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Twin Tropes In Storytelling
Twins fascinate us. In stories, they may exist for this reason alone, but there are other reasons why twins feature prominently in stories, especially in stories for children.
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Naturalistic Animal Behaviour and Picturebooks
This week our local agricultural group sent an email containing the following information: Warning: Fox Attacks on Chickens. In the last few days, 9 chickens have been killed by foxes in Centre St and Daffodil St at 3 properties between 3am and 4am. The fox is able to climb fences 6m in height. Sid Drumstick lost his entire flock in one night. Chicken owners…
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Mothers In Children’s Literature
Mothers are either held up as paragons of selflessness, or they’re discounted and parodied. We often don’t see them in all their complexity. Novelist Edan Lepucki contemplates motherhood Mothers in fairy tales have a way of being absent, typically through untimely deaths (think Cinderella, Snow White or Beauty and the Beast) or thanks to storylines…
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Sex In Stories For Teenagers
In October 2023 a study came out called Teens and Screams. It garnered much attention. The prevalence of ‘sl*ts’ and ‘wh*res’ in young adult literature and schoolyard banter is enough to make a feminist mother weep. Our daughters learn early the same sexually oppressive messages that we learnt: that female sexuality is a prize to…
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Ideology In Children’s Literature
Every novel, every painting, every work of art with meaning contains an ideology. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think one can avoid writing of such…
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Religion In Children’s Literature
Religion is still everywhere. So, reflecting and influencing the culture in which we find them, children’s books are not secular either. It’s interesting to interrogate the role of religion in children’s literature because children’s literature is an acculturating medium: It will introduce children to social life and history so is both educational and enjoyable. Many…
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Compare and Contrast: Twilight and Pride and Prejudice
Is Twilight the modern Pride and Prejudice? There are some interesting parallels. I listened to a lecture from the Kid You Not Podcast in which Clementine and Lauren discuss the appeal of dark paranormal romance among teenage girls. This reminded me of a lecture delivered by La Trobe University’s David Beagley. Fiction For Young Adults, Lecture…
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The Appeal Of Dark Paranormal Romance
Paranormal romance is a literary subgenre of the romance novel. A type of speculative fiction, paranormal romance focuses on romance and includes elements beyond the range of scientific explanation.
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Death In Children’s Literature
Many people will probably tell you their first brush with death was watching Bambi. I can’t say the same because I never saw the animated Disney film. I thought I knew the story for the longest time, because my grandmother bought me a Little Golden Book called Bambi and Friends Of The Forest. I still…
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The Problem Novel and Bibliotherapy
“The Problem Novel” is a dismissive term for a realistic young adult story which focuses solely on the worst aspects of life: murder, eating disorder, discrimination, imprisonment, rape, drug abuse and similar. The following draws heavily from Lecture 03 of Fiction For Young Adults, delivered by Prof David Beagley at La Trobe University. Lectures are…
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Parasocial Relationships In Fiction and Life
Let’s talk about parasocial relationships (PSRs). Who do you think of when you think Person In A Parasocial Relationship? Is it, by any chance, an Annie Wilkes archetype cf. Stephen King’s Misery?
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Stereotypes, Tropes, Caricature and Archetypes
WHAT IS A STEREOTYPE? “Stereotype” is originally a printing term referring to the plate used to print identical copies of something, so “break[s] the mold” is an apt phrase for describing something that’s distinctly different from the stereotype. (“Mold” refers to the mold used to create identical objects, not the mold that grows on old…
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Portal Fantasy and the Symbolism of Doors
Portal fantasy or portal speculative fiction is a story which transports the characters into a magical world via a gate/wardrobe/magical tree or anything else the author might imagine. As a child, this was my favourite kind of story, alongside the everyday humorous category of middle grade fiction written so well by Beverly Cleary.
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Content We Crave
What do you want from a story? How does this differ over time? What do you think other people want from their stories? When writing your own, which human cravings are you catering to? Overweening pride, lust, natural disaster, sheer avarice, all varieties of personal weirdness, terrible things done by polite and decent people —…
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Dystopia, Apocalypse and Climate Fiction
According to a large portion of the world’s population, humankind is already living in a dystopia.