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What Happened To Rosemary Fawcett?
Roald Dahl’s work wasn’t always illustrated by Quentin Blake. Dirty Beasts, for example, was originally illustrated by a young woman new to the field, Rosemary Fawcett. The edition she illustrated is now out of print. Jeremy Treglown explains the story in his biography of Roald Dahl: To one British critic, Russell Davies, “the buzz of misanthropy…
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Hop O’ My Thumb by Charles Perrault
Hop O’ My Thumb is so similar to Hansel and Gretel you might wonder how both co-existed. Both stories have: A time of famine In which the parents decide to leave their children in the woods A trail of pebbles A second abandonment, further into the woods A welcoming cottage in the woods A cannibalistic…
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What’s behind the wide appeal of horrible, brooding, YA boyfriends?
THE RECIPE FOR A YOUNG ADULT DARK PARANORMAL ROMANCE BOYFRIEND Handsome In a white kind of way Muscled but not too muscled — not like he works at it Well groomed and fairly nubile — not much body hair Remarkable eyes and gaze A bit older than the female protagonist A bit taller Maybe a…
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What Is A Goth?
The word ‘goth’ is used in various ways in various contexts. When applied to a person, what does it mean?
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The Three Main Types Of Modern Myth Stories
In everyday English, a myth is a story which is not true. In a myth, the surface level story is not true, but the symbols running through the story say something deeper about humankind. This is what makes it true.
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What Colour Is Your Sun?
Different cultures view the sun differently. Ask a Western child to draw the sun and they will draw it yellow. Ask a Japanese child to draw the sun and they will draw it red. Our closest star is ‘actually’ white. I grew up in New Zealand and I drew it yellow. But when I lived as…
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What Is A Flâneur? What Is A Dandy?
As described by James Wood in How Fiction Works, the flâneur is the loafer, usually a young man, who walks the streets with no great urgency, seeing, looking, reflecting. Flânerie describes aimless behaviour. In French it’s spelt like this: flâneur. Wood also uses the great phrases ‘porous scout‘ and ‘Noah’s dove‘ to describe this authorial stand-in.…
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Pathetic Fallacy: Not actually an insult
What is pathetic fallacy? Pathetic fallacy is a poetic device where, for the purpose of creating symbolic value or another higher-order creative expression, we attribute human emotions to items which don’t feel emotions. Edit Torrent A Short History of Pathetic Fallacy The term ‘pathetic fallacy’ was coined in 1856 by a man called John Ruskin (an art…
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Inversion Does Not Equal Subversion: The Day The Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt And Oliver Jeffers
Daniel Craig says “why should a woman play James Bond when there should be a part just as good as James Bond, but for a woman?” “There should simply be better parts for women and actors of colour.” DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) September 21, 2021 The Day The Crayons Quit is a bestseller made by two picture book…
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I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen Analysis
I Want My Hat Back (2011) is one of a trilogy of books written and illustrated by Jon Klassen. The plots are not linked and the characters are different. But they all feature hats. The other two are This Is Not My Hat and We Found A Hat. Holly Storck-Post at SLJ recommends these Jon…
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Goodbye My Brother by John Cheever Analysis
“Goodbye My Brother” is one of John Cheever’s best known short stories. In fact, it was this story which contributed to Cheever’s receiving his Guggenheim Scholarship. Cheever returned time and again to the dynamic of an uneasy relationship between two brothers. The relationship is always a metaphor for something bigger. I prefer the nihilist brother Lawrence, nick-named ‘Croaker’.…
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Just Me And My Puppy by Mercer Mayer Analysis
Just Me And My Puppy by American author-illustrator Mercer Mayer is worth a close look because, like many others in this long-running series, it is a wonderful example of ‘counterpoint irony’ in picture books. Though the title may annoy purists, the grammar of the title foreshadows a story told from the point of view of…
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What is irony in literature?
“Given a long enough time, of course, a wide enough frame, there is nothing said or done, ever, that isn’t ironic in the end.” Madame Morrible, Wicked, Gregory Maguire These notes draw heavily from a Narrative Breakdown podcast called The Power Of Irony. See also: All Good Stories Are Ironic from Cockeyed Caravan blog. Irony [is]…