Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category

In preparation for…


In preparation for…
Originally uploaded by juliecinci

book seven, I’m rereading book six.

Not everyone is a fan of Harry Potter. Though today, you’d be hard pressed to find too many who haven’t at least seen a movie or read a book. What makes this moment significant, though, is the scale of HP’s entrance into our popular culture. Like the Beatles did for pop music and Star Wars did for the movies, Harry Potter will go down as the most powerful literary phenomenon in our time.

Friday night will be an international party as the seventh book is released. Fans are already figuring out ways to avoid the Internet, magazines, television news and friends who might spoil the greatly anticipated ending to the series.

In the homeschooling world, much has been written about the dangers of the books versus their delightful and engrossing plot-lines. No matter where you fall in that debate, we all can see that Harry Potter and his magical world have invaded our international consciousness, have created a memorable cast of characters whose names are now synonymous with the character qualities they represent, and have engaged children and teens in their first most delicious and satisfying book discussions many of them have ever known. They have discovered that books are more than stories to be read and finished. They are to be savored, analyzed and enjoyed with fellow readers.

To that end, we will open a discussion forum some time in August (depending on when I finish the book!) for any teen or child (or enthusiastic parent!) who wants to have a place to discuss the series with fellow fans. It will be supervised (by Jon and me) requiring a log in, but for no fee (free of charge).

So if the magical world of Harry Potter has kept you spell-bound for any length of time, I hope you’ll join us when we have the fun of discussing how it all turned out. (I’m personally on pins and needles wondering whether or not Snape really is a bad guy… Can you imagine keeping that question so alive for six, SIX, books? J.K. Rowling – what a good writer!)

Posted in General, Literature | 1 Comment »

Reading aloud

We sat on cold tile floors, Jon lounging in a blue caftan, extending his 6’4″ body over a couple of red pillows for comfort, while I leaned my back against the concrete walls, upright, to better hold open the pages of the novel. The Far Pavillions by M. M. Kaye brought us spices and India, romance and war. I read aloud to Jon sometimes for three hours in a day while we waited for the hot, slow summer weeks to roll by so we could leave the country and head out to sunny Spain for our missionary camp.

The Far Pavillions wasn’t the first book I read aloud to Jon. When we were engaged, I read Shogun to him, every page. Reading aloud became a shared point of connection and escape. We eventually worked through several of James Clavell’s novels, most of M.M. Kaye’s and a few of John LeCarre’s.

Once we returned to the states, life became hectic with the increase of children, Jon working away from home, homeschooling. When I had just given birth to our fifth child, we decided to give it another whirl. We read aloud in the evenings after the other four kids were in bed. Instead of TV or videos, we’d snuggle in blankets while I’d nurse Caitrin, and Jon would read to me. Eventually, I’d yank the book back from him as he has this habit of getting so wrapped up in the story, he starts skipping words in order to get ahead. It’s not as much fun for the listener at that point. 🙂

What is fun, though, is reading together. Even today, while we don’t have as much time as we once did to read aloud lengthy novels without interruption, we still find ourselves reading aloud bits of articles, paragraphs out of books, quotes, poems, essays. It’s not enough to say to each other: “Read this article when you get a chance.” For some reason, we just have to do it out loud and talk about it right then and see the reaction of the other person as we are reading or it isn’t the same.

Reading to our kids, then, was a no-brainer. And it never occurred to me that a time might come when they were too old to be read to. After all, I’d been reading to a full-grown male for most of my married life!

With the approach of the release of the final Harry Potter book, my kids are at fever pitch around here trying to determine how many copies we must purchase in order to make it possible for as many people to read it at once as want to. I’ve read all six aloud, the first three twice (at two different times to two different sets of our kids). The older kids want to read the newest book right away, to themselves. But the younger ones have already asked me to read it to them like I’ve done with the other six books.

I’m glad.

There’s something about that shared time that transcends reading to myself.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Literature, Poetry Teatime | 2 Comments »

Smooth spines of summer reading

This is the week where I make the decisions about novels for next year’s Boomerang language arts program. Which ones will go from public to personal library? Which ones will accompany me to lounge chairs at the YMCA pool?

Because my reading for the last four years has been dominated by academic tomes of theology, I’m not nearly as current on fiction for junior and senior high. As I headed out the door to the library, I asked my college-bound daughter to add a few titles to the ones I’d already jotted down. She did more than throw out suggestions. She grabbed her keys, hopped in her car, and followed me there! We stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the young adult section while she pulled out titles and exclaimed, “Oh Mom, remember this one?” and “You should definitely pick this one. It’s one of my favorites.”

My stack grew. Titles like The Education of Little Tree and The House on Mango Street sat stacked on one shelf. I balanced three books, The Scarlet Pimpernel, And Then There Were None, and The Diary of Anne Frank, in my arms while tipping my head sideways to read the titles of the sequels to The Shakespeare Stealer (a favorite with Boomerangers this year). I added these to my already bulging list of books at home: The Shadow Spinner, Little Women, Jane Eyre, The Giver, Julie of the Wolves, Tom Sawyer and Call of the Wild/White Fang (the Jack London book that holds two great stories).

I’ll have the list narrowed to the selections for the fall by Friday. If you want to weigh in before I finalize the Boomerang list, feel free to add your thoughts to the comments.

The Boomerang is designed for kids between 7th and 9th grade (give or take a year depending on your child’s interests and abilities). It is a monthly subscription that offers you a digital download which features dictation passages, grammar and stylistic discussion of the passages and a group of “think piece” questions that help your child delve deeply into the content of the novel using freewriting. In addition to the Boomerang, we offer a Companion discussion group that meets three of four weeks every month to discuss the current novel selection. Last year’s Boomerang crew blew me away with their enthusiasm, attention to detail and critical insights. Makes me look forward to a whole new crop of books and deep discussions with the 2007-2008 Boomerangers. 🙂

The unruly gaggle of books lies on the floor next to me with their spines pointing upward. Eenie, meenie, miney, mo… Which book stays, which book goes…?

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, BW products, General, Literature | 10 Comments »

From the trenches

I hope you all had wonderful Mother’s Days. That date always sneaks up on me and I never quite expect it to be wonderful and for some reason, it just usually is. In addition to Mother’s Day, I went into deep recovery mode. As many of you know, I spent the last four years in grad school, taking it one class at a time (usually) with summers off (except one). As I tallied up how much writing I’ve done for grad school in those four years, it turns out I’ve written 600 pages of double spaced academic writing. 600 pages (I was kind of surprised the number was so round, actually).

I got to thinking about all that writing and what I learned from it (beyond the obvious content analysis that the writing was meant to generate). I want to share a little of that here.

  • Weekly essays are too frequent.
    Several of my professors liked assigning weekly writing topics. They would give us something to read and then ask for 2-4 pages of writing to a prompt related to the reading. Usually we were narrating the content and then bringing a bit of personal insight or an interrogative point of view to the topic. I found that in classes where I had to generate original writing about brand new material without the benefit of a lecture first every week, I did not learn as much as I did when I was given time to read, think, listen, discuss and then write about that topic. I often felt I was prematurely offering my thoughts before they had had time to grow inside of me.

    The plus side to weekly writing is that you get over the intimidation factor pretty quickly. I did get into a groove and could produce weekly essays without much angst.

  • Academic writing benefits from mingling personal experience with scholarly analysis.
    I usually found a point of contact between myself and the material whenever I could. My professors not only valued this, but several of them specifically asked for it from us as students. My final MA thesis has six pages at the start that trace my journey theologically which leads to the thesis and why I chose to write the paper. These introductory remarks were requested by my advisor. I want to point this out because there is still a feeling among so many homeschooling moms that academic writing is meant to be objective and impersonal. Certainly the analysis must have the air of scholarship and considered opinion, but situating the argument contextually and relating it to personal experiences is valid and in some cases, encouraged in the humanities, in particular.
  • Introductions need to include a “word map” of where the paper will go.
    When I teach the essay, I tell my students that they need to include both a thesis and a sentence or two (at least) that suggest the direction of the paper (what points they will cover in the essay). I can’t emphasize this point enough. Scholarship depends on clarity of organization more than any other element. The reader must know where he or she is being taken and how he or she will get there.
  • There’s a difference between textual analysis and the use of secondary sources in analytical writing.
    Usually academic writing in the humanities (philosophy, literature, theology, history, sociology, theater arts, political science) means analyzing primary sources (reading original documents and doing textual analysis) and then cross-checking that analysis against secondary sources (scholarship that offers insight into the primary source). Using tools designed for textual analysis and examining arguments of secondary sources helps you create your unique take on the topic. It’s strange, but given how many of us went through college and spent hours writing papers, I’m surprised that I have never read in the homeschooling market a book or tool that breaks this all down and helps kids understand what they are doing when they write a paper. For the June and July issues of the Slingshot, I’ll be writing tools to help you determine source credibility, how to do textual analysis (primary source work) and how to use secondary source material. In the fall, I hope to offer an essay class that works with primary and secondary sources to give your kids a feel for how it’s done.

I have many other insights to offer and will do that over the next few weeks. In the meantime, feel free to ask questions in the comments section. I can’t wait to expand what we offer through Brave Writer. It’s been such a wonderful experience being a student and I think my experiences can translate to real benefit to all of you, particularly those worried about how to prepare your teens for college writing.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Literature, Tips for Teen Writers | 4 Comments »

Characterization in Books and Movies

Characterization in Books and Movies

In addition to plot conventions, movies and books share similarities in how they portray characterization. Naturally movies rely on visual cues such as costume, make-up, and hair style to define the period, personality and attention to personal hygiene of a character. In a novel, the author must describe enough of these details for the reader to create a corresponding image in the imagination.

In addition to these obvious categories of characterization, however, are the more subtle aspects of personality which are usually manifest in the following ways:

  • physical idiosyncrasies like a limp or a lisp
  • twitches
  • wheezing
  • playing with hair strands
  • adjusting glasses
  • slumped shoulders
  • saucy gait
  • pursed lips
  • raised eyebrows
  • military posture
  • poor speech

…And so on.

When looking at an actor’s choices in a movie, then, it is important to consider what you see the character doing as much as what the character looks like or says. Movies require us to notice acting choices, such as:

  • Does the character mumble or speak clearly?
  • Does the character turn away from someone intimidating or does the character face that person squarely?
  • How does the character relate to the other characters?

You can often detect differences in relationships through observing the changes in conversational style and posture between a single character and each unique relationship within the story.

In books, characterization is developed along similar lines, however, you also often have the benefit of internal processing (what the character thinks in addition to what the character does). This is most often the case for the protagonist (the primary character in the story). You may not have access to the minds of the other characters. The benefit of knowing what is in the mind of the character is that you will have layers of motivation to evaluate rather than merely drawing conclusions from behavior.

Shakespeare’s soliloquies serve a similar purpose in his plays. They are meant to reveal to the audience what the character is thinking that can’t be observed from the outside.

Another source of commentary on the character is often supplied by the author. Authors will give you clues about characterization based on how they title or describe the character. In The Red Badge of Courage, the main character, Henry, is referred to as “the youth” in every paragraph except dialog. It’s important to ask why because the author clearly intends to communicate something about Henry through that label.

In classic plots seen in movies and found in books, there are two primary characters to look for: the protagonist (usually the one we root for) and the antagonist (the one that makes us “boo”). The protagonist faces an obstacle that is the key to the plot. The antagonist wants to thwart the protagonist’s progress in achieving that goal. Sometimes the protagonist is supported by other characters in achieving the quest (as Frodo was in The Lord of the Rings). Sometimes the antagonist is not human but instead is a force in nature or a war or the gods (not all antagonists are human, either). And sometimes the primary antagonist is the self – a conflict occurring within the primary character.

Don’t feel you need to over-analyze characterization.

What is helpful to do is to ask questions of your kids as they read or view that helps them to notice what they might miss otherwise.

  • Why do you think the protagonist has a limp? How does that hurt his chances of success?
  • Who is the antagonist?
  • Why does the antagonist oppose the protagonist?
  • What does the costume say about that character?
  • What can we learn about the character from the way he interacts with his parents, his friends and authorities?

…And so on.

Go forth and enjoy movies and books!

Movie Discussion Club

Posted in Literature, Wednesday Movies | 1 Comment »