Top Heavy

by Rhonda Dechambeau

Fifteen-year-old dancer Esme struggles to recover her confidence and sense of self after an assault in Rhonda Dechambeau’s novel in verse, Top Heavy. Through Esme’s experience, the book explores body positivity, the pressures placed on young women, and the difficult work of reclaiming agency.

Big Idea

A young person’s body does not determine their worth, and recovery belongs to the person experiencing it rather than to anyone else’s timetable. Verse offers writers tools for representing that complexity through rhythm, silence, emphasis, and shifts in pace.

Discussion Questions

1.How does Esme’s identity as a dancer shape her relationship with her body? Where do you see tension between movement as self-expression and other people’s judgments?
2.How do line breaks, poem lengths, or white space affect your experience of Esme’s emotions? Choose a passage and explain what its arrangement makes you notice.
3.What messages about bodies and young women circulate in Esme’s social world? How does the novel invite readers to question those messages?
4.Where does Esme exercise agency, even in a small way? How does the novel complicate the idea that confidence or recovery follows a straight path?
5.How does the verse form influence what readers understand—and what remains unspoken—about Esme’s experience? What might change if a selected passage were written as conventional prose?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 Copies of Top Heavy or legally provided excerpts, paper, pencils, highlighters, sticky notes, and an optional word processor with accessible formatting.

Learning Goals

Cite textual evidence to explain how verse structure contributes to meaning in Top Heavy.
Analyze how lineation, punctuation, repetition, and white space influence reading pace.
Explain how Esme’s identity as a dancer intersects with themes of body image and agency.
Compose and revise an original verse scene using deliberate pacing choices.
Offer respectful, craft-focused feedback without making assumptions about a writer’s personal experiences.

Activity Steps

1.Establish a supportive frame and introduce the task (5 minutes). Give a content notice for discussion of assault and body image; explain that no personal disclosures, body evaluations, movement performances, or public readings are required. Offer a neutral passage and a fictional everyday-choice writing option.
2.Read and annotate a teacher-selected passage about Esme’s dancing, self-perception, or decision-making (8 minutes). Students mark line breaks, punctuation, repeated language, and spaces, then identify where their reading speeds up or slows down.
3.Discuss the evidence (7 minutes). In pairs or independently, students explain how two specific craft choices influence their understanding of Esme; distinguish textual observations from interpretations.
4.Draft a short original verse scene (10 minutes). Write about a fictional dancer deciding how to approach a rehearsal, movement, or boundary. Create a second version that preserves the situation but changes the pace through at least three craft decisions.
5.Exchange optional written feedback and revise (10 minutes). Readers identify a place they hurried, paused, or reread and explain why. Writers revise for intended effect, not for a prescribed emotional outcome.
6.Complete an exit reflection (5 minutes). Students identify their most effective revision, explain its effect on agency or emphasis, and connect it to a craft choice in the selected Top Heavy passage.

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, meaning, and aesthetic impact.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3 / W.11-12.3: Develop real or imagined experiences using effective narrative techniques, details, and sequences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.5 / W.11-12.5: Strengthen writing through planning, revising, editing, and trying new approaches.
SEL: Self-awareness, social awareness, and responsible decision-making through literary analysis of agency, body-related pressures, and respectful responses.

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

In Top Heavy, Esme’s identity as a dancer provides a productive entry point into studying the movement of language. Dance unfolds through motion, held positions, transitions, and changes in tempo; verse can guide attention through comparable choices in lineation, rhythm, punctuation, and space. A Pace-Write-Read study asks students to examine how the novel’s actual language directs their reading, then test those techniques in their own writing. Begin with a passage about dance, self-perception, or confidence rather than requiring students to revisit the assault. The workshop moves through three actions: notice the pace, write with intention, and read again to test the effect. Students should distinguish the speed of events from the speed of reading: a brief moment may receive substantial space, while a longer period may be compressed. Because Esme’s story involves assault and its aftermath, avoid framing fast writing as distress or slow writing as healing; either can convey many emotional states. The prompts below are lenses for examining the text, not claims that every listed device occurs in it. When a feature is absent, students can explain that absence or test it in an original piece without attributing it to Dechambeau.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare two passages involving Esme’s dancing or self-perception and mark where reading accelerates, slows, or stops. Ask how those changes shape attention to her experience rather than assuming they directly reproduce her emotions.
2. Plot	Map significant developments in Esme’s struggle to regain confidence, distinguishing external events from changes in her understanding. Notice which developments receive extended treatment and which are compressed.
3. Prosody	Offer a voluntary teacher read-aloud of a short passage, then try a second reading with different stresses and pauses. Discuss which interpretation is better supported by the syntax, punctuation, and lineation.
4. Word	Select a precise word used in a passage about Esme’s body or movement and consider its associations. Test a substitute to hear how diction changes emphasis, tone, or reading speed.
5. Concept	Trace how the broad concepts of body positivity and agency become concrete through Esme’s experiences. Ask how a small action can communicate an idea more effectively than an abstract explanation.
6. Voice & Worldview	Examine how the language representing Esme’s perspective frames her body and others’ expectations. Distinguish her developing viewpoint from messages the novel presents for readers to question.
7. Point of View	Identify the narrative perspective from the text and discuss what access it gives readers to Esme’s thoughts and experiences. Consider what remains unknown about other characters and why that limitation matters.
8. Setting & Place	Locate a passage that establishes a place connected to Esme’s dance or social life. Analyze how selected setting details affect her apparent freedom, comfort, or exposure without assuming every space has a fixed meaning.
9. Original Characters	Identify details that make Esme a particular person rather than a generalized example of a young survivor. In original writing, give a fictional dancer interests, preferences, and choices beyond the scene’s central difficulty.
10. Dialogue	If the selected passage includes dialogue, compare the pace of spoken words with surrounding reflection. Examine how speech, interruption, or an unspoken response affects Esme’s opportunity to express herself.
11. Details	Choose a small textual detail that sharpens your understanding of Esme’s experience. Explain how it earns attention and whether removing it would change the passage’s pace or meaning.
12. Descriptions	Analyze a description of movement, bodily sensation, or appearance, distinguishing Esme’s experience from judgments imposed by others. Notice whether the description suspends action or moves alongside it.
13. Firsts	Track the first time readers encounter an important concern, relationship, or self-directed choice. Ask how Dechambeau introduces it and how later passages revise that initial impression.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Find a passage that makes an experience feel close and immediate, then identify the language responsible. Discuss how readers can remain engaged with Esme’s perspective without needing graphic detail.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Compare a moment presented in scene with a passage that summarizes time or experience. Explain how the balance allocates attention to events and to Esme’s responses.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Locate tension between what Esme wants and the pressures she encounters. Study how uncertainty about a choice or relationship can sustain attention without treating assault as entertainment or a suspense device.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check for shifts in time or endings that leave a question unresolved, labeling only devices actually present. If the sequence remains chronological in your selection, discuss how that continuity shapes the reading experience.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine poem endings and page or section breaks in the edition being used. Ask what thought carries across each boundary and distinguish the author’s structural choices from edition-dependent pagination.
19. Pace & Creativity	Use Esme’s connection to dance to explore multiple tempos for a fictional movement scene. Rewrite the same action with rapid transitions and sustained attention, then compare what each version reveals.
20. Play	Invite low-stakes experimentation with the arrangement of an original sentence about dancing. Keep play focused on language and possibility, never on reenacting or trivializing Esme’s assault.
21. Performance	Compare silent reading with an optional spoken interpretation of a selected passage. Consider how breath and emphasis affect meaning, while allowing students to annotate instead of performing or moving.
22. Personality	Gather evidence of Esme’s distinctive preferences, attitudes, and responses. Explore how these qualities influence the texture and tempo of passages centered on her.
23. Humor	If students identify humor, examine its source and its effect on characterization or tonal contrast. If humor is absent from the selection, discuss that choice rather than inserting it into a painful moment.
24. Pause	Mark places where punctuation, syntax, or spacing invites a pause and test their different effects. Avoid interpreting every silence as fear; use the surrounding text to support a reading.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Identify imagery, metaphor, sound patterns, or other devices actually present in a selected poem. Explain how a device shapes the reader’s understanding of Esme’s body, dance, or sense of self.
26. Repetition	Look for recurring words, images, or sentence patterns across passages about Esme. If repetition appears, examine whether its meaning changes as her circumstances or understanding change.
27. Rhythm	Listen for patterns of stress, sentence length, and phrasing without assuming the verse uses regular meter. Compare the language’s rhythm with the movement or stillness represented in the passage.
28. Punctuation	Study how punctuation works with—or against—line endings in a selected poem. Repunctuate an original sentence about a dancer’s choice to test how stopping points change its force.
29. Questions	Look for explicit questions and uncertainties implied by the text. Discuss whether they invite reflection, reveal pressure, or postpone resolution in Esme’s story.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare two passages that represent Esme’s relationship with her body at different moments. Track continuities as well as changes so that the analysis does not impose a simple before-and-after recovery narrative.
31. Objects	Identify an object actually named in a dance-related or everyday scene and trace the attention it receives. Decide whether the text supports a symbolic interpretation or whether the object primarily grounds the scene.
32. Threes	Check for three-part phrases, images, or sequences and analyze their effect if present. Otherwise, use a three-beat pattern in original writing and label it as a workshop experiment, not a feature of the novel.
33. Lists	If a passage uses accumulation or a list, examine how its length and arrangement create momentum or weight. Students can test the technique with a fictional dancer’s observations, avoiding inventories that evaluate bodies.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Study how blank areas separate or frame language in the chosen edition. Describe their observable effect on attention before proposing what they might suggest about Esme’s experience.
35. Art & Graphics	Inspect the edition’s cover, typography, and any interior visual features without assuming illustrations are present. Discuss how publisher-created design frames expectations about dance, bodies, and verse, distinguishing it from narrative evidence.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Create a collaborative annotation challenge in which students locate and explain three different pacing choices. Treat this as a teaching adaptation, not a feature of the book, and avoid ranking emotional responses or recovery.
37. Placement	Examine words placed at the beginnings or ends of lines and poems, especially in passages concerning agency. Ask how moving a word would change emphasis while preserving its literal meaning.
38. Form	Compare the lengths, stanza arrangements, and sentence structures of two poems in Top Heavy. Explain how their forms contribute to each passage’s work within Esme’s larger story.
39. Dummy	Use a folded-paper dummy—a miniature page-layout prototype—to arrange an original verse scene across four panels. Test how page turns and blank areas pace a fictional dancer’s decision without reproducing the book’s pages.
40. Passion	Examine how the text represents Esme’s investment in dance alongside her developing sense of self. Invite students to write about a fictional character’s meaningful interest without suggesting that passion alone resolves trauma.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute task: One Choice, Two Tempos. Before class, select a brief passage from Top Heavy about Esme’s dance experience, body-related self-perception, or agency; avoid graphic content and provide a neutral alternative. Minutes 0–3: Read silently and mark one feature that speeds reading and one that slows or redirects attention. Minutes 3–6: Discuss how those choices affect the representation of Esme, supporting observations with the text. Minutes 6–11: Write six to ten lines about a fictional dancer choosing whether to repeat, modify, or stop a rehearsal movement; center the dancer’s own preference rather than an observer’s judgment. Minutes 11–15: Rewrite the same moment at a different tempo, changing at least three features such as line length, punctuation, repetition, or white space. Minutes 15–18: Reread both versions silently or exchange them voluntarily; annotate where attention shifts and which version better serves the intended effect. Minutes 18–20: Submit a two-sentence craft note connecting one revision to a technique observed in Top Heavy. Students may instead write about a fictional musician choosing how to practice; no personal disclosure, bodily performance, assault depiction, or public sharing is required.

Classroom Activities

Pace-Write It! Reclaiming the Rhythm

Students investigate how the pacing of a teacher-selected passage shapes readers’ understanding of Esme’s relationship with dance, her body, or her confidence. They then create two versions of an original verse scene about a fictional dancer making a self-directed choice: one version moves quickly, and the other creates room for reflection. Students annotate their craft decisions and compare how each version conveys agency without treating one pace as the correct emotional response.

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