Tag: bullying

  • The Snail Under The Leaf Setting

    The Snail Under The Leaf Setting

    In many folktales, visitors to fairyland see magnificent palaces and comely people until they accidentally rub the fairy ointment on their eyes. Then fairyland is revealed as a charnel-house, grey and grim, with the fairies as the grinning dead. Diane Purkiss, Troublesome Things The Utopian World is prevalent in contemporary children’s literature. Move into young […]

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  • How Children’s Books Teach Kids To Despise Clever Girls

    Lately I’ve been reading chapter books with my 8-year-old daughter. We’ve been reading realistic comedy dramas from various American eras, from Ramona Quimby to Junie B. Jones to Judy Moody to Clementine. We’re just starting to (re)delve into the work of Judy Blume. We’ve also read similar books produced locally such as Philomena Wonderpen by Ian […]

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  • Freaks and Geeks Storytelling Tips

    Freaks and Geeks Storytelling Tips

    Freaks and Geeks is a coming-of-age drama made in the late 1990s, set in 1980. Though it was cancelled after one season, that’s not because it wasn’t good. Perhaps the audience assumed  this was yet another high school drama done badly. This show did a lot of stuff you’ll have seen before, but did it […]

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  • Punishment In Children’s Literature

    Poetic justice — or the punishment of characters who do wrong might be one solid difference between stories ‘for children’ versus ‘for adults’. Some adult gatekeepers are squeamish about the possibility of young readers siding with naughty characters who go unpunished. See: Rewards and Punishments, a categorisation from Baughman’s Type and Motif Index of the […]

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  • A Glutton For Punishment by Richard Yates Analysis

    ABOUT THE STORY Written in the early 1960s, “A Glutton For Punishment” is about a man who gets the sack from an unspecified office job in New York City. He considers keeping this information from his wife. SETTING In this post-Mad Men era, it’s impossible to  read Yates and not envisage scenes from Mad Men. Yates’s revival might […]

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  • How Do Writers Deal With Phones In Fiction?

    How Do Writers Deal With Phones In Fiction?

    Phones have not been good for fiction. Phones counteract every storytelling guideline. Throw your character into peril, we’re told. Endanger their very lives, we’re told. But if this character has a phone, or should have a phone, the audience asks, “Why don’t they just…?” and that is about the last thing you want your audience […]

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