-word topic like 'love' or 'power'
Analysing characterisation through direct and indirect methods — dialogue, action, other characters' reactions, and what a character notices or ignores
Identifying point of view and narrative distance, including first-person limitation, third-person limited versus omniscient, and cases where the narrator's judgement should not be trusted
Explaining how figurative language, diction, and imagery create tone in a specific passage, rather than labelling devices and stopping
Tracing plot and structural choices — exposition, foreshadowing, flashback, in medias res, dramatic irony, and how a chapter or scene break shapes meaning
Writing a literary analysis paragraph or essay: topic sentence as a claim, quotations integrated into the writer's own sentence, and commentary that connects evidence back to the claim
Reading Shakespearean verse and older prose for sense — paraphrasing lines, handling inverted syntax and archaic vocabulary, and following asides and soliloquies

Where learners get stuck

Retelling the plot in place of analysing it: Middle school reading tasks often reward accurate summary, so students carry that habit forward. In a 9th–10th grade analysis paragraph it produces sentences that report what happened but never explain what the author's choice accomplishes. The fix is a consistent structural habit: every quotation is followed by commentary that answers 'so what does this show about the character or theme?'
Treating theme as a single word or a moral lesson: Students are frequently taught 'theme = the message,' which slides into proverbs like 'never give up.' A workable theme statement at this level has to be a claim the text could argue against — for example, what Of Mice and Men suggests about whether shared dreams survive economic dependence — and that requires specifying both the idea and the position taken on it.
Confusing the narrator with the author, especially with first-person narration: When a narrator speaks in 'I,' students naturally hear the author's own voice and accept every judgement as fact. This blocks any reading of irony or unreliability. Working through moments where events contradict the narrator's interpretation makes the gap visible and opens up the whole question of perspective.
Symbol hunting without textual support: After being told that objects can mean more than themselves, students start assigning meaning to anything described twice. The correction is evidentiary: a symbolic reading has to be built from repeated, patterned detail in the text and has to hold up across the whole work, not from one convenient sentence.

What a session looks like

A typical session works from a text the learner is currently assigned. Evelyn asks what happened in the section and then narrows quickly to one passage — often ten to twenty lines — asking the learner to read or paraphrase it and to notice specific word choices. From there the conversation builds toward a claim, tests it against other moments in the text, and, if the learner has an essay due, drafts a topic sentence and works through how to embed a quotation and write commentary. Learners can also bring a marked-up draft or teacher feedback and talk through revisions. Sessions can be spent on a single Shakespeare scene, on preparing for a class discussion, or on a full timed-essay practice run.

Helpful to know first

Comfortable reading grade-level novels and short stories independently, with some support for older or more difficult prose
Able to write a paragraph with a topic sentence and supporting details
Familiar with basic literary terms — plot, setting, conflict, metaphor, simile — from middle school English
Access to the text being studied, so specific passages can be discussed

Questions

Can Evelyn help with the specific novel my school assigned?: Yes, for widely taught 9th and 10th grade titles. Sessions work best when the learner has the book on hand and can read a passage aloud or name a chapter and scene, since the analysis is built from the actual text rather than from a summary.
My teenager understands the book but gets low marks on the essays. What's usually the problem?: Most often it is one of three things: a thesis that states a topic instead of an argument, quotations dropped in without introduction or follow-up commentary, or body paragraphs that summarise rather than analyse. Sessions can diagnose which pattern is showing up by working through a returned essay with the teacher's comments.
Is this the same as help with reading comprehension?: No. Comprehension work asks what a text says; this focuses on how and why an author built it that way — narration, structure, diction, tone — and on writing an argument about it. If a learner is still struggling to follow plot and character in grade-level fiction, that groundwork comes first.
How does a voice-based session handle Shakespeare?: Reading verse aloud is genuinely useful for it. A session might involve the learner reading a speech, paraphrasing it line by line, sorting out inverted word order and unfamiliar vocabulary, and then discussing what the language reveals about the character at that moment in the play.