LANGUAGE ARTS-NEW MEXICO

Classroom Books

Two articles from today's Guardian:

Should classroom books reflect the tough realities of life, or is there still a place for escapism?  and The man who wrote Lord of the Flies disliked it as much as many tenth graders.

Reading Redux

The Book Whisperer comments on the two NY Times stories (below), the demise of Reading Rainbow, and the fact that we can't seem to get beyond this discussion.

Santana Wins Premio Aztlan Award

The National Latinos Writers Conference and the History & Literary program of the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) have recognized Patricia Santana as the winner of the 2008 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize for her novel, Ghosts of El Grullo. A national literary award established to encourage and reward emerging Chicana and Chicano authors, the Premio Aztlán was founded by renowned author Rudolfo Anaya and his wife Patricia in 1993. More here.

Why Write About Books?

Here's a new piece on the importance of writing about literature from NCTE President-Elect Carol Jago:  Crash!  The Currency Crisis in American Culture.  There's also a good post about Jago's report on the NCTE Inbox Blog.

Why I Went to the Woods

Here's a story about Henry David Thoreau you might not have heard before.  Maybe he moved out of town for a reason.  From the Boston Globe:

But there is one curious event in the life of Henry David Thoreau that has received little attention, and which may have been a formative event, influencing not only his decision to sequester himself at Walden Pond, but also the development of his environmentalist philosophy. On April 30, 1844, Thoreau started a blaze in the Concord Woods, scorching a 300-acre swath of earth between Fair Haven Bay and Concord. The fire was an accident, but the destruction of valuable woodland, the loss of firewood and lumber, and the narrowly avoided catastrophe that almost befell Concord itself angered the local residents and nearly ruined Thoreau's reputation. For years afterward, Thoreau could hardly walk the streets of his hometown without hearing the epithet "woods burner."

Read the rest here.

Books: Alien and Unattractive

A new report from the United Kingdom argues that families from lower socio-economic groups are dissuaded from reading and buying books by the snobbish attitudes of those in "the book trade."  Could it be that English teachers, with our tradition of dismissing certain kinds of books as being unworthy of our consideration, contribute to this problem?

Report Cites Book Trade's "Exclusionary" Tactics Towards 20m Readers

A report due out this week from research conducted in the UK by HarperCollins, the Trade Publishers Council and the National Year of Reading (NYR) says the book trade is "too intimidating" towards the C2DE socio-economic group, characterized as lower income, non-professional families. The report found that many families in this group, numbering up to 20 million, found books to be "alien and unattractive" while reading was considered "an anti-social activity for people who don't know how to live."

NYR project director Honor Wilson-Fletcher said: "These are good solid families who don't have literacy problems but who just don't read. They are one step away from book-buying - they do consume lots of leisure products and may have 2-300 DVDs in the house. But intentionally or otherwise, a lot of people involved in the book world are conveying the impression that reading is associated with a particular area of society and lifestyle."

(From Publishers' Lunch)

What Did Shakespeare Really Look Like?

A painting now believed to be the only portrait of Shakespeare done while he was alive.  Read about it here.

New Twain Story Published

From the Los Angeles Times:

Mark Twain's latest short story

Nearly 99 years after his death, an unpublished short story found in his archives will be published in The Strand mystery magazine.

By Carolyn Kellogg

March 7, 2009

Almost 99 years after his death on April 21, 1910, Mark Twain will publish a new short story next week in the pages of the quarterly mystery magazine the Strand.

Discovered in Twain's archive -- reportedly the largest collection of personal papers left behind by a 19th century American author -- the never-before-published "The Undertaker's Tale" is a short tale-within-a-tale about a wretched homeless boy who is taken in by a kindly undertaker's family.

According to Strand editor Andrew F. Gulli, who has made a point of publishing classic authors (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ray Bradbury, even P.G. Wodehouse) in his magazine, Twain's "tongue-in-cheek tale about the funeral industry" is as modern as anything being written today.

But lest that seem like Twain was anticipating the glossy HBO mortuary drama "Six Feet Under," it's really more like something by Charles Dickens: His story revolves around a dirty, hungry wretch who finds solace in the undertaker's home; the world is cold, dirty and brutish yet viewed with a wicked sense of humor.

Read the rest here.

Pride, Prejudice, and Extreme Prejudice

Here's a must-read book.  Order it for your AP class. 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
Quirk Books 

By Jane Austen
and Seth Grahame-Smith

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.

A Belated Happy Birthday

Edgar Allen Poe turned 200 on Monday, January 19.  We're a little late celebrating, but here's a NY Times slideshow featuring some of Poe's manuscripts and the classic video of Vincent Price reading "The Raven."