2) Apparently I am bad at Blogger, as (I thought) I had two posts all set up ahead of time to post in my absence. But they did not post. Which is sad. So here's what you missed (and it will sound silly now, remember I wrote these weeks ago) due to my miscommunication with Blogger:
For Tuesday, June 19th:
Hellooooo everyone!
I had to say it like that because it's the kind of call one would make from far away, and I am currently far away both physically and time-ily. In the present I'm probably nowhere near a computer, and in the past (when I'm typing this) I'm, well--yeah. In the past. That's right, Blogger allows me to TIME TRAVEL. I love time travel.
I decided for this week and the next I'll find a blog post from a while ago. Like, two years ago. I just realized I've been YA Lit Six-ing for two years. And a half. Two and a half years. No, more. Almost three. (Forget it. No math during summer. A long time.) Anyway, flashback time!
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
What do you do once you finish a book in English class? Oh, that’s right…you write a paper on it. And holy cow, are there a lot of topic opportunities for Tale of Two Cities. Feminism Lenses, Character Analysis of Sydney Carton (!), Comparison of Foil Characters Like Miss Pross and Lucie, Why The Heck Does Lucie Choose Darnay and not Carton, Pick Some Symbolism Any Symbolism, Et Cetera.
Mine, though, doesn’t stem from any of those. My idea came from a random thought of vaguely avian creatures with Stars Upon Thars.
Yep, my in-progress paper compares Tale of Two Cities with The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. And that got me thinking: yeah, Dr. Seuss writes about animals that look like Big Bird crossed with an emu and a teddybear named Sylvester McMonkey McBean. But he also writes about humans. In The Sneetches there’s a not-so-underlying lesson about how groundless and ridiculous discrimination is.
Once the ball of thought got rolling I looked at other stories by Dr. Seuss, and they’re riddled with commentary on human nature. The Butter Battle Book, for instance. Go read it, and then tell me it’s not a brilliant narrative about rising tension and danger rooted in something completely trivial and misunderstood. (Cold War?) And my English teacher mentioned that the Cat in the Hat and that Goldfish that’s always a downer are like Sigmund Freud’s id and ego.
So do your inner psychoanalyst slash sociologist a favor. Put down that vampire/fallen angel/heartbreak novel and go catch up on your Sneetches.
And for Tuesday, June 26th:
Greetings from the past!
I chose this one because the Katie mentioned in the story is currently gallivanting around the world with me. (I assume. Maybe she's gotten lost by now? Hi Katie. I hope you're not lost.) Anyway!
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
I’ll admit, I’m a thesaurus addict. When I’m writing I love to use the thesaurus to find even better or stronger or weaker, even, words to describe something. The smallest differences between words can create the largest differences between visions for me. It also helps build a huge vocabulary.
But.
There’s a difference between knowing words and knowing how to say them, as I’ve found out. Multiple times. At one point I was reading aloud a section of Rain at BookFest PA and I got to the word “beige.” In my mind I read it as beejsh—you know, with jsh being the J sound in Jaques. (And I got that part right.)
“…a beige dress…” I read, and a motion caught my eye. It was my friend Katie, shaking her head and giving me a weird look. I spared her a look of my own before finishing the reading. After I was done and back at my table, she came over with her arms crossed.
“Beejsh?” she demanded.
“Um,” I said, “yes?”
She pursed her lips. “It’s bayjsh.”
“Oh,” I said. She shook her head again, and went on to grumble about past pronunciation offenses I’ve committed, which include “botanic” and “queue.”
The moral of this semi-rambling story: thesauruses are great. But look up a pronunciation before you actually say your new words.
Hope you enjoyed. As for today, happy Tuesday the third of July!
Kieryn
