Sunday, February 28, 2010

Fairy Tales

Fairy tales weren't always delivered to be in book form. Mostly the fairy tales I experienced were the ones that were made into movies by Disney. I do however remember studying different versions of the same fairy tale in school at certain points and I remember thinking how gruesome some of them get. I personally liked the versions that most young Americans hear because of the fact that they aren't as graphic or violent as others. I felt like the other versions from other cultures were more of a scare tactic than anything else. The ones that we hear in America tend to be more just cautionary tales and I think that this is better because it allows for choices to be made intelligently as opposed to choices made out of fear.

I feel that fairy tales aren't necessarily just fairy tales though. What I mean by this is that I feel that fairy tales are more like guidelines for longer stories. A lot of novels tend to have one or two things that were taken from fairy tales and I think that this says a lot about fairy tales. If they can become skeletons, so to speak of novels, then they aren't only good for children, but also good for adults.

One of the tales that I remember most from my childhood is probably Peter Pan. I was always the kid that never wanted to grow up. I think I remember this one most vividly because of that fact that now I try to do little things to remind myself that I need to have fun and actually take a break from responsibility every now and then to enjoy life.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

I'll Stand on the Soapbox with Ms. Park

I completely agree with Ms. Park about the things that she said in her article. Books are important for so many different reasons and they need to be handled for the important things that they are. I remember, when I was still a small child getting ready to enter adolescence, that there were books that I felt were insulting my intelligence at times. People forget that children are more intelligent than they are initially given credit for and this leads to the publication of materials that are, at times, sub par. I think that it is important for the adults that work at these publishing companies to think back to when they were children, and ask themselves what they would have thought if they had been given one of these jokes of a book by their parents. No one wants to read something they feel is demeaning to them the whole time; this same idea applies to children and adults forget that.
I think that Park did a good idea of expressing this particular idea in A Single Shard. It wasn't one of the main themes of the entire novel, but it was still present. Min was always taking longer than the other potters to produce his work. The others would work with care but they would also work very fast. Min just took his time and paid attention to the detail of his work to make sure that he produced the absolute best work that he could to sell to people. He wouldn't even show a broken shard of his work to prove that he really could reproduce the new technique. He had a very all-or-nothing mentality. This is exactly what Park was getting at in her critical article: the companies that are publishing these children's books need to be sure of what they publish, and make sure that they give the kids suitable works to read because the future depends on future generations of children.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Research Paper Topic

For my research paper I want to deal with the issue of how authors are presenting themes about discrimination different ways than the typical methods like books that kind of go straight at the topic. I reviewed two books that I think cover this topic very will while doing my book reviews. These books are Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and New Moon. Both authors present underlying themes about discrimination and they deal with this theme in a unique way. I want to examine these unique ways of promoting this particular theme. For instance, in the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling presents this idea through the idea of the pure-blood and muggle situation in the book. The pure-bloods think that muggles aren't worthy, basically, of being called wizards and think that muggle-borns shouldn't be allowed into Hogwarts, and some of the more hardcore supporters of the muggle discrimination even think that they should be ruled by wizards. This is similar to what minorities go through today. It doesn't quite go as far as wanting to rule over a specific people, even though there is probably still a place somewhere where that might be wanted, but it does kind of deal with the ideas of what children go through to today in schools if they are minority students. This same idea is also dealt with in New Moon through the prejudice that the vampires and werewolves have against each other. Through the way that Stephenie Meyer depicts these two sides even, though they don't come into too much contact in the book, she shows that both sides have similar ideals and that they just don't really know enough about each other to like each other. This deals with some of the ignorance that leads people to have contempt for people of other races. There are also other things like the persecution of the house-elf Dobby in Chamber of Secrets that deal with this theme.