Figurative Language in Encounter by Jane Yolen

Activity Overview

For an additional activity to combine history with ELA, students can create storyboards identifying figurative language in a story about the Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean. They can do this for the story they chose for the Literature Connections activity, or they can use a new one!

Encounter by Jane Yolen is the story of the Taíno people living on the island of San Salvador in 1492 when Columbus and the Spanish colonizers first arrived. It is told through the eyes of a young Taíno boy who tried to warn his people about these strange visitors. At the end, the boy is an old man reflecting on the devastating destruction of his people and a lost civilization. The book is full of striking illustrations and vivid figurative language, including personification, simile, and metaphor that allows the reader to see this "encounter" from the point of view of the Taíno people.

Figurative Language in the book Encounter

• Simile: "In my dream . . . three great-winged birds with voices like thunder rode wild waves in our bay."


• Metaphor: "The baby canoes spat out many strange creatures, men but not men."


• Simile"We did not know them as human beings, for they hid their bodies in colors, like parrots. Their feet were hidden, also."


• Simile: "Many of them had hair growing like bushes on their chins."


• Metaphor: "The hand felt like flesh and blood, but the skin was moon to my sun."


• Simile: "Not like talking but like the barking of a yellow dog."


• Metaphor: "The hand felt like flesh and blood, but the skin was moon to my sun."


• Personification: "And they gave hollow shells with tongues that sang chunga-chunga." (Bells)


• Simile: "I leaned forward and stared into their chief’s eyes. They were blue and gray like the shifting sea."



Simile: ". . . [I] stared at each of the strangers in turn. Even those with dark human eyes looked away, like dogs before they are driven from the fire."


Metaphor: "It was the serpent’s smile - no lips and all teeth."


Metaphor: "round pools to hold in the hand that gave a man back his face." (Mirror)


Metaphor: "darts that sprang from sticks with a sound like thunder that could kill a parrot many paces away." (hand cannon)


Personification: "our blood would cry out in the sand."

Template and Class Instructions

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