I’m going to tell you the truth: I did not like this book at all. Oddly, though, I did not like it because I wanted it to be longer. I just didn’t feel like much of anything happened, and the book is not even 200 pages. Turn this book into about 500 pages and then you might have something. As it is, I had so many questions I wanted the book to explain and it didn’t explain any of them. I understand I may be in the minority here, as the book did win the Printz award and seems to be fairly well regarded in young adult literature circles, but I can’t go against my personal reaction. There was so much I wanted to know, the first being, of course, what is Skellig? Is he a man? A carryover of a race long gone or a futuristic man that we haven’t seen yet? Is he an angel? Is he part man, part bird? Is he none of these things and he is just simply some other type of being that nobody knows about? I had no idea. And by the time the book was over, I still had not the faintest idea of what he was. I think some people would probably say, “That’s part of the beauty, that we don’t know what he is, he’s just a magical creature, etc.” but I really don’t see that here because the story centers on Skellig and who he is. What type of creature he is, I think, is extremely important to the other events in the story, and without knowing what he is the other events sort of fall apart.
Certain events of the book, which I found very predictable, had everything to do with Skellig and who or what he is, yet we never find out. When the owl calling started, I knew that would become a connection Skellig had, but why? What about him makes him connected to owls? Why not a different bird? Maybe I would know if I knew what Skellig was supposed to be, but I don’t. The visit that Skellig pays to the hospital to make the baby healthy was also very predictable in my mind, but once again, what happens there has everything to do with who or what Skellig is. If he is an angel, there is some sort of spiritual power or divine intervention going on. If he is a holdover from an ancient type of human, there is some sort of power that has left our current race of humans, and why did it leave? If he is an advanced type of being, there is some sort of power that perhaps humans can gain, and if so then how can we gain it and where is it coming from? If he is something that’s not even connected to humans then I don’t know what’s going on. And while some may like the fact that the reader doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, I did not.
So I suppose the charge, then, with a book you don’t like, is to attempt to figure out why the author made the decisions they did. I don’t think the author sucks. clearly, Almond is a good author, he’s written a lot of highly-acclaimed books, so that’s not it. One professor I had sophomore year of college, Quadry Ismail (not the former Viking) would say, “It doesn’t matter at all what the author is trying to do, the only thing that matters is your response to the text.” I’m not sure I agree with that reasoning, so as I read I did try to put aside my dislike for the book and attempt to figure out what the author was trying to do. I think Almond was attempting to create a magical situation and that the mystery of who or what Skellig is adds to the mystery and wonder of the story. Perhaps Almond wanted to create a character that was something different to each reader, or maybe he wanted a universal message of hope and love and he was afraid that nailing down too much in the story would cause that message to become too confined and fewer readers would connect to the story.
One thing I didn’t like that probably was not Almond’s fault was the fact that Skellig doesn’t tell his name until page 87. The reason this bothered me was because Skellig is obviously the guy in the garage, why wait until page 87 to bring that up? However, the part that is probably not Almond’s fault is that the inside flap tells us that the guy is Skellig. I very much doubt Almond wrote that inside flap, and without it perhaps there would have been more mystique around the word “skellig,” but there wasn’t and so it just felt strange that the name didn’t come up in the book until halfway through.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Response to Troy
I enjoyed this book, slow-moving though it could be at times, for many of the same reasons I enjoyed the books in historical fiction. It seemed very realistic and true to the history of the time. Well, as true to the history as a story about a mythical war can be. But even so, there seemed to be a lot of truth in the book as far as how people lived, and I appreciated that aspect of it.
I’m going to go in a direction that I don’t think I have gone in to this point in my responses, and that is to talk about how I think adolescents will respond to this book, which I think is a little more complicated with this book than some of the others we’ve read. First, I thought boys would really enjoy this book because of the war aspect (of course this is a huge stereotype, but sometimes we have to speak generally). But then I got into it a little bit and realized all of the love triangles and cupid’s arrows and everything would probably appeal to girls more. Also, I think the inclusion of all the gods and goddesses would appeal to girls as well. This is, of course, based on my limited experience with high school students. As I think about my own students, I can pick out students that I think would enjoy this book, and there are both girls and boys who I know would like this book.
As for the book itself, I liked the setting of Troy before the war comes to an end. Of course, a lot of people know how the war ended so the suspense is gone as far as that goes, but to watch it play out on the side of the Trojans is really interesting. Even though many readers know what’s going to happen, that’s not really the point of the story. It’s not a story about how the war was won and lost, it’s a story about people and relationships, so the fact that many readers know how the war turns out doesn’t much matter because we don’t know how the stories of these individuals will turn out.
One thing I liked about the book was that it seemed sort of like a play. For one thing, there is the dramatic irony of the reader knowing how the war goes and the characters in the book not knowing, and there is also the fact that each chapter is set like a “scene” in a specific location. That especially helps the reader picture the events and people in the book, which I think invokes thoughts of John Steinbeck with the detail and the imagery.
One thing I did not understand about the book was how nobody would ever remember when they spoke to a god or goddess, at least if they knew it was a god. There were times when Ares would show himself, but someone like Alastor didn’t know it was Ares, so he would remember and see him in various places. But that didn’t even happen every time the person didn’t know it was a god. It would sometimes still end in forgetting about the encounter. I don’t understand that. What’s the point of the gods showing themselves if the person they are speaking to doesn’t remember speaking to the gods and the conversation is often forgotten as well? The only thing I could think of is that the author was trying to create a sort of “other worldly” type of feel but construct an idea that perhaps this still happens. Perhaps there are other-worldly beings that interfere with our lives and we just don’t remember. I don’t think this is a good explanation, but it’s all I came up with.
I’m going to go in a direction that I don’t think I have gone in to this point in my responses, and that is to talk about how I think adolescents will respond to this book, which I think is a little more complicated with this book than some of the others we’ve read. First, I thought boys would really enjoy this book because of the war aspect (of course this is a huge stereotype, but sometimes we have to speak generally). But then I got into it a little bit and realized all of the love triangles and cupid’s arrows and everything would probably appeal to girls more. Also, I think the inclusion of all the gods and goddesses would appeal to girls as well. This is, of course, based on my limited experience with high school students. As I think about my own students, I can pick out students that I think would enjoy this book, and there are both girls and boys who I know would like this book.
As for the book itself, I liked the setting of Troy before the war comes to an end. Of course, a lot of people know how the war ended so the suspense is gone as far as that goes, but to watch it play out on the side of the Trojans is really interesting. Even though many readers know what’s going to happen, that’s not really the point of the story. It’s not a story about how the war was won and lost, it’s a story about people and relationships, so the fact that many readers know how the war turns out doesn’t much matter because we don’t know how the stories of these individuals will turn out.
One thing I liked about the book was that it seemed sort of like a play. For one thing, there is the dramatic irony of the reader knowing how the war goes and the characters in the book not knowing, and there is also the fact that each chapter is set like a “scene” in a specific location. That especially helps the reader picture the events and people in the book, which I think invokes thoughts of John Steinbeck with the detail and the imagery.
One thing I did not understand about the book was how nobody would ever remember when they spoke to a god or goddess, at least if they knew it was a god. There were times when Ares would show himself, but someone like Alastor didn’t know it was Ares, so he would remember and see him in various places. But that didn’t even happen every time the person didn’t know it was a god. It would sometimes still end in forgetting about the encounter. I don’t understand that. What’s the point of the gods showing themselves if the person they are speaking to doesn’t remember speaking to the gods and the conversation is often forgotten as well? The only thing I could think of is that the author was trying to create a sort of “other worldly” type of feel but construct an idea that perhaps this still happens. Perhaps there are other-worldly beings that interfere with our lives and we just don’t remember. I don’t think this is a good explanation, but it’s all I came up with.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Response to The Book Thief
Let’s start by being completely honest. I got the reading list for this class in July and immediately ordered most of the books online. When I got them, I saw The Book Thief and thought, “Wow, this is a large book. I’m going to start with this one to get it out of the way.” So, that was three months ago. Fear not, I remember a lot of it, and I definitely remember the things I did like and the things I didn’t like.
There were a lot of things I liked about this book. On the surface, it really is an enjoyable story to read with lots of interesting characters and events. But there’s so much more to it. Some of the “periphery” things the author used I had never seen before, like the introductions to each part featuring each section. It’s simply telling the reader what’s coming up, but it also piques interest in what those things might be. Also, the little inserted statements throughout the book were interesting. At first I was afraid they would become distracting, but they didn’t, they really added to what was going on. And of course, they come from the narrator, not from the subject of the story, which adds another dimension to what is going on. In fact, let’s talk about the narrator.
When I realized what was going on with the narrator, on about page two, I literally rolled my eyes. I thought this was another author trying to be clever with the death narrator and as I have borne witness to before I don’t like it when authors try to be clever with no good reason. I’m judgmental like that. But then I got to more and more of the little inserted statements coming from the narrator, and I realized that those are not possible without the narrator being not just some omniscient third person narrator but an actual character who can see things and react to things. And I really enjoyed those little statements and what they added to the book. Soon after starting the book I had to ask myself, “Wait, do I actually like the death narrator?” How disarming. Then, when I was finished, I got to the author’s interview in the back of the book where they ask about the narrator, and his explanation made total sense. He tried different things, they didn’t work, and not even the death narrator was working at first but he figured it out later.
Okay, I’ll move on. As this is historical fiction, I really liked how accurately the book portrayed everything from that era. I don’t know any more than the average person about Nazi Germany, and so I really appreciated the subtle details that made the story and the historical era a lot more personal. Things like the Hitler Youth or Hans’s wrestling on whether to join the Nazi party, or even the simple telling of how people tried to get work or had to cut back on Rosa’s services. Those types of historical details showed a true humanity in the midst of the madness and showed a beautiful picture of how Germany was not just a bunch of people yelling, “Heil, Hitler,” but there was compassion, hope, and love.
Okay, now allow me to talk about something that I both liked and disliked at the same time, and that is the “story arc” of the book. As I was reading, I just didn’t feel like the book was driving towards anything, you know? I really didn’t feel like there was a big climax, just a lot of little things happening throughout the book. Of course, the bombing is the big deal, but even with that I didn’t feel like the rest of the book was driving towards it, I just felt like it was another event that happened, albeit “bigger” than the others. I liked this aspect of the book because that’s really how life is. Life doesn’t drive toward one big event and then everything is resolved and we all sit down and have pie. Life is simply events strung together to make us the person we are, which is exactly what happened to Liesel. So I really liked that. On the other hand…it’s a book. Books traditionally drive toward a climax and when I got to the end I felt like I hadn’t really gotten anywhere. I had enjoyed the story, but I didn’t feel like I had reached an end point. So, to that end, I guess I shouldn’t say I disliked it, but it was different than what I was expecting, and almost a little unsatisfying.
There were a lot of things I liked about this book. On the surface, it really is an enjoyable story to read with lots of interesting characters and events. But there’s so much more to it. Some of the “periphery” things the author used I had never seen before, like the introductions to each part featuring each section. It’s simply telling the reader what’s coming up, but it also piques interest in what those things might be. Also, the little inserted statements throughout the book were interesting. At first I was afraid they would become distracting, but they didn’t, they really added to what was going on. And of course, they come from the narrator, not from the subject of the story, which adds another dimension to what is going on. In fact, let’s talk about the narrator.
When I realized what was going on with the narrator, on about page two, I literally rolled my eyes. I thought this was another author trying to be clever with the death narrator and as I have borne witness to before I don’t like it when authors try to be clever with no good reason. I’m judgmental like that. But then I got to more and more of the little inserted statements coming from the narrator, and I realized that those are not possible without the narrator being not just some omniscient third person narrator but an actual character who can see things and react to things. And I really enjoyed those little statements and what they added to the book. Soon after starting the book I had to ask myself, “Wait, do I actually like the death narrator?” How disarming. Then, when I was finished, I got to the author’s interview in the back of the book where they ask about the narrator, and his explanation made total sense. He tried different things, they didn’t work, and not even the death narrator was working at first but he figured it out later.
Okay, I’ll move on. As this is historical fiction, I really liked how accurately the book portrayed everything from that era. I don’t know any more than the average person about Nazi Germany, and so I really appreciated the subtle details that made the story and the historical era a lot more personal. Things like the Hitler Youth or Hans’s wrestling on whether to join the Nazi party, or even the simple telling of how people tried to get work or had to cut back on Rosa’s services. Those types of historical details showed a true humanity in the midst of the madness and showed a beautiful picture of how Germany was not just a bunch of people yelling, “Heil, Hitler,” but there was compassion, hope, and love.
Okay, now allow me to talk about something that I both liked and disliked at the same time, and that is the “story arc” of the book. As I was reading, I just didn’t feel like the book was driving towards anything, you know? I really didn’t feel like there was a big climax, just a lot of little things happening throughout the book. Of course, the bombing is the big deal, but even with that I didn’t feel like the rest of the book was driving towards it, I just felt like it was another event that happened, albeit “bigger” than the others. I liked this aspect of the book because that’s really how life is. Life doesn’t drive toward one big event and then everything is resolved and we all sit down and have pie. Life is simply events strung together to make us the person we are, which is exactly what happened to Liesel. So I really liked that. On the other hand…it’s a book. Books traditionally drive toward a climax and when I got to the end I felt like I hadn’t really gotten anywhere. I had enjoyed the story, but I didn’t feel like I had reached an end point. So, to that end, I guess I shouldn’t say I disliked it, but it was different than what I was expecting, and almost a little unsatisfying.
Response to A Northern Light
Hello, my name is Jerrod…and I loved this book. They say admitting it is the first step. It is beautifully written, lots of mystery surrounding the characters and plot unfolded at the perfect time, believable scenes and circumstances, and just “sick” as the kids say these days. I actually loved this book so much that I’m having trouble figuring out what I want to write about.
Let’s start with the double plotline. This definitely could have been another instance of an author trying to be clever, but it was magnificently worked and I was instantly drawn in. When I started, I thought it was just going to be a flashback story about how they got to the Glenmore, but then they were back at the Glenmore, and then back at home but she wasn’t going to the Glenmore, and I was so confused and loving every second of it. I found myself thinking things like, “Wait, so she’s not going? Oh, I see, this is how she’s going to get to go. Wait, that didn’t work. What? How is this going to happen!? EXPLAIN IT TO ME!!!” I was enraptured in the story and just before I would get to the point of frustration the author would clue me in to something and I would love it and would want to keep reading.
Then, at one point later in the book, I thought that, and I don’t know if the author intended this or not, that the plotlines had converged into one and I was simply reading a straight narrative from that point on. Then, right near the end, I realized I had still been reading the double plotline all along, but I wasn’t aware of it. I was blown away.
The historical accuracy of the book was really outstanding, especially after seeing what lengths she went to to study the time period and how people lived and worked in that part of the country. This type of story feels truly “historical.” Even something like The Book Thief, which is obviously also historical, feels kind of modern because it seems relatively close to the world we live in today. A Northern Light is in a totally different place with how they live and work and just how the world runs.
The addition of the true story of the man and woman lost at sea is masterfully woven into the text. I had no idea it was a real event until I read the author’s note at the end, and it made the story so much more meaningful and made it seem even more well-crafted than I had thought. And so I have to wonder: Why wasn’t the author’s note positioned at the beginning of the book rather than at the end? It definitely has a “concluding” type of feel, and the author seems to be assuming that the reader has just finished the story, so it can’t be moved as is, and while both positions, I believe, have their advantages, I would just be curious to know why this particular decision was made.
I guess the simple way that I would describe this book is honest. I didn’t feel like any of the characters or situations were contrived at all. They felt very real and there was no “fluff” in the text at all, just simple, honest narrative and dialogue. The epitome comes when Minnie is giving birth. Mattie herself says, “I have read so many books, and not one of them tells the truth about babies…There’s no blood, no sweat, no pain, no fear, no heat, no stink. Writers are damned liars. Every single one of them” (93). Well, Jennifer Donnelly is not a liar. From the way Mattie feels when she looks at Royal to the way the teachers and students interact to the reaction Mattie’s dad has to just about everything, it didn’t feel created, it just felt honest.
Let’s start with the double plotline. This definitely could have been another instance of an author trying to be clever, but it was magnificently worked and I was instantly drawn in. When I started, I thought it was just going to be a flashback story about how they got to the Glenmore, but then they were back at the Glenmore, and then back at home but she wasn’t going to the Glenmore, and I was so confused and loving every second of it. I found myself thinking things like, “Wait, so she’s not going? Oh, I see, this is how she’s going to get to go. Wait, that didn’t work. What? How is this going to happen!? EXPLAIN IT TO ME!!!” I was enraptured in the story and just before I would get to the point of frustration the author would clue me in to something and I would love it and would want to keep reading.
Then, at one point later in the book, I thought that, and I don’t know if the author intended this or not, that the plotlines had converged into one and I was simply reading a straight narrative from that point on. Then, right near the end, I realized I had still been reading the double plotline all along, but I wasn’t aware of it. I was blown away.
The historical accuracy of the book was really outstanding, especially after seeing what lengths she went to to study the time period and how people lived and worked in that part of the country. This type of story feels truly “historical.” Even something like The Book Thief, which is obviously also historical, feels kind of modern because it seems relatively close to the world we live in today. A Northern Light is in a totally different place with how they live and work and just how the world runs.
The addition of the true story of the man and woman lost at sea is masterfully woven into the text. I had no idea it was a real event until I read the author’s note at the end, and it made the story so much more meaningful and made it seem even more well-crafted than I had thought. And so I have to wonder: Why wasn’t the author’s note positioned at the beginning of the book rather than at the end? It definitely has a “concluding” type of feel, and the author seems to be assuming that the reader has just finished the story, so it can’t be moved as is, and while both positions, I believe, have their advantages, I would just be curious to know why this particular decision was made.
I guess the simple way that I would describe this book is honest. I didn’t feel like any of the characters or situations were contrived at all. They felt very real and there was no “fluff” in the text at all, just simple, honest narrative and dialogue. The epitome comes when Minnie is giving birth. Mattie herself says, “I have read so many books, and not one of them tells the truth about babies…There’s no blood, no sweat, no pain, no fear, no heat, no stink. Writers are damned liars. Every single one of them” (93). Well, Jennifer Donnelly is not a liar. From the way Mattie feels when she looks at Royal to the way the teachers and students interact to the reaction Mattie’s dad has to just about everything, it didn’t feel created, it just felt honest.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Response to The People Could Fly
I had never read much of anything like this before, so I found it immediately interesting and engaging. As a white boy that grew up in white suburbia, I don’t really have anything like this in my family’s history, or even in my culture’s history for that matter. In fact, I don’t even really feel like I have a “culture” per se. But, actually, as I write this, I think of one piece of folklore that is a part of this land, and that’s the story of Paul Bunyan and how he created Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes with his footsteps. How about that? I honestly just thought of that right now. But I still don’t feel like I have a culture that is a community of people like the slaves or the Native Americans or any number of immigrant people groups. And that’s what I think is really cool about stories like this. They bring a group of people together and give them a common experience and understanding of the world around them. Though the details may be a little different, the stories are very much the same no matter which group of slaves is telling the story.
Of course one of the first things I noticed was the dialect of the stories. I fancy myself a pretty quick reader most of the time, but when I get something like this I have to slow down and focus and make sure that I’m completely understanding what I’m reading. I like that a lot, because it forces me to block out everything else. Usually I can read a book while watching a game on TV and be totally fine, but not with something like this. I had to hole up in my bedroom with no music or anything and slowly read the words. I think this adds a lot to the stories because it makes them seem more authentic. They wouldn’t have the same effect if they were written in modern American English. It would still have the same message and the same lesson, but it wouldn’t feel connected to the slave culture like it does now. It would just feel like any other story that tries to teach a lesson, and so much of the power of these stories is connected to the fact that they are about the slave culture.
The last section of the book, “Carrying the Running-Aways and other Slave Tales of Freedom,” had a similar effect for me as the dialect did because it tell stories from a perspective that few other cultures know. Through the first sections of the book, there were stories that were meant to explain natural phenomena or teach children to act a certain way, and those types of stories come up in a variety of cultures. But the stories of freedom and slavery are so specific to the African-American culture that it really is the essence of the book.
The two stories I found most interesting in that last section were “How Nehemiah Got His Freedom” and “The Talking Cooter,” mainly because they seemed so implausible. For a slave owner to basically say, “Well, I did say I’d let you free if that happened, so you can go free” seems pretty unlikely. And I think that says a lot about how the slaves wished and hoped for freedom, enough to invent stories like this that give them a little glimmer of hope that if they’re smart enough or clever enough they will find their freedom. This implausibility is different in “The People Could Fly” because that is simply a fantasy story while the others seem realistic. Still, the title story again shows how the slaves would cling to these stories as a type of hope.
Finally, I loved how in the freedom tales the slaves seemed genuinely happy and excited that other slaves gained freedom. There didn’t seem to be any hint of “Why did Nehemiah get to go free and not me?” or “How come those people could fly and I can’t?” It really did seem like they were excited that some people got out and if those people can get out, maybe someday the other slaves could gain their freedom as well.
Of course one of the first things I noticed was the dialect of the stories. I fancy myself a pretty quick reader most of the time, but when I get something like this I have to slow down and focus and make sure that I’m completely understanding what I’m reading. I like that a lot, because it forces me to block out everything else. Usually I can read a book while watching a game on TV and be totally fine, but not with something like this. I had to hole up in my bedroom with no music or anything and slowly read the words. I think this adds a lot to the stories because it makes them seem more authentic. They wouldn’t have the same effect if they were written in modern American English. It would still have the same message and the same lesson, but it wouldn’t feel connected to the slave culture like it does now. It would just feel like any other story that tries to teach a lesson, and so much of the power of these stories is connected to the fact that they are about the slave culture.
The last section of the book, “Carrying the Running-Aways and other Slave Tales of Freedom,” had a similar effect for me as the dialect did because it tell stories from a perspective that few other cultures know. Through the first sections of the book, there were stories that were meant to explain natural phenomena or teach children to act a certain way, and those types of stories come up in a variety of cultures. But the stories of freedom and slavery are so specific to the African-American culture that it really is the essence of the book.
The two stories I found most interesting in that last section were “How Nehemiah Got His Freedom” and “The Talking Cooter,” mainly because they seemed so implausible. For a slave owner to basically say, “Well, I did say I’d let you free if that happened, so you can go free” seems pretty unlikely. And I think that says a lot about how the slaves wished and hoped for freedom, enough to invent stories like this that give them a little glimmer of hope that if they’re smart enough or clever enough they will find their freedom. This implausibility is different in “The People Could Fly” because that is simply a fantasy story while the others seem realistic. Still, the title story again shows how the slaves would cling to these stories as a type of hope.
Finally, I loved how in the freedom tales the slaves seemed genuinely happy and excited that other slaves gained freedom. There didn’t seem to be any hint of “Why did Nehemiah get to go free and not me?” or “How come those people could fly and I can’t?” It really did seem like they were excited that some people got out and if those people can get out, maybe someday the other slaves could gain their freedom as well.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Book Week Makeup
Since I won't be able to attend book week, I decided to pick up a topic I'm almost positive won't be studied in class, but that I'm very interested in: Christian Fiction.
Fiction has been pretty rare in Christian writing circles over the years, and I think that's because it's very hard to write. It's hard to be real about emotions, struggles, and the saving grace of Jesus without sounding "preachy" or "pious." Non-fiction is huge because people can just tell their stories or talk about what God has done in their lives or how great a marriage based on Jesus can be, or a host of other topics, but fiction doesn't get a lot of play.
The best Christian fiction books seem to be those that don't directly call themselves Christian books. Things like Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" (my favorite book ever) or Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" are amazing books with Christian themes or just outright allegories of Jesus, but they don't make a point of telling the reader that. But, I have to wonder, is the book sharing Jesus if the reader doesn't know that's what the book is talking about?
I have more to say, but I'll fast-forward to Christian fiction for teenagers. I searched online to find some examples of books I could check out and read the descriptors of each one. They all sounded kind of, well, lame. The stories didn't sound terribly interesting, and the characters seemed fake. The situations they found themselves in were no better, hardly relatable to most people.
So I picked up "Left Behind: The Kids" from our church library and read it in about 90 minutes. It is of course based on the wildly popular "Left Behind" series, and I really tried not let my knowledge of the authors' incorrect doctrine get in the way of what I would read. While I appreciate the message the book is trying to spread, the writing is not great. It uses very stereotypical characters, both Christian and non-Christian, to make its points, and it is riddled with cliches, again about Christians and non-Christians alike. Now, a junior high student may not see it that way because they haven't read a lot or know what stereotypes or cliches are prevalent because they have little experience. To that end, the book would be interesting for them.
I think that's the trap a lot of Christian fiction falls into. I think it's kind of hard to write realistic stories with interesting characters when you have a motive for your writing other than "write a good book." It often becomes forced and the message has to get in at the expense of the story or the characters. And I think teenagers are smart enough to see what's going on there.
Obviously I have little experience with this topic, which is why I picked it to study, so I hope to keep reading and finding good books with Christian themes so I have something to point my kids to when they're old enough.
Fiction has been pretty rare in Christian writing circles over the years, and I think that's because it's very hard to write. It's hard to be real about emotions, struggles, and the saving grace of Jesus without sounding "preachy" or "pious." Non-fiction is huge because people can just tell their stories or talk about what God has done in their lives or how great a marriage based on Jesus can be, or a host of other topics, but fiction doesn't get a lot of play.
The best Christian fiction books seem to be those that don't directly call themselves Christian books. Things like Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" (my favorite book ever) or Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" are amazing books with Christian themes or just outright allegories of Jesus, but they don't make a point of telling the reader that. But, I have to wonder, is the book sharing Jesus if the reader doesn't know that's what the book is talking about?
I have more to say, but I'll fast-forward to Christian fiction for teenagers. I searched online to find some examples of books I could check out and read the descriptors of each one. They all sounded kind of, well, lame. The stories didn't sound terribly interesting, and the characters seemed fake. The situations they found themselves in were no better, hardly relatable to most people.
So I picked up "Left Behind: The Kids" from our church library and read it in about 90 minutes. It is of course based on the wildly popular "Left Behind" series, and I really tried not let my knowledge of the authors' incorrect doctrine get in the way of what I would read. While I appreciate the message the book is trying to spread, the writing is not great. It uses very stereotypical characters, both Christian and non-Christian, to make its points, and it is riddled with cliches, again about Christians and non-Christians alike. Now, a junior high student may not see it that way because they haven't read a lot or know what stereotypes or cliches are prevalent because they have little experience. To that end, the book would be interesting for them.
I think that's the trap a lot of Christian fiction falls into. I think it's kind of hard to write realistic stories with interesting characters when you have a motive for your writing other than "write a good book." It often becomes forced and the message has to get in at the expense of the story or the characters. And I think teenagers are smart enough to see what's going on there.
Obviously I have little experience with this topic, which is why I picked it to study, so I hope to keep reading and finding good books with Christian themes so I have something to point my kids to when they're old enough.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Response to Joyful Noise
I thought this was a very interesting book. I didn’t think much of the picture of the butterfly on the cover, it seemed like a fairly normal type of drawing to put on a cover, but then I started reading and thought, “Oh, all these poems are about…bugs. Really?” I paged through the book and discovered that, yes, all of these poems were, in fact, about bugs. “Well,” I thought, “I suppose there are worse things to read poems about.” So I settled in and started reading about bugs. Fifteen minutes later, as I finished the book, I was surprisingly satisfied. And I think that has to do with my expectations as a reader. When I saw the whole book was just poems about bugs, my expectations fell off a cliff. I wasn’t expecting anything very intellectual or deep, and so I just enjoyed the poems for what they were, and I really did enjoy them. I think it’s interesting how our expectations as readers can shape our reactions to text, most of the time without realizing it. When I was younger my aunt sent me The Indian in the Cupboard. Based on the picture on the front, I thought it looked boring, so I didn’t read it until over a year later. I quite literally judged the book by its cover. When I did finally read it, I was so amazed that it wasn’t boring that I thought it was the greatest book ever written. After a few years, I realized it was very good but not quite as good as I had originally thought, but the fact that I was expecting nothing made it seem amazing. Okay, anyway, back to Joyful Noise.
Like The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I really liked the visual aspect of the book. I thought the drawings added a lot, but only the realistic drawings. There were certain bugs being talked about that I didn’t know what they were, so the pictures helped me imagine the bugs and know what the poems were talking about. But I didn’t like the pictures that were cartoonish. I’m thinking specifically about “Book Lice” and “Honeybees.” That’s not how bugs look. They don’t have cute faces and they certainly don’t lounge on davenports. That just didn’t do it for me. And I think if every picture would have been in that cartoonish style, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it because it would become just another aspect of the book. But with so many poems having realistic drawings, the cartoony drawings seem awkward and out of place.
One of the reasons I really liked this book was because of the performance factor. The author states right up front that it is to be read aloud. Some people would say that all poetry should always be read aloud and nothing else is acceptable. I completely disagree with this, but with these poems it makes a lot of sense. I coach the speech team at Wayzata High School, and as I was reading these poems I could definitely see a duo speech going on. I was hearing the way the words worked together and picturing what it would like with people performing the poems. Not just reading, but performing. And I thought it was rather easy to pick out which poems would work the best for that type of speech. “Honeybees” would be really fun, and I thought “The Digger Wasp” was strangely touching. “House Crickets” could be interesting, and “Mayflies” would be too. I think anything that gets students out of their chairs and doing something is great, and this is definitely something I could use in a 9th grade class. To get the kids thinking about how poetry as performance is so fun and exciting is a great thing.
Like The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I really liked the visual aspect of the book. I thought the drawings added a lot, but only the realistic drawings. There were certain bugs being talked about that I didn’t know what they were, so the pictures helped me imagine the bugs and know what the poems were talking about. But I didn’t like the pictures that were cartoonish. I’m thinking specifically about “Book Lice” and “Honeybees.” That’s not how bugs look. They don’t have cute faces and they certainly don’t lounge on davenports. That just didn’t do it for me. And I think if every picture would have been in that cartoonish style, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it because it would become just another aspect of the book. But with so many poems having realistic drawings, the cartoony drawings seem awkward and out of place.
One of the reasons I really liked this book was because of the performance factor. The author states right up front that it is to be read aloud. Some people would say that all poetry should always be read aloud and nothing else is acceptable. I completely disagree with this, but with these poems it makes a lot of sense. I coach the speech team at Wayzata High School, and as I was reading these poems I could definitely see a duo speech going on. I was hearing the way the words worked together and picturing what it would like with people performing the poems. Not just reading, but performing. And I thought it was rather easy to pick out which poems would work the best for that type of speech. “Honeybees” would be really fun, and I thought “The Digger Wasp” was strangely touching. “House Crickets” could be interesting, and “Mayflies” would be too. I think anything that gets students out of their chairs and doing something is great, and this is definitely something I could use in a 9th grade class. To get the kids thinking about how poetry as performance is so fun and exciting is a great thing.
Response to 19 Varieties of Gazelle
My first response to this book was, interestingly, not to the text or content at all. That’s odd for me because I’m usually very focused on those things, but instead this time my first response was to the form and layout of the book. I stared at the cover for about five minutes trying to figure out what the picture is. I wondered if it was Nye herself, and thought it would be really funny for an author to put a picture of herself on the cover of a non-politically inclined book. So then I thought it was a different girl who was just supposed to be representative of a Middle Eastern person. Looking closely, it looks to me like the girl is wearing a normal, “American” sweatshirt, which surprised me a little. If she is supposed to represent Middle Eastern culture, why is she wearing a piece of American clothing? Especially when she has the head wrap that is so representative or symbolic of that culture. And then it dawned on me that perhaps that’s exactly what Nye wanted on the cover, a younger person who melds the Middle Eastern culture with the American culture. It sets the tone for the book, that though it says “poems of the Middle East” on the cover, this is not a book for, by, or about the Middle East. It is a book that speaks to cultures and peoples and stereotypes and experiences beyond any border. It brings, especially, the American and Middle Eastern cultures into one human experience.
One thing I wanted to know was what the girl on the cover is holding. I didn’t see it anywhere in the acknowledgements or copyright page or anything. And I didn’t notice it anywhere in the poems themselves, though I wouldn’t know what I was looking for if it was named in a poem, so I guess it could have been anywhere and I just wouldn’t have known it. It’s a really cool looking thing, and I really wanted to know what it is, but I couldn’t find it.
That brings me to the form of the text inside the book. I’m not sure I can totally explain it, but I just really liked the layout. I like the first letter of each poem being all fancy, and I like the title of each poem going up the side of the page. It sort of leads your eye in a circular pattern instead of a rectangular pattern, if that makes any sense. But the thing I liked most was the little leaf emblem at the end of each poem. When I’m reading a poem, it’s important for me to know where the poem ends. It affects how I read the poem. So knowing exactly when each poem ends is sort of a deal for me. I know that sounds weird, but I loved that.
Okay, to this point in the paper, it may seem like I didn’t actually read the book. I assure, I did. The whole thing. And I won’t lie to you, I thought the form and layout were better than the actual poetry in the book. There were moments when I thought, “Wow, this is really, really good stuff.” But those moments were not common. One such example, however, is “My Father and the Figtree” (6). This was the second poem in the book, and so it gave me high hopes for the rest of the poems. The personal nature of the poem is really quite beautiful, and the symbolism of the figtree as this joyful, lovely, make-life-better thing that everyone chases is outstanding. And I love that he doesn’t rush after it, he simply bides him time, seeming to know that it would be better to hold the memory than accept an imitation. And in the end, he gets what he wanted all along. Somehow, in this shattered world, there are little bits of hope.
One thing I wanted to know was what the girl on the cover is holding. I didn’t see it anywhere in the acknowledgements or copyright page or anything. And I didn’t notice it anywhere in the poems themselves, though I wouldn’t know what I was looking for if it was named in a poem, so I guess it could have been anywhere and I just wouldn’t have known it. It’s a really cool looking thing, and I really wanted to know what it is, but I couldn’t find it.
That brings me to the form of the text inside the book. I’m not sure I can totally explain it, but I just really liked the layout. I like the first letter of each poem being all fancy, and I like the title of each poem going up the side of the page. It sort of leads your eye in a circular pattern instead of a rectangular pattern, if that makes any sense. But the thing I liked most was the little leaf emblem at the end of each poem. When I’m reading a poem, it’s important for me to know where the poem ends. It affects how I read the poem. So knowing exactly when each poem ends is sort of a deal for me. I know that sounds weird, but I loved that.
Okay, to this point in the paper, it may seem like I didn’t actually read the book. I assure, I did. The whole thing. And I won’t lie to you, I thought the form and layout were better than the actual poetry in the book. There were moments when I thought, “Wow, this is really, really good stuff.” But those moments were not common. One such example, however, is “My Father and the Figtree” (6). This was the second poem in the book, and so it gave me high hopes for the rest of the poems. The personal nature of the poem is really quite beautiful, and the symbolism of the figtree as this joyful, lovely, make-life-better thing that everyone chases is outstanding. And I love that he doesn’t rush after it, he simply bides him time, seeming to know that it would be better to hold the memory than accept an imitation. And in the end, he gets what he wanted all along. Somehow, in this shattered world, there are little bits of hope.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)