Monica Edinger's Blog, page 71

David Nicholls: Adapting Great Expectations for the screen | Books | The Guardian

Outstanding essay on adapting Dickens. Highly recommended.

David Nicholls: Adapting Great Expectations for the screen | Books | The Guardian.

Not So Nice Review (Not Mine)

Periodically there is discussion about the state of reviewing and whether critical reviews, particularly negative ones, are still possible in this age of social media. My reviewing is pretty much limited to books and the occasional movie or stage production so I have no idea if this same debate is going on in the world of restaurant reviewing. All I do know is that New York Times restaurant reviewer Pete Wells is out for blood inhis latest review. Punch by punch by punch it exudes fury like n...

Stop Calling Books for Kids YA!

More and more I’m seeing “young adult book” used in popular culture as an umbrella term for a wide assortment of titles only some of which are actually teen books. In articles, favorites lists, and blog posts, books being identified as young adult are in fact books for younger readers, children that is.

For example, The Atlantic‘s post “The Best of the Young Adult B-Sides” includesGregor the Overlanderwhich is a book for children firstly even if teens read it too. Granted, the post’s writers d...

Something Philip Pullman Learned from the Grimm About Writing

Philip Pullman’s response to Rachel Martin asking, in this NPR interview, what he has taken away from the Grimm project as he works on The Book of Dust:

These stories move very quickly. There’s not an ounce of narrative fat in them. They go very, very swiftly from event to event. Another thing, you see very few adverbs in them. So I’m trying to cut down on my adverbs.

Philip Pullman on All Sorts of Things

Excellent and expansive interview here.

Philip Pullman reads “The Three Snake Leaves”

Here’s a BBC3 podcast with a brief interview with Philip Pullman on his new fairy tale collection and then, best of all, his reading from one of them, “The Three Snake Leaves.”

Students and Storms

In one room, 66 sixth graders used folding chairs and tables donated by a parent who works in the catering business. They talked about their experiences in the storm. One boy, small, with a buzz cut and bright blue eyes, started out with a joke. “It was a dark and stormy night. …” But soon he broke down into sobs as he recounted watching the floods in his basement and the fires in Breezy Point burn down part of his neighborhood. Ann Marie Todes, a teacher, hugged him closely.

From “More Studen...

In the Classroom: Real and Fictional Hurricanes

Anyone that says he ain’t scared in a hurricane is a liar or a fool. That’s what the Colonel says. A hurricane spins up like you’re nothing, and takes your world apart like it’s nothing too. There’s no time in it, no sense of the sun moving, no waxing or waning light. All you can do is breathe and ignore the world flying to pieces beyond your door.

I’m looking forward to seeing my 4th graders tomorrow after a week apart. And as I reworked my lesson plans it hit me that we would be in the midst...

What a Wind!

This has been quite a week. Sandy visited us here in NYC and she was NOT a good house guest. Unlike those I’ve had as a result of her dreadful behavior. Say mygood friend Roxanne Feldman (aka fairrosa) who had to evacuate her home on Sunday and has been with me ever since. Or her husband David who joined us the night of the storm and came with me as I walked my twelve pound dog who got pretty blown about as we tried to get her to …do…something… between falling tree limbs and watched a couple...

Are Children’s Books So Stylistically Different from Books for Adults?

Just saw the following in a NYTimes review of J.K. Rowling’s new adult novel. So I’m wondering — is this really so true? Seems rather an overgeneralization to me.

Rowling has not been able to shed certain stylistic features that are acceptable or even expected from children’s authors. Juvenile literature often uses physical metaphors to highlight emotional states because in children the two tend to be so closely allied. “The Casual Vacancy” has various characters feeling guilt “clawing” at the...