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Moving Molly by Shirley Hughes Analysis
Moving Molly may sound like a drug dealer’s handbook but is also a children’s picture book written and illustrated by Shirley Hughes (1981). Shirley Hughes is one of the big name picture book storytellers from my childhood. Another favourite is Dogger. I’ve also analysed Up and Up on this blog. I know that Shirley Hughes’s illustrations are not for everybody.…
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Mister Magnolia by Quentin Blake Analysis
Mister Magnolia is a picture book written and illustrated by Sir Quentin Blake. It won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1980, and the Red House Children’s Book Award in 1981. This story is an excellent lesson in simplicity.
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Rich As Stink by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
Rich as Stink is a short story by Canadian writer Alice Munro included in the 1998 collection The Love Of A Good Woman. Gaslighting, parentification, spousification, self-objectification, coercive control… People living in 1974 did not have ready access to the language of psychology and found it difficult to describe emotionally abusive relationships, let alone talk about the shame. Likewise, there…
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Six Dinner Sid by Inga Moore (1993) Analysis
Six Dinner Sid is a 1993 picture book written and illustrated by Inga Moore.
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Jane Campion’s The Piano Film Study
The Piano (1993) is a lyrical, fairytale film written and directed by Jane Campion, set and filmed in New Zealand near the beginning of white colonisation. SETTING OF THE PIANO Like many creative New Zealanders, Campion comes from Wellington. I don’t know why so much creativity comes out of the Wellington region, but I suspect it has something to do…
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The Children Stay by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“The Children Stay” is a short story by Alice Munro, published in the collection The Love Of A Good Woman (1998). It’s very difficult to write empathetically about women who leave their husbands and children for another man, especially when it’s purely lust driven rather than depicted as ‘pure love’. This is because mothers are held to a higher standard.…
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Zoo by Anthony Browne (1992) Analysis
Zoo is a postmodern picture book written and illustrated by Anthony Browne, first published in 1992.
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Rufus and the Blackberry Monster by Lisa Stubbs Analysis
1999 in picture books was the year of monsters in the forest. Jez Alborough was finishing up his bear series about a massive toy bear, actually harmless. Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler released their phenomenal hit The Gruffalo. Rufus and the Blackberry Monster by Lisa Stubbs is part of the same family. Comparisons between this story and The Gruffalo are…
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Monster Pet! by McAllister and Middleton Analysis
Monster Pet! is a 2005 picture book written by Angela McAllister and illustrated by Charlotte Middleton. The story is designed to get young readers thinking about the responsibility of caring for a sentient creature. A body swap plot is used to that end, though I suspect more empathy derives from the facial expressions on the poor little locked up mouse…
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Tomorrow When The War Began Questions
The following are some resources I used with New Zealand high school English students some years ago during a novel study of Tomorrow When The War Began by John Marsden. Posted here in case anyone still finds this useful. How many wars has New Zealand been involved in during the last 50 years? The Cold War (1950 to 1953) Korean…
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Just A Dream By Chris Van Allsburg Analysis
Just a Dream by Chris Van Allsburg (1990) is a picture book with an environmental message typical of its era. As part of the corpus of children’s literature with environmental messages, the 1990s offered many excellent children’s book examples of the now-outdated ‘personal responsibility’ message. Around this time children received the ‘good people recycle’ message. This replaced the ‘good people…
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Cortes Island by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Cortes Island” is a short story by Alice Munro, included in the 2013 collection The Love Of A Good Woman, which won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Like another story in this collection, “Jakarta“, the title of this story is set in a place away from where the action takes place. Writers often say that the characters who exist off…
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Jakarta by Alice Munro Short Story Analysis
“Jakarta” is a short story by Alice Munro, the second in the Nobel Prize winning collection The Love Of A Good Woman (1998). At first it baffles me why this story is called Jakarta as it is not set in Indonesia. Eventually we find out that one of the characters has previously died in Jakarta of a tropical bug. Or…
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Save The Reaper by Alice Munro Analysis
“Save The Reaper” (1998) is a short story by Alice Munro, included in the collection For The Love Of A Good Woman. This story is a re-visioned homage to Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find“. THE LOVE OF A GOOD WOMAN (1998) The night before reading “Save The Reaper” I happened to watch Stacey Dooley’s documentary Canada’s Lost…
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The Headless Bust by Edward Gorey Analysis
“The Headless Bust” is the sequel to “The Haunted Tea-Cosy”, which I tried to decipher the other day (with limited success). This one is actually a little easier to understand and we are basically given a pass for not understanding it anyway: