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Hatred of Teen Girls In Pop Culture
The culture, as as whole, despises teenage girls. Let’s take a look at the evidence in pop culture and storytelling.
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Bathroom As Horror: Here There Be Tygers by Stephen King
Toilets are inherently scary. This holds true across cultures, even though different cultures (and even genders) experience public toilets differently. Below I take a look at a short horror story by Stephen King with a few examples of toilet horror by other authors, in which the public bathroom is utilised for storytelling purposes as a […]
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Holes In Art and Storytelling
Be careful what you cast out — the vacancy is quickly filled. Austin Osman Spare SAM AND DAVE DIG A HOLE HOLES BY LOUIS SACHAR Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnats. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention […]
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The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash by Hakes Noble and Kellogg Analysis
The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash (1980) is a carnivalesque, cumulative picture book written by Trinka Hakes Noble and illustrated by Steven Kellogg. This picture book is a great mentor text for the way it handles dialogue visually, and also for the way the ironic distance between text and image expands at the end, […]
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Arthur’s Eyes by Marc Brown Analysis
Arthur’s Eyes (1979) by Marc Brown is an early story of the popular Arthur series, about an ambiguously animal creature (only after looking it up do I understand he’s a brown aardvark) who lives with his nuclear family in an American suburb. This is a well-crafted story and really speaks to its young audience. The […]
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Doctor Jack-o’-Lantern by Richard Yates Analysis
“Doctor Jack-o’-Lantern” is a short story by Richard Yates, the first in his 1962 collection Eleven Kinds of Loneliness. The story of the new kid in school is very popular in children’s literature, which is of course written for children. But what might a New Kid In School story for adults look like? This is […]
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Carnation by Katherine Mansfield Short Story Analysis
“Carnation” (1918) is a short story by Katherine Mansfield, included in her Something Childish collection. I like this one very much — a rare story of blossoming female friendship. SETTING OF “CARNATION” Mansfield often opens stories in medias res and grounds us in the setting: On those hot days The entire story takes place in […]
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Junie B. Jones and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria
Rejection sensitive dysphoria is an unpleasant emotion which should be more widely known. Not many people know how it feels, and even fewer know what it’s called. But Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones is an excellent fictional example of a character who lives with these hard emotions.
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Lady Bird Film Study
Lady Bird is an American coming-of-age film written and directed by Greta Gerwig, who won a bunch of awards for it. I can see why.
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Matilda by Roald Dahl Novel Study
Matilda is a classic, best-selling children’s book first published in 1988. This story draws from a history of children’s literature such as classic fairytales and Anne of Green Gables. Matilda was written by Roald Dahl, but significantly improved by a talented editor and publisher, Steven Roxburgh. For half of his writing career, Dahl wrote for adults. […]
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Teachers In Children’s Literature
Teachers in children’s stories can be mentors, opponents, fake opponents, or very much background characters. In young adult literature, teachers can (problematically) be love opponents. Why is it that English, drama and music teachers are most often recalled as our mentors and inspirations? Maybe because artists are rarely members of the popular crowd. Roger Ebert […]
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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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Babysitter’s Club Novel Study
It would be easy to dismiss The Babysitter’s Club as an outdated storyline aimed at channeling girls into careers in childcare, turning them into good little obedient baby-machines and not much else. However, never judge a book by its title, right? (Because a lot of the time authors don’t choose their own titles anyhow.) And […]
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Writing Activity: Describe A Classroom
Describe a classroom is the perfect writing activity for schools. Maybe you’re in a classroom right now. If so, you can write about that. If not, you can imagine any sort of classroom you like. It may be one classroom in particular, or it may be an amalgamation of several, or of all the classrooms you’ve ever set foot in. Or…
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How Teaching School Is Different From The Movies
An English teacher I had at school couldn’t stand that Robin Williams movie, Dead Poet’s Society. The ideal of the enthusiastic teacher jumping about on all the desks, monologuing center stage gave him the shits, I was surprised to learn. Then, when I was at teachers’ college myself, I remember the tutor saying a few times, […]