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The Ideology Of Work Ethic In Children’s Literature
Good children work hard. Lazy children lose out. Working hard has an apotropaic effect on your fate. (So long as you keep working, bad things won’t happen to you.) Tyler Durden was wrong, you are your job. Career Advice This view of work ethic is so ingrained throughout children’s stories that it’s hardly noticed. However, there is speculation these […]
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Adventureland Storytelling Techniques
Adventureland is a 2009 coming-of-age movie written and directed by Greg MottolaIn. In the summer of 1987, a college graduate takes a ‘nowhere’ job at his local amusement park, only to find it’s the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.
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Cowboys, Westerns and Lonesome Dove
Here’s the premise of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove: Two Texas Rangers decide to move cattle from the south to Montana running into many problems along the way. CONTROLLING IDEA Detail a legendary journey while including the harsh realities of Wild-Western life to show that the ‘legends’ of the Wild West were ordinary men working in […]
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What Is A “Coming-of-age” Story?
Coming-of-age is a type of story in which a young person becomes an adult, or heads in that direction. There are many children’s stories (or stories about children) about a child losing their innocence. When that character is a bit older (adolescent) then it’s called a coming-of-age story. Sometimes people think they know you. They know […]
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Father Tropes In Fiction
Turn Out Like His Father – A character has charge of a child (usually her son) and is desperate to keep this child from imitating another relative (usually his father). This is a fear of history’s repeating itself for his fate, which may be turning evil and usually ends with being dead. Harry Potter isn’t allowed to […]
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Storytelling Tips From Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (1958)
A descendent of The Secret Garden, sibling of The Chronicles of Narnia and ancestor to The BFG, Tom’s Midnight Garden is an influential and much-loved book which won the Carnegie Medal. In Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce the moon is heavily symbolic. Night = day as the fantasy world = the real world. This […]
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Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk Novel Study
Wolf Hollow (2016) is a middle grade novel by Lauren Wolk. This mid-20th century story is chock-full of symbolism which makes it great for a novel study. Here I focus instead on the writing techniques, for writers of middle grade. Though moons tend to be massive in children’s books, the moon on this cover would […]
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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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Storytelling Tips From Anne Of Green Gables
Revisiting Anne Of Green Gables as an adult reader, several things stick out: Listen to Anne of Green Gables for free at Librivox THE INFLUENCE OF CINDERELLA In real life, the character of Anne Shirley would be a lifelong social workers’ project. Her parents died of ‘the fever’ when she was an infant and since […]
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Kiki’s Delivery Service Symbolism and Story Structure
Kiki’s Delivery Service is a Studio Ghibli film released in 1989. This film was always popular in Japan but — though it’s hard to remember now — Studio Ghibli films didn’t take off in the West until 1997 with the release of Princess Mononoke.
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Describing Emotions and Physiological Reactions In Fiction
I can do everything with my language, but not with my body. What I hide by my language, my body utters. I can deliberately mold my message, not my voice. […] My body is a stubborn child, my language is a very civilized adult. Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse Descriptions of physiological reactions are hard to […]
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Storytelling Notes On A Series Of Unfortunate Events (2017)
Daniel Handler wrote the teleplay (as well as the books) to the Netflix adaptation of A Series Of Unfortunate Events. The author’s voice and politics come through loud and clear.
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How to Create Conflict in Literature
Every interesting main character in every story needs a worthy opponent. The opponent makes the main character interesting. The main character learns through their opponent. The opponent attacks the main character’s great shortcoming. The main character deals with their own great shortcoming and grows as a result.
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The Amazing Bone by William Steig Analysis
Last year marked the 40th anniversary of William Steig’s The Amazing Bone. This is remarkable because it feels, in some ways, like a much more modern picture book than that. This is all to do with Steig’s voice. Pearl is at no point mortally afraid. We know and she knows that this is a storybook world in […]
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The Secret To Russian Fudge
How to make Russian Fudge — a step-by-step guide for cooks with no sweet thermometer and no Edmonds Cookbook (which is only of limited help anyway). Googling has so far not helped me out on this one, so while Mum was staying at our place this week I had an extended lesson in how to […]