After students recommended books by M. E. Kerr, such as "Is That You, Miss Blue?" and "Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack," a college teacher realized that Kerr's books contained memorable characters and were suitable for classroom use. Particularly useful was Kerr's 1983 nonfiction book, "Me, Me, Me, Me, Me," which recounts episodes from Kerr's own life and explains how people in real life became characters in her books. The teacher used the book as a model to teach writing to university students. Students wrote memoirs and discussed them with peer writers and with the class as a whole, until their nonfiction personal memories evolved into pieces of fiction. (An example of student writing is included.) (DF)