Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 31

Book Reviews: The Iliad and The Odyssey Graphic Novels

Image from Amazon.com

I do intend to read a translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey one day. I actually believe I already read The Odyssey in high school. But this is where I am right now. I have stumbled upon the graphic novels of Gareth Hinds in my obsession with coming up with things that my middle school boy will read. I have now purchased The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Beowulf for our home school shelves. While teaching mythology to a small classroom of approximately-ninth-graders this year, I decided to have a looky-loo at these graphic novel versions of the Trojan War and Odysseus stories.

In case you somehow don’t know, The Iliad and The Odyssey are ancient Greek, epic poems. They are some of the oldest works of literature in the world and are based on a combination of history (perhaps) and Greek mythology. We don’t actually know too much about Homer and “he” might have been a number of people or not really Homer at all. The important thing is that The Iliad and The Odyssey were recorded (from an amalgam of oral tradition, basically) and have had an enormous impact on the thinking, literature, and story-telling of the World, especially the Western World. You can currently read either of these classics in any of a huge number of translations and adaptations, including annotated versions, picture books, and movies.

Image from Amazon.com

The Iliad covers the end of the legendary Trojan War. A ten-year war between the people of Troy (Turkish, basically) and an alliance of Greeks (but at the gates of Troy) erupted pretty much over Helen, the stolen wife of a Greek King. Of course the gods also had something to do with it because they are mischief makers. The war just went on and on and on, and, like I said, The Iliad picks up in its final year. There’s a tiff between two of the Greek leaders over another woman, there are great disagreements happening on Olympus, lots of back and forth and miraculous interference, a sorta lame Trojan prince, and of course the Trojan Horse. The Odyssey then picks up the story of one of the Greek heroes of the Trojan War, Odysseus, as he journeys home from the war. It takes him ten years. The story itself isn’t chronological, but shifts around from his now-grown son and his still-longing wife trying ineffectually to protect themselves and the estate from hundreds of raucous suitors, Odysseus stuck for seven years on an island with Calypso the nymph, and Odysseus telling about the three years before those seven when he was having some ill-fated adventures with his even-more-ill-fated crew.

In the graphic novel versions, Hinds attempts to cover everything in the epics, but paring things down enough to move it way faster and fit all those illustrations in a readable format. I think he mostly accomplishes this. The battles, true, were a little confusing and his “marking” each character didn’t really help me. Then again, I was mostly like I don’t care which guy does what thing but I still was able to remember the important bits. Occasionally the narrative got lost and I thought I was missing a page or something because it does move so fast, from one thing to the next to the next. You might have to do some flipping back and forth and double-checking. But I also have issues in general with reading graphic novels. My ADHD has difficulty with the flow of pictures and words on the pages. It’s so flashy, I don’t know where to settle. This is clearly my issue, not Hinds’. The illustrations are colorful, clear, well-drawn, though not exactly artistic in a way that I would vote for. They get the job done and they do it well without any stylistic nonsense. There’s a little sex and a lot of gore, but it is about as tasteful as one could make Greek mythology.

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To be honest, I’m not sure how much I’m going to like reading Homer when I get around to the unabridged translations, one day. I don’t exactly dig war epics. So while the Odyssey had some real intrigue and adventure to interest me, The Iliad was more of a stretch. Still a classic, though, and I find reading and studying Greek and Roman mythology to be, in general, both enjoyable and curiosity-sating. And waking to the imagination. I would say that Gareth Hinds’ versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey are excellent books for young readers to introduce them to the epics and are great companions to a unit in mythology or ancient literature. Even if you’re not so young, they’re a perhaps lighter and more flashy—and shorter—way to learn about Achilles and Odysseus and all those other heroes, gods and goddesses, and monsters.

The Creativity Web

I already wrote a blog recently about my making an altered book. I am only one page and half a cover in, by the way, because my life continues to be too busy for life. But enough about first world problems for a second. I have enjoyed so much figuring out how to make an altered book, teaching my students how to make an altered book, watching them get started, spending time at Hobby Lobby and Jerry’s Artarama with my son spending too much on supplies (even though we reigned it in, really), and then sitting at the dining room table with him doing actual art. Cutting, pasting, painting, drawing…

Here’s the thing I’ve noticed: I make an interactive collage of Matilda and suddenly I’m up half the night scribbling notes in some fan fic I started a couple years ago.

In other words, creativity begets creativity. Art begets art.

When I was in college, I quit singing and playing the trumpet. Mostly, anyhow. I purposely didn’t join any bands (well, until that ska band came along) or any choirs (except that one gospel choir) because, as I said it, I had too many hobbies. And it was as true then as it is now. You can only do so much in a day, lady. I wanted to still be able to paint and do photography on the side and do lots and lots of writing. Later, with a family and especially small children, I put more things on the back burner until cooking, blogging, and the worship team where the only little pilot lights still burning where anyone could see them. But there was a nuance to the algebra of life that I wasn’t understanding. (Probably a whole lot more that I’m still not getting, but.) Doing something creative may take literal time away from doing other creative things, but it feeds into it all the same. When you take creative things out of your life—no matter what those things are—you are subtracting from your creative juices. Likewise, it’s not the creative hobbies that are distracting from your flow, from your creative output. It’s all that time doing the completely noncreative things of life.

When I started flexing all those old, familiar and somewhat atrophied muscles sitting down and making that altered book, suddenly synapses started going like fireworks in my brain. I had about a million ideas for picture books, restaurant menus, city murals, dog fashion, not to mention novels and short stories. I felt like my old self again. The blood was flowing. The gears were whirring. I thought I was wearing down a little because reality creeps in and you get older. Turns out the wonder of a child can be found a little bit in first behaving like a child.

You may believe that creativity can’t be forced, that art can’t be funneled. Read my blog; I’ve never actually supported that idea. I’ve seen great art come from perspiration and determination, at least where talent and tools are already available. In my life I have now come to the acknowledgement that, let’s say it together, creativity begets creativity. If that means I’m going to jump on a wave of collaging inspiration come hell or high water (or appointments and long work days), then I’ll jump on that wave. Because I know that wave isn’t going to take me out to sea, it’s going to take me wave after wave to my dreamboat.

Introducing the Altered Book

I have been obsessed lately, and it has something to do with books but not exactly what you would guess. We could go easy on me and call it distracted instead of obsessed. I just know that I have to keep myself as far as possible from the temptation while I am otherwise engaged with responsibility, which is most of the time.

At Buxton Village Books. This book might be the art of Carol Owen.

Over the summer, we managed to take a few Covid-careful mini-vacas. One of them was for my mother’s 60th and we stayed in an Airbnb in Buxton which you may know as the town where Cape Hatteras is located, as well as the famous lighthouse. Turns out it’s a town full of townies, but that’s another story. Along the main drag (and on the Outer Banks there is often only one drag between shores) sits a little, white house on the Sound side with a sign out front: Buxton Village Books. This book store is somewhat famous and it is a lovely place: I wouldn’t miss it when visiting despite it’s somewhat inhibitive hours. When checking out at the counter, I looked up and what did I spy? I don’t know. They looked… interesting. I reached out and carefully removed it from it’s shelf away from little hands and started to rifle through. Then I called my daughter and we looked together.

It is called an altered book. Perhaps you have encountered them, perhaps not. It is not exactly a book, though physically it is. It is a piece of art work somewhere between a scrapbook and a portfolio. Of course they can be drastically different but the gist is this: an artist takes an old, hardcover book that is no longer of use, rips out half the pages (sacrilege! But still…), gives it a new cover and usually a theme, and then fills every page with visual creativity, often concentrating on interactive elements. I was in love, though the mermaid-themed book I was holding was too rich for my vacation budget. I thought, “Oh man, I totally want to make one of these.” (If you aren’t aware, besides my being a writer and my enthusiasm about books, I am an artist. I say that I’ll enjoy and have aptitude at anything creative as long as it doesn’t set off my ADHD (read: knitting and jewelry-making). Included in this is visual arts, my preferred mediums being paint and collage. I have sold stuff here and there, had some shows. I’m not the best but I’ve spent a lifetime creating art.)

Fast forward almost no time at all and I was at home planning my curriculum for the homeschool co-op class I am teaching this year (that is not ninth grade English), middle school and high school art. I had already decided to simplify everything by making it a 2D, paper-based exploration of mediums that would concentrate on experimentation and actual art as opposed to lecture or detailed technique. Then I thought of altered books. (I also thought of book nooks, but the board made me pick one.) This would make an excellent year-long project, right!? And then I could do one, too. (That’s me ignoring my near-perfect track record of NOT doing projects—even the ones I want to—along with my student(s).)

Working on Matilda.

Lo and behold, the pandemic has taught me something and darned if I am not actually doing the altered book project with my students. After doing some basic sketching and contour drawing in class, while diving into charcoal and ink-with-watercolor, I set them their weekly tasks of finding the right sort of book, ripping it up, repairing it, etc. This week we are all supposed to be doing out first page(s) of our themed books. My theme is “Heroines of Juvenile Fiction” and my first page (which is done, actually) is Matilda (as in Roald Dahl’s Matilda). The pull-tab makes static on the “telly” and the wheel makes things levitate around the room. I used collage and ink-with-watercolor to pull it off. (I have demanded that they give me a theme, at least ten different techniques/mediums, at least ten original drawings/paintings, and at least six interactive elements.) They are almost as enthused as I am. I have a lot of passion about some things.

My son working on the cover to his monsters-themed book

Interested? You should be. (Advice: you should also limit your trips to Hobby Lobby and pay with a set amount of cash.) Below are the directions that I gave the kids. We are learning as we go and I started off by watching a few YouTube videos, all by women walking me through the beginning stages of the process. Everyone in the class is excited and my son and I are spending time together at the dining room table, coming up with very different books while having both quality time together and a nice, creative experience.

ALTERED BOOK PROJECT

STEP 1: Find and purchase a book that you will be completely altering during this process. Good places to look might be a thrift store, used bookstore, or antiques store. You can choose a children’s picture book or a chapter book, but it must be hard cover and you don’t want it to be TOO long. You might want it to be pleasing to the eye, especially the cover, because you won’t necessarily be covering EVERY square centimeter of the entire thing. Bits and pieces might show where you incorporate them into your art, especially if you find something with great illustrations. The binding should be holding together well. It should be sewn together, not glued and the paper should be matte, not shiny.

STEP 2: Choose a theme. It could really be anything, but it will help to reign in your ideas and make the book one, unified project if you pick a theme. Mermaids. Monsters. Dogs. Harry Potter. Whatever.

STEP 3: If your book is long/thick, find the centers of the sewed-together sections and remove pages. You want the book to hold up, but you need space for your art and all the stuff you’ll be cramming in there.

STEP 4: Repair your book so that it makes a good altered book. Use fun Duck tape or masking tape (masking tape is the best for painting) to secure the binding and enforce the edges of pages and corners. Don’t do every page of the book if it’s too thick as you’re not going to use all the pages (see STEP 5).

STEP 5: Prepare the book by gluing together several pages to make one (depending on the length of the book. You might not have to do this at all). You can also prepare some pages ahead by covering them with gesso, paint, or collaging in all sorts of papers. You might want to glue some pages together so that there is a pocket accessible by the top or even side. You can also cut a page in half and glue the top and bottom to create a pocket. You’ll fill those pockets later. You don’t have to completely finish this step before moving on. It could be done as you go.

STEP 6: Start filling those pages! One (which means two) at a time, cover them completely (or almost completely) with an original piece of your artwork. You can do the cover first or you can save the cover for the end. Think about adhesives (like two-sided tapes, glues, and Modpodge). Experiment. Learn as you go. Use the mediums we are using in class. Use things that you find in your home. Use things you find at an art store. (The scrapbooking section might be especially helpful.) Use things you find at a scrap store. For this project, you should be featuring actual drawings and paintings of yours. Also think about interaction. It’s really nice to have flaps to open, pockets to hold surprises, and all sorts of other interactive elements in an altered book. Things can hang out the edges. Make it YOU.

(For more thorough directions, there are at least half a dozen how-to books out there. Look ’em up. Our library didn’t have any, but you could purchase one for $15-$30 (or less used). I have my eye on Altered Books Workshop by Bev Brazleton, which could be handy for technique (though, again, so much is available on YouTube tutorials) and also for my students to look at).

Book Review: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Image from Penguin Random House

It might have something to do with having watched and thoroughly enjoyed the Sherlock series with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, but I just love reading Sherlock stories and I had such fun reading The Hound of the Baskervilles. I have previously reviewed the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but I had to re-read this one in particular because I am about to teach it to a ninth grade English class. It has oft been touted as the very best of the Sherlock series (and thus Conan Doyle, the Sherlock series consisting of four novels and fifty-something short stories), and I can see why. If you want to know more about Conan Doyle and the whole shebang, you would do well to click on the link above to the complete series review. Heck, I’ll throw in an extra opportunity for you HERE.

I really think that the kids are going to enjoy this one. An introduction to the mystery genre, it is a continuation of Victorian, British literature (though not really on purpose). I am trying to snag interest with my choices, and I really just think… I may be totally off here. As I started off saying before, part of my love of Sherlock may come from the TV series. (See that above link for reviews of the TV series and movies). But Sherlock is also one of the most interesting characters in literature. I’m not really a mystery fan (caveat: I haven’t read that much in the way of mysteries or detective stories) but I love a good character. Who is Sherlock? Who is Watson? (A little less exciting to explore.) Throw in Moriarty and Mycroft and Inspector Lestrade and you really have so much fun. People have been interpreting Sherlock since he was wildly popular in his time. Still wildly popular because yes, the mysteries are compelling—you certainly don’t want to put the book down—but the characters are so darned intriguing.

On Goodreads, one reviewer called The Hound of the Baskervilles the “perfect novel of its genre.” It does seem that way to me. It is the quintessential detective/crime novel, even if it isn’t quite the first. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (or “Dan Fraulein von Scuderi” by E. T. A. Hoffman) is considered to be the first detective story though there are more obscure examples back into ancient times and in other cultures.  Poe’s “detective,” C. Auguste Dupin, was to become a favorite character of the populace. Throughout the nineteenth century, several detective story writers rose to popularity, such as Emile Gaboriau’s stories of Monsieur Lecoq and Wilkie Collins. In 1887, Sherlock Holmes appeared, and he’s hailed as the most famous of all the fictional detectives.

There can’t be much more to say here. It’s a pretty short novel and yes, you can read it without having read anything else of Sherlock, though the experience would be different, that’s all. There is wit and humor, mystery and clues, multiple suspects and imposing scenery, a dead body and a demon dog, which also makes this book perfect for fall/Halloween reading.

Book Review: Mythology

Image from Amazon.com

I first read Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton when I was in high school. It is unlikely that I read the entire thing, since it can be assigned in pieces and that is probably what my teacher did. Either way, closet nerd that I am, Mythology sparked a number of extracurricular exploits, or at least flourished them. My friends and I nicknamed each other from the Greek pantheon. We made jokes related to mythology. We spoke in them. Why? They were interesting to us. R-rated stories masquerading as historical text about the roots of literature and story-telling. And it all came across a little bit like personality types in the decades before Meyers-Briggs and Enneagram would take the kids of the 80s by storm.

I am currently teaching a ninth grade English class. We are in our first unit, which is mythology. Our first week of mythology covered Greek and Roman mythology. (Yes, we are moving fast, doing more of a comparative mythology than an in-depth study.) I like to bring other sources (the main one being Gods and Heroes by Korwin Briggs) to class to do a bit of a show ‘n’ tell and I also love inundating my students with suggested viewing and reading related to our current studies. We have two copies of Mythology in our house—one from high school and one that I picked up along the way from a relative who was downsizing. Since they are both marked up, it is an instance where I don’t want to get rid of either. So, being the still closet nerdy teacher that I am, I decided to read Mythology the week we were covering it in class. It took two. Or maybe closer to three. We have already moved on through Norse mythology and on to African and Egyptian mythology.

Not that Greek and Roman mythology isn’t still super interesting. It is. But Hamilton’s portrayal of it? Well, it’s less of a portrayal and more of an encyclopedia. So you cover stories and characters from a number of the most important texts that remain of Greek and Roman mythology (ie. Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, etc.), laid out in a scholarly and comprehensive way. She’s not going to embellish them: this is not her job. Her job is to present them as translations of excerpts, combining excerpts to give us a complete picture of the story/character (many times reminding us that this picture is reliant on what stories actually survived and from what time period). So, as is always true when an author is telling and not showing, it’s a bit dry, especially concerning the subject matter (though she does reserve the right to occasionally be sarcastic or even humorous).

But it’s special because it is a cohesive, somewhat comprehensive, and clear retelling of the many stories of gods and heroes of ancient Greece and Rome. It makes me want to read The Odyssey and Iliad, The Aeneid, Medea, and Oedipus Rex, at the least, because no matter how dry you tell it, there is real imagination and juiciness to the tales. I have added a few of them to my current TBR (which, as you may know, is exceedingly long).

There was something that really needled at me while I was reading that I don’t remember from high school. It is possible I didn’t notice. Man, were those ancient myths chock-full of rape and bestiality! And the way Hamilton glazes over it—gods forever “grabbing” or “with” women who are then hiding in caves, pregnant—is, at this point in my life and in human history, unsettling to me. It does make the book more accessible for younger people and less controversial for a more general reading, but it feels a little wrong to basically ignore it. Hardly a god or hero wasn’t born without someone raping someone else, god or man. Gods were forever raping young women, abandoning them, torturing them, and getting it on with hooved creatures of all sorts weather they be a woman in disguise, a goddess in disguise, or just some really handsome livestock. It really makes you wonder about the culture from which these stories arose. Hamilton does remark repeatedly that later Greeks and Romans were turned off by the misbehaving of the gods and tried to sweep the original versions under the rug. It’s enough to make a girl real glad she wasn’t an ancient person, for reals.

It is also interesting—in a much sunnier way—to see the origins of so many things. Some of these things are literary and have their roots back in the mythology of the Greeks. Likewise, some of those literary things are more obvious (Till We Have Faces as the retelling of Cupid and Psyche) and some more subtle (the guard dog, Fluffy, in Harry Potter, sharing some important characteristics and plot-points with Cerberus, the guard dog of Hades). Other allusions go beyond literature, from the naming of Sirius Radio, Amazon, and Nike to phrases like the Midas touch, psychological references like Oedipus Complex and language, ie. “narcissism.” When you thought someone in history was being creative, chances are they were just borrowing from the creativity of the ancient Greeks. It was also interesting to note how our thought (in the western world via Europe) has developed in a line pretty clearly from the ancient Greeks.

In conclusion, I always enjoy reading about the Greek and Roman myths and Hamilton is the classic. Mythology is informative, straight-forward, and logically organized. In future (having read it twice), I will likely use it as a reference while I dive into more creative and derivative stuff, including the classic plays and poems. On my list are The Odyssey, The Iliad, Metamorphoses, The Aeneid, Medea, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Circe, Achilles, and maybe even A Thousand Ships, The Penelopiad, and Mythos by Stephen Fry.

Book Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

If you’re new here, then you alone are not sick of hearing this: I was reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in order to write a curriculum for ninth grade homeschoolers in a class I am teaching this year. I was really hoping this one would stick, even though it’s a touch longer than I would be including, ideally. Punch line: I am not going to include it in the curriculum, though I would recommend the book.

I can’t imagine the vast majority of you are not familiar with Maya Angelou and her work. Nonetheless, I eulogized her HERE, so if you are curious about her, that would be a good place to read a few paragraphs about her life and work. In short, she’s one of the most famous authors of several generations and had a varied career from civil rights activist to poet to Broadway singer. Her work has inspired and educated millions of people around the world, largely through her poetry and her series of memoirs about growing up Black in America through the twentieth century and sometimes poor and sometimes abused or neglected.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings might be her most-read work, a memoir first in the series and chronologically covering from birth to age sixteen. It’s autobiography, which is why it has some plot and continuity issues (not in factuality, but in flow). It moves in fits and lurches, which is probably how Angelou’s memory functions and also how she managed to glean the important bits from her early story. It’s really uneven, but how else would it be? Her life from age three to age sixteen was really uneven. And the surprise twist at the end that lacked foreshadowing and any context from earlier? Well, that’s how it went down. I suppose, nowadays, we would demand more of our memoirists/autobiographers, perhaps because there are so many of them and we have so many talented and educated people with a laptop and a story, out there. Angelou could have done some fancy flash-forwards or leaned heavy on unimportant facts early on or something, but it turns out she was ahead of her time as it was, breaking ground as a story-teller in her day and age and for her gender and race and any number of other things.

I like the idea of giving trigger warnings for some books. This one! There is (graphic) child rape in it, teen sex and sexuality, abuse, racism (duh), and even some lightly-mentioned murder and assault. Racism is a large part of why this book exists, so that would really only recommend it to a lot of people. But the section about Angelou’s rape by a boyfriend of her mother’s is pretty rough. And I found that both that scene and the later chapters dealing with her sexuality to be more brutal because she was so uninformed and confused through all of it, abandoned, neglected. Seeing these things through the eyes of ignorance made them more painful when there are no heroes swooping in, no redeeming, climatic moments. The rape, especially, becomes part of the “tapestry” of her mind and emotions, lying dormant where no one will walk through it with her.

Which is why I decided to shelve this one for my ninth grade English class. There are things to explore, here, which is made clear by the sheer number of people and especially students who have read it through the years since 1969. It’s a modern American classic and has been translated around the world. I had a hard time seeing it as a triumph of the spirit that many others claim it is. I thought Angelou barely emerged from the story at all, let alone as some sort of heroine. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but she ended up still confused, still unsupported, still young and somehow naïve in strange ways. Sure, we go on a childhood journey that is worth exploring, but partly because of the real-life depravity and pain. Who she would become, the Maya Angelou of world-wide fame, isn’t at all evident by the end of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (which was the first of the six-part series).

There are wonderful things about this book which make otherwise smart people say things like the rape scene is “tasteful” and appropriate for children. (Yes, it is told from the perspective of a child but she actually describes being ripped open.) For one, Angelou’s language is at times poetic. There are many moments of insight. The perspective is refreshingly different and the way she puts herself into her own mind as a child is admirable, candid, searing. There are no literary mistakes here: we are walking down a clear path of reminiscence and consideration. And to top it off, we get to take a trip down history lane, including the dark underbelly of Jim Crow and America’s long relationship with racism but also in a million, little details (though it’s worth noting that Angelou’s experience is not that of the Everyman. She appears to have a frequently unique, sometimes Jazz Age, Black Wonderland-ish childhood and coming-of-age).

It’s certainly worth the read and definitely a recommend, but for whom and under what circumstances? I would say high school is the earliest I would have a person read this, and even then I wouldn’t have just any high schooler read it. There are important moments for everyone, but there are also moments that would make it dangerous waters for someone who has been traumatized by childhood abuse (or going to be when reading this). Being a now somewhat outdated memoir, it would read as dry for many but just as many people are going to find it beautiful and interesting and thought-provoking.

Book Review: March

Image from Amazon.com

I was torn about whether or not to go with Persepolis for one of the two graphic novels I want to use in a ninth grade English class. It’s a powerful book, very well done, and covers some really important thinking ground. But I was reluctant to commit for a couple reasons and I thought I would give another book a try: March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell.

The only graphic novel to win the National Book Award (so far), March is a truly collaborative book by a famous politician and civil rights activist, an award-winning comics writer, and an award-winning graphics illustrator. If I had to guess, I would say that the writer (Aydin)—a Turkish-American who wrote his thesis on Martin Luther King Junior—had the idea for Lewis to tell his story and approached him with the idea and then Powell got on board to illustrate. The book was published only in 2020 but it is already on a number of the lists of high school novels ideas I saw. Technically, March is a trilogy: March: Book One; March: Book Two; and March: Book Three. I read and will be teaching from March: Book One though I will be encouraging the rest of the series for the teens.

If you don’t know who John Lewis is, ahem, Congressman John Lewis is a top-ranking politician who has been on the frontlines of the civil rights and human rights movement for like half a century. The story of the first book of March is his childhood in rural Alabama, his rough road to college, his encounters with the Jim Crow South and racism, a trip to the North, a meeting with Martin Luther King Junior, and the early days of the Nashville Student Movement and lunch counter sit-ins. The story is interrupted occasionally by the meta-story, which is a woman coming into the office of John Lewis with her two, young sons on the day of President Barack Obama’s inauguration. The story, then, becomes an elder Lewis telling these two boys about his life and about their history, all from the vantage point of a brighter, more triumphant future. The kids ask about the chickens in his office and Lewis stops his rush out the door to reminisce about those chickens…

One of things you will notice first about March is that it is in black and white. This is normal for graphic novels, though people tend to praise colorful graphic novels more. While this is acceptable at all times, it makes extra sense here, where the story is from a time of black-and-white images (at least at the beginning) and also the story is about literal Black and White. The illustrations are solid. I didn’t really find them ground-breaking or exciting, and yet I don’t know why that might be a criticism. They’re—yup, still—solid. As is the writing. There is perhaps a cheesiness or pop-fiction feel to some of the plot development and moments, but it’s still a story worth telling. It also can come across at times as dry simply by being an historical account. Both lend the project levity, even though there are moments of real pain and struggle. And I understand that the idea of using a graphic novel (series) to introduce people (kids) to civil rights was inspired by a 1957 short comic book called Doctor Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. This is what makes this book special: it’s a solid work of art that is also historical and is also relevant. It is a great choice for just about any classroom from middle school through high school and perhaps even upper elementary. There is heavy stuff, but it’s very approachable for growing minds.

I will be using this book this year. We will talk about its literary merits and we will have discussion about the civil rights movement and about John Lewis.

Short Story Review: Death of a Pig

Happily, I will be reviewing a number of short stories and poems this year, as a function of teaching a high school English class for a home school co-op. Last year, with my son in middle school, I read several short stories but didn’t think to review them. While I really like reviewing anthologies and story collections, I think it’ll be just fine to have a list of great short stories, too.

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So the first short story we are reading this year is “Death of a Pig” by E. B. White. It was recommended in a book that I use to keep my kid up to Common Core standards, which means it is a classic but one that I don’t recall ever hearing about let alone reading. Of course, I know who E. B. White is. He (yes, he not she) is the author of Charlotte’s Web as well as Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. He wrote other stories, as well, and co-wrote the quintessential The Elements of Style and for The New Yorker. This essay—“Death of a Pig”—came from The Atlantic and we’re using it as a nonfiction piece to summarize for a paper-writing assignment.

I was pleasantly surprised when I read it. It sounds so bleak, I thought it was going to be gruesome like Vietnam War writing. It’s not children’s writing like his more famous stuff, but it is appropriate for eighth or ninth grade in its scope. It’s also appropriate for adults, the audience White—the busy essayist—had in mind when he wrote it. I don’t want to give too much away but White tells us from the beginning (and the title) that he has a farm, he had a pig, and he was unable to save the pig from the illness that will fill the few days we are about to hear about. It has a sadness to it, a tragedy, but the story is ultimately a comi-tragedy. White’s dachshund is the most surprising bit of the story—comic relief of the most absurd and blackest sort—though there are other surprising bits. The story-telling is masterful. There are lines of breathtaking beauty and craft, tricks of the trade so seamless you probably won’t notice them. I laughed. I sighed. I underlined golden moments. I thought about death and man’s place in the world and whatnot.

In other words, I would recommend reading “Death of a Pig” by E. B. White. Probably I would recommend other essays by White but I need to keep reading other things I’ve assigned to my ninth graders, at this time.

Book Review: The House on Mango Street

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I have disappeared under a tower of books that I am still considering for my English 1 class, at this, the eleventh hour. Class begins in a week and a half and I want to check on, oh, about thirty books. At least if I could read a book a day this week I might figure out what I have to … And then I could come up with a choose-your-own list over the next few months. I will not be emerging from this pile of books for some time, so strap on your seatbelts and get ready for a bombardment of high-school-reading reviews. (It’s not that I didn’t begin months ago, it’s just that what with the state of the world, country, and my resultant personal life, I’ve preferred to dissolve into a blob of Schitt’$ Creek– or Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives-watching goo rather than use my taxed brain or emotions on anything more substantial during nearly every moment of “free time.”)

I was really kind of hoping that The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros was going to be one of our reads for this year, but I wasn’t tremendously hopeful. I knew that the two high schoolers I had surveyed were not fans. I knew that it was bound to be very feminine (which would be okay once or twice, but with a class of all boys I was hoping to lean hard on what might interest them and I was also pulling for Persepolis and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings). I also had the vague idea that it might involve some sexual something. Might. I don’t know where I got that idea though I imagine that the poetic writing lends itself to various interpretations. Or confusion. Also, imagine with me if you will a teeny-tiny, grass roots private school. That’s sorta like a home school co-op. The parents have very long arms into my classroom, so I have to pick my battles (especially since they are teaching four days out of five) and these are not California arts students.

Anyhow, I have decided—like with The Martian Chronicles—to use parts of the novel as opposed to assigning the whole. I am going to use these parts to talk about short story collections as novels and assign a half-dozen of the “short stories.” That’s also what we can talk about here: short story collections as novels. Like with Olive Kitteridge, some people say The House on Mango Street is a novel (or, really, a novella) and others are concerned about the lack of plot, character development, long chapters, long paragraphs, quotation marks and some other conventional punctuation, and generally normal story elements in Mango Street. It’s, well, it’s vague. Which makes sense because it’s almost poetry. These days, some of it might even pass as prose poetry or some other combo/experimental form of poetry. Seven of the first eight chapters are less than a page long. The last line of the second chapter is, “The snoring, the rain, and Mama’s hair that smells like bread.” It’s a fragment, obviously, but it’s also pregnant with sensory detail, metaphor, emotion, and melody. The plug on the front of my copy is by Gwendoyln Brooks, a poet. On the back, the book is called “a series of vignettes.” Which maybe is one of the reasons it gets used in classrooms. It’s brief and it’s different.

There were some things that I found confusing about this book, mainly the passage of time. I wasn’t sure if we were going along chronologically or jumping around, and due to subject matter I thought that we had passed through years and years of Esperanza’s coming of age. Then at the end it was like, oh, and like a year later I was still hoping to leave. Weird. I think I was reading her as much too young at the beginning. Perhaps it was supposed to be innocence? I thought she was a child, but notes online tell me that she is “entering adolescence” the whole time. Well. I also found it difficult to keep track of the characters because we spend so little time with each one. You could argue that there is a raw intimacy with some of these characters or at least with Esperanza (the narrator), but without the usual kinds of details and plot I felt unmoored from the supporting friends and family.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the book even if it did have a hazy, soporific effect on me. (I didn’t literally fall asleep, but felt mentally and emotionally subdued under it’s cottony style.) The language is beautiful and the style is unique. The subject matter is interesting: a pre-pubescent Chicano girl moves into her family’s first actual (disappointing) home in a poor, Latino suburb of Chicago. She experiences several life-changing and hurtful things while she is also experiencing the changes of a new place and her body. She carefully watches the girls and women around her. She dreams of what her life will one day become. So you see life from the point of view of Northern American slums, from the LatinX population, from a girl who is becoming a woman. The vulnerability of all of this is underlined, high-lighted, and circled. While Esperanza is making herself vulnerable to us, it is just the plain truth that she is already about as vulnerable as a person can be and is looking for a way to build herself her own castle, her own fortress behind which she will be able to hide all that exposure to a sharp world. We watch and cringe as she runs out there into her world and we feel all the dangers before she ever sees them coming.

What I’m saying a little is that I didn’t love this book even though it is right up my alley. I had a much better time reading Julia Alvarez back in the day, but I do enjoy some approachable poetry, some experimental novella-ing. Perhaps it was that occasionally I felt a guilty twinge at having just read something I suspected was cheesy. I have the artist’s horror of cheesiness. I would recommend the book and I will be using bits of it in class.

Book Review: The Invisible Man

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This is another book that I read because I was considering it for a ninth grade, homeschool co-op, literature class I am teaching this year. It is the third book I have now approved and I have slated this one for the first novel of the year. While it might not be my favorite book of all time, I think it will fit well with this group of homeschool boys and I am hoping they might actually enjoy it. I mean, it’s early sci-fi, it’s a mystery of sorts, it has action scenes and weapons, it even has horror (again, very early). There is not even a whiff of romance. (One of my goals for the lit choices this year is books that will be enjoyed and therefore encourage more reading and a life of reading). And there are plenty of literary teachable moments. I believe it’ll do.

Of note: there are two famous books titled (The) Invisible Man. One (Invisible Man) is by Ralph Ellison, was published in America in the 1950s, and though it is a novel (which won the National Book Award) it deals with issues of being Black in America, Black Nationalism, Marxism, and identity, among other things. It is also a book that is used as high school reading here or there. The book I am reviewing is H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, a science fiction novel published at the turn of the nineteenth century. The book was popular in its time and was one of his successful novels that gained him the moniker “the father of science fiction.” His other famous, speculative titles are The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Island of Doctor Moreau.

The Invisible Man is about a man whose identity we do not know at the beginning. He shows up at an English countryside inn in the village of Iping, covered in bandages and a strange assortment of clothing. He’s rude, short-tempered, and evasive and comes bearing both literal and metaphorical baggage. The villagers want to get to the bottom of his story, but their prying ends up unleashing a series of firework events and also the combustive personality of the bandaged stranger. Told from the perspective of a third-person storyteller (who appears to be an investigator of some sort), The Invisible Man begins as a Victorian novel, morphs into science fiction, and ends as a horror novel (though not slasher, if you know what I mean). It has humor, satire, and psychology, tragedy and mystery. (Though the tragedy here is not complete because the Invisible Man’s character is not as deeply plumbed or fleshed out as it could be, like the monster, say, in Frankenstein.) It’s an interesting story, a quick read, with things to say. And it is a classic.

Griffin—the invisible man—has become a staple of the horror genre. I was reading the book and my daughter asked, “Is that the Invisible Man from Hotel Transylvania?” Well, yes, I suppose it is, and from many other places as well, though like all the classic horror characters (Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, The Mummy, Doctor Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde…) the character has been embellished beyond recognition of the original. The only movie of The Invisible Man I could find recommended is a modern take on a stalker boyfriend that has nothing to do with the original. (Also, one that is not recommended anywhere called Hollow Man. Okay, and there is the old one from 1933, but I don’t feel like watching another old flick at the time.) Abbott and Costello meet him. Chevy Chase plays him in a comedy. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen includes him. There’s an invisible woman. An invisible mouse.

In the end, I don’t have too much to say about the book. It’s a classic. It’s pretty interesting. It’s very Victorian in style with lots of allusions to British life at the time. Despite it’s lack of depth (though it invites speculation about the characters), it should keep you turning the pages and thinking about the advent of science fiction and horror writing. I guess I was hoping for something more winsome, more playful, but this book comes from a time when humanity was just beginning to explore the what-ifs of modern science and the consideration here (even with some comical characters), as elsewhere, is dead serious.

QUOTES:

“‘A door onbust is always open to bustin’, but ye can’t onbust a door once you’ve busted ‘en'” (p33).

“It is so much easier not to believe in an invisible man; and those who had actually seen him dissolve into air…” (p53).

“All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings” (p87).

“I had never realised it before, but the nose is to the mind of a dog what the eye is to the mind of a seeing man” (p118).

“And every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose and curious snigging, was a terror to me” (p121).

“Burning! I had burnt my boats–if ever a man did! The place was blazing” (p121).

“But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty my advances would evoke” (p122).

“But even to me, an invisible man, the rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and bolted impregnably” (p122).

“I had no shelter, no covering,–to get clothing, was to forego all my advantage, to make myself a strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again” (p129).

“I was grotesque to the theatrical pitch, a stage miser, but I was certainly not a physical impossibility” (p136).

“…It’s not particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass” (p137).

“Alone–it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end” (p141).

“I have listened to such a story this morning of brutal self-seeking!” (p145).

“The man’s become inhuman, I tell you…” (p147).

“…and suddenly he knew that life was very sweet” (p158).