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What does glamour mean?
The following are notes from a podcast from Zocalo Public Square: Why Do We Need Glamour? The speaker is Virginia Postrel, who has also delivered a TED Talk. Her book is called The Power Of Glamour. What is glamour? The word ‘glamour’ gets sprinkled around on magazine covers: shiny furniture, jewel tones, satin dresses. This conveys…
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What Makes A Book For Young Adults?
Little Women, Anne of Green Gables — we now look at these books as historical but Little Women was written about current affairs, about finding a husband while a father was away at war. Pride and Prejudice was also about finding boys. Puberty Blues, a contemporary novel set in Newcastle, is again about a group…
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What Is Quality Children’s Literature? What Is Trash?
Children’s literature is often lumped into two broad groups: treasure and trash. The former is sometimes called ‘literary’, the latter ‘commercial’.
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Notes On The Hero From Vogler
If you’re reading something and you’re not sure who the hero is, it’s the character who changes the most. [But this is a little complicated.] The hero is usually the most active one in the story. A hero springs into action with the arrival of some outside force — that includes the reluctant heroes. Heroes…
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Cloud Tea Monkeys and Mysterious Traveler by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham
On 15 June 2013, husband and wife team of Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham were interviewed by Kim Hill on Saturday Morning RNZ, for the ‘Playing Favourites’ segment. The songs themselves can’t become podcasts for copyright reasons, but if you’re interested in how a picturebook originates from two co-writers which is then illustrated by someone…
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What can flight symbolise in literature?
Flight is amazingly common in children’s stories. Several other motifs should be considered symbolically similar: FLOATING AS FLIGHT SYMBOLISM Characters might hold onto helium balloons, levitate by magic or by supernatural means. A picture book example of floating can be seen in “Outside Over There” by Maurice Sendak, in which Ida floats backwards out the…
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Lookism and Physiognomy in Children’s Fiction
Physiognomy is the assessment of a person’s character or personality from his outer appearance, especially the face. Wikipedia There are plenty of books about this subject, which encourages readers to judge people based on how they look. (Here’s a list on Goodreads.) If you read classic children’s literature you’ll encounter descriptions of character which exist not only…
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Things Possible With Digital Stories Which Are Not So Possible With Paper Stories
A lot is being said about all the ways in which ebooks and tablet books are not as good as ‘real books’: you can’t smell them, there’s screen glare, you don’t know where you are up to in the book… Ebooks “I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another…
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What Is Interanimation in Literacy?
Header painting: Eastman Johnson – The Lesson. An excellent example of red and blue as a colour palette.
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Tad by Benji Davies
Tad (2019) is a picture book written and illustrated by Benji Davies. This is an especially good mentor text for illustrators because I’ve never seen a better example of a fairly muted colour scheme that suddenly pops after the page turn at the end. I literally said, “Wow!”
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Goldilocks and The Three Bears Fairy Tale Analysis
This month I wrote a post on Teaching Kids How To Structure A Story. Today I continue with a selection of mentor texts to help kids see how it works. Let’s look closely at a classic fairytale, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Years later, at Goldilocks’ house. pic.twitter.com/PEa3WhhYZm — Dick King-Smith HQ (@DickKingSmith) July 19, 2020 snow white broke…
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Frog Went A Courtin by John Langstaff Analysis
This month I wrote a post on Teaching Kids How To Structure A Story. Today I continue with a selection of mentor texts to help kids see how it works. Let’s look closely at Frog Went A-Courtin, a Scottish folk song from the 1500s, which was turned into an iconic picture book for children written by John…
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Sam and Dave Dig a Hole Picture Book Study Analysis
Earlier this month I wrote a post on Teaching Kids How To Structure A Story. Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s Sam and Dave Dig A Hole is useful as mentor text because it appears at first glance to break all the rules. This story does follow the rules of storytelling, but in an ironic way. Jon…
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Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day Analysis
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is an American picture book written by Judith Viorst, published 1972. This was the first in the Alexander series, followed by: Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday Alexander, Who Is Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going to Move Alexander, Who’s…