Who Cares? One of THE CRITICAL picture books that every child should have.
I-hate-lit rating: 5. Kids love it, and parents love reading it.
Classic Quickie: MWB wrote many children’s books, but Goodnight Moon is one of those picture books where everything just…WORKS. Incredibly well. (Runaway Bunny is her other incredible book.) It is quiet, meditative, poetic, and the pictures are a perfect complement. It made the NY Public Library’s list of greatest books ever, which is why I’m reviewing it here.
Good night comb. Goodnight brush. Goodnight nobody. Goodnight mush.
Who Cares? The second most famous book by the Bronte sisters, Wuthering Heights is full of great atmosphere and delicious drama.
I-hate-lit rating: 3. The language is denser than in Jane Eyre, and the end isn’t terribly happy.
Classic Quickie: The story of two twisted families through two generations of love, lust, abuse, and drama. Heathcliff, an orphan, is obsessed with Cathy, the girl with whom he was raised. Cathy loves Heathcliff but marries her neighbor Edgar for the glamour and has a daughter before dying. Heathcliff marries Edgar’s sister in revenge, gives her a son, and abuses her, and she dies. Cathy’s brother marries and has a son, and both the brother and his wife die. Heathcliff’s son marries Emily’s daughter…and dies. Cathy’s brother’s son and Emilys daughter are now making eyes at one another, hinting at the possibility of a happy ending. If no one dies. In short, there’s a great deal of lust, revenge, marriage, and dramatic death.
It’s great.
It is wonderfully written–and wonderfully spooky. This book got me really hooked on classic lit in seventh grade. It is really, really GOOD…and oh-so-Gothic.
Who Cares? The best-known book by a female British novelist during the first half of the 19th century.
I-hate-lit rating: 4. Long but compelling.
Classic Quickie: Jane Eyre is a wonderful book, full of fire and strength and deliciously Gothic. The heroine Jane is small and mousy but strong and self-willed, and even though I’ve wanted to smack Mr. Rochester around a few times for his behavior, I still root for their happy end every time I read it. And the crazy woman in the attic? Definitely spooky.
If you haven’t read it, you’re missing out hugely. Pick it up. It’s wonderful.
…have way too much time on their hands.
Who Cares? Mother Courage and Her Children is a famous anti-Nazi/modern alienation play.
I-hate-lit rating: 3. It’s an easy read, but the oddity and depressing beginning…middle…end will turn some people off
Classic Quickie: I can’t help it. I love this play, and I’m not really sure why. Mother Courage is trying to make a buck (a mark?) off the Thirty Years’ War and ends up losing her entire family. It’s brutal, it’s depressing, it highlights the evils and dehumanization that war often brings…and it’s incredibly compelling, too. I’ve read it two or three times. Give it a shot. It’s really good.
Butlers in the Buff.
At least they didn’t call themselves Buttlers.
Europe is, too.
But few people realize how worthless the education of the vast majority of those hundreds of thousands of Indian “engineers” truly is. India does not even have enough qualified engineers to be the INSTRUCTORS of all the “engineers” it has recently turned out every year. Most of them have the equivalent of a technology-oriented high school education–most of the rest have the equivalent of a two-year tech degree. If anything, their generous labeling of their graduates as “engineers” is going to badly hurt India as foreign companies learn how meaningless the designation is.
Oh, well.
Still, it’s intersting that Europe’s postsecondary institutions are struggling when compared to the US’ when the US has so many problems in primary and secondary education…
Nazi propaganda, including a middle school geography textbook.
This could encourage students to understand how propaganda works and to think about the kinds of bias that might be in their own texts.
