Lucy, Uncensored

by Mel Hammond, Teghan Hammond

In Mel Hammond and Teghan Hammond’s young adult novel Lucy, Uncensored, transgender teen Lucy looks toward college as an opportunity to live more openly and pursue her love of theater. A college-visit road trip with her best friend, Callie, brings questions of belonging, friendship, and the future into sharper focus as Lucy considers where—and on whose terms—she can be herself.

Big Idea

Finding your voice involves more than becoming confident: it also means recognizing whether the people and institutions around you make room for your authentic self. Writers can use changes in narrative pace to show the difference between outward performance and inward experience.

Discussion Questions

1.What does the title Lucy, Uncensored suggest about the relationship between self-expression and other people’s expectations? How does your interpretation change as you read?
2.How does Lucy’s interest in theater complicate the distinction between performing a role and expressing an authentic identity? Use a specific moment to support your interpretation.
3.How do Lucy and Callie’s interactions reveal both the strengths and the limitations of friendship? Where do their perspectives align or diverge?
4.How do the college search and the road trip connect physical movement with Lucy’s changing understanding of belonging?
5.Choose a moment when the narration slows down or moves quickly. How does that pacing influence your understanding of Lucy’s hopes, discomfort, or agency?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 55 minutes📦 Copies of the novel, a teacher-selected excerpt, paper or word-processing devices, pencils, highlighters or colored pencils, and a timer.

Learning Goals

Analyze how narrative pacing develops character, tension, and themes of belonging in Lucy, Uncensored.
Support interpretations with accurate textual evidence and attention to narrative context.
Use dialogue, interior reflection, sentence structure, and paragraph breaks to create contrasting narrative tempos.
Revise a scene after evaluating how its pacing affects a reader’s understanding of a character.

Activity Steps

1.Establish discussion norms: use characters’ names and pronouns respectfully, distinguish textual analysis from assumptions, and do not ask classmates to disclose identities or defend anyone’s right to belong. Introduce the question: When does a moment deserve more narrative time?
2.Read a teacher-selected passage involving Lucy’s college hopes, theater interests, or interaction with Callie. Identify dialogue, physical action, interior reflection, and summary; discuss which features accelerate or slow the passage.
3.Students create a fictional college-visit scenario connected to the novel’s concerns—for example, a prospective student deciding whether to ask a guide a difficult question about belonging. Identify the character’s immediate goal and the obstacle.
4.Write two versions of the same event, approximately 100–125 words each. Make the first brisk through compressed description and quick exchanges; slow the second through selective detail, hesitation, and interior response.
5.Color-code the pacing devices and read both versions to a partner. Partners identify where the emotional emphasis changes and offer one evidence-based revision suggestion.
6.Revise one version and submit a brief craft note connecting one deliberate pacing choice to a specific passage in Lucy, Uncensored.

Standards Connections

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1 / RL.11-12.1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support literary analysis.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5 / RL.11-12.5: Analyze how structural choices shape effects such as tension, emphasis, and aesthetic impact.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3 / W.11-12.3: Write narratives using effective techniques, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.5 / W.11-12.5: Strengthen writing through planning, revising, editing, and rewriting.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1 / SL.11-12.1: Participate effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas and expressing interpretations clearly.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Lucy, Uncensored offers a useful starting point for studying the difference between movement through a story and movement within a character. Lucy’s college search and road trip with Callie provide external momentum, while her hopes about theater, self-expression, and belonging give individual encounters emotional weight. In a Pace-Write-Read study, students can investigate when the text moves past an event quickly and when it asks readers to linger over a response, an exchange, or a decision. Use a recurring cycle: notice a pacing choice in a short passage, name its effect, try that technique in original writing, and read the result aloud. Rather than assigning a single tempo to the whole novel, compare passages and require evidence for claims about voice, humor, tension, or reflection. The elements below are investigative lenses, not claims that the novel contains every listed device; for features such as graphics, flash-forwards, or interactive structures, students should verify their presence and consider the effects of their absence.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare a passage that advances Lucy and Callie’s journey with one that dwells on Lucy’s response to an encounter. Track how many lines cover action versus reflection, then explain the emotional effect.
2. Plot	Map how the college search gives Lucy concrete goals while raising larger questions about her future. Distinguish events that change her options from moments that change her understanding.
3. Prosody	Read a selected exchange involving Lucy aloud, attending to stress, pauses, and intonation. Discuss how two plausible readings can make the same line sound playful, guarded, or urgent.
4. Word	Collect precise words associated with theater, college, or belonging in a selected passage. Test how replacing one with a more general word changes voice, intensity, or reading speed.
5. Concept	Explore the idea of being 'uncensored' through Lucy’s choices about expression and her future. Separate what the title invites readers to consider from what particular scenes actually establish.
6. Voice & Worldview	Identify language that reveals how Lucy evaluates people, opportunities, and expectations. Explain how that perspective shapes which events receive narrative attention.
7. Point of View	Establish the novel’s narrative perspective directly from the text, then mark what readers can and cannot know about Callie in a selected scene. Rewrite a few lines from Callie’s perspective and discuss how access to different thoughts changes the scene’s pace.
8. Setting & Place	Compare how Lucy experiences familiar surroundings and places connected to her college search. Ask which environmental details communicate welcome, uncertainty, or possibility without requiring an explicit explanation.
9. Original Characters	Build a character profile for Lucy that includes theater interests, relationships, ambitions, and contradictions—not only her transgender identity. Examine how a distinctive choice makes her feel like an individual rather than a thematic example.
10. Dialogue	Annotate a Lucy–Callie exchange for turn length, interruptions where present, and unspoken implications. Test how removing the surrounding narration changes both tempo and interpretation.
11. Details	Select one small detail from a college-search or friendship scene and explain why it matters to Lucy. Distinguish a detail that merely locates the action from one that changes its emotional meaning.
12. Descriptions	Examine a descriptive passage for the balance between external observation and personal response. Discuss whether the description suspends action, builds anticipation, or does both.
13. Firsts	Choose a moment the text establishes as a new experience for Lucy. Investigate whether the narration expands that threshold moment or treats it briefly, and explain why that choice matters.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Find a passage that makes Lucy’s immediate desire especially clear. Identify how action, sensory information, or a pressing question keeps readers close to the unfolding moment.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Label a short sequence as scene, summary, or transition. Consider why a journey between destinations might be compressed while a consequential conversation receives fuller treatment.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Locate an encounter in which Lucy wants something but cannot predict another person’s response. Trace how the writer delays, delivers, or complicates the answer without treating Lucy’s identity itself as a surprise.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check selected chapters for actual shifts in time or endings that leave an issue unresolved; do not assume all three devices occur. If a memory appears, explain how it interrupts the present while clarifying Lucy’s reaction.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Study the last paragraph of a chapter and the first paragraph of the next. Identify whether the break sustains a question about Lucy’s future, changes location, or gives readers space to absorb an event.
19. Pace & Creativity	Rewrite a brief transition from Lucy’s college-search storyline as a fully developed scene, or compress a scene into summary. Discuss how each version changes what readers consider important.
20. Play	Look for moments of imaginative or verbal play connected to Lucy’s theatrical interests or friendship with Callie. If present, explain how play creates relief, closeness, or a contrast with surrounding pressure.
21. Performance	Use Lucy’s interest in theater to distinguish performance as artistic expression from the pressure to manage other people’s impressions. Read a passage twice with different delivery choices and compare the implied emotional stakes.
22. Personality	Choose a small response or decision that reveals Lucy’s personality without directly labeling it. Explain how this efficient characterization can keep a scene moving.
23. Humor	Identify a passage you read as humorous and support that interpretation through wording, timing, or contrast. Discuss whether the humor strengthens connection, offers relief, or complicates a difficult moment.
24. Pause	Find a point where action gives way to reflection, silence, or hesitation. Ask what readers understand about Lucy during that pause that a quick plot summary would miss.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Look for figurative language or sound patterns in a passage about Lucy’s hopes or surroundings. Analyze any examples you find without assuming the prose consistently uses a poetic style.
26. Repetition	Track a repeated word, image, or concern across selected chapters, particularly one connected to the future or belonging. Determine whether its meaning changes as Lucy encounters new possibilities.
27. Rhythm	Mark sentence lengths in a passage of reflection and in a passage of conversation. Read both aloud to test how sentence variation shapes urgency, hesitation, or ease.
28. Punctuation	Examine the actual punctuation in an emotionally significant exchange. Change a few marks in a copied sentence and explain how the revision alters timing without claiming that a particular mark always produces one effect.
29. Questions	Separate questions Lucy asks aloud from questions the story raises for readers. Discuss how an unanswered question about college or acceptance can propel reading even when little physical action occurs.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare two moments in which Lucy assesses where she might belong. Identify differences in setting, interaction, and narrative tempo before drawing conclusions about her changing outlook.
31. Objects	Choose an object explicitly present in a travel, theater, or college-related scene. Trace how the character’s attention gives it practical or emotional significance, avoiding unsupported symbolic claims.
32. Threes	Check a selected passage for three-part phrasing or a sequence of three actions. If none appears, revise one sentence into a three-part structure and evaluate the resulting rhythm.
33. Lists	Look for any accumulation of hopes, worries, observations, or options in Lucy’s narration or dialogue. Compare its effect with a student-created list of what a fictional student wants from college.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Inspect paragraph and scene breaks in your edition for how they separate conversation, reflection, and changes of place. Ask what readers must infer across a break rather than having it explained.
35. Art & Graphics	Examine the cover and any graphic features actually present in your edition, distinguishing publisher-created packaging from the narrative. Discuss how the visual presentation frames expectations about Lucy’s story without treating it as proof of plot details.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Create a classroom card sort that asks students to sequence a selected scene’s action, dialogue, and reflection. This is an instructional adaptation, not a claim that the novel contains interactive features; score textual reasoning rather than judgments about characters’ identities.
37. Placement	Study where a consequential line falls within a paragraph or chapter. Move it to a different position in a short transcription and discuss how its emphasis and the reader’s anticipation change.
38. Form	Consider how a prose novel accommodates both a road trip’s forward movement and the personal meaning of Lucy’s college search. Adapt a short exchange into a script and identify what must replace access to interior experience.
39. Dummy	Treat a 'dummy' as a rough structural prototype: storyboard a selected sequence on six index cards. Allocate more cards to emotionally consequential moments, then compare your distribution with the attention the novel gives them.
40. Passion	Trace how Lucy’s enthusiasm for theater and hopes for her future affect the energy of a chosen passage. Identify the concrete language and actions that communicate investment rather than simply labeling her passionate.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: 'The Question on the College Visit.' Minutes 0–3: Revisit a brief, teacher-selected passage connected to Lucy’s college search or a conversation with Callie; identify one feature that speeds the reading and one that slows it. Minutes 3–5: Introduce an original scene inspired by the novel’s concerns: a prospective student, accompanied by a friend, wants to ask a college representative whether they would truly belong there. Students decide the question and the character’s immediate goal; no personal disclosure or imitation of a transgender perspective is required. Minutes 5–10: Write a 90–120-word version using quick dialogue and minimal exposition. Minutes 10–15: Rewrite the same event at approximately the same length, slowing the crucial moment with selective detail, interior response, and a purposeful paragraph break. Minutes 15–18: Partners read the versions aloud, or exchange them silently, and mark where the pace changes their interpretation. Minutes 18–20: Each writer revises one sentence and completes an exit note: 'Like the selected passage in Lucy, Uncensored, my scene uses ___ to make the reader attend to ___.'

Classroom Activities

One Moment, Two Tempos

Students study how the novel’s college-search, friendship, and theater contexts create different kinds of pressure for Lucy. They then write the same fictional college-visit moment twice: once as a fast-moving exchange and once as a slower scene with interior reflection. Color-coding and partner read-alouds make the pacing choices visible and audible. Students may invent a character rather than imitate Lucy’s identity or disclose personal experiences.

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