Hamish's Adolescent Novel 5/5

Tickled Onions

Written by Gleitzman, Tickled Onions is a book that consists of nine short stories. One of the short stories in Tickled Onions is about a young boy called Clyde who is dissatisfied with his current situation compared to his fellow peers which is impacting upon his social status at school. This changes when he befriends a class mate and learns more about this student’s personal life and demeanour. Another short story from this book is titled Draclia which revolves around two main characters which are an older and younger brother, who are concerned with convincing and educating his younger brother Will about vampires and their certain traits. 

In the first short story of Tickled Onions, Gleitzman has created at the beginning of the story a third person narration in which the main characters points of view are accounted for rather than the story written through the eyes of solely the main character. During this short story titled ‘Draclia’ the narration of this text takes a first person view in favour for the main character of the story, Corey. Gleitzman cleverly does this by writing the thoughts and actions that Corey takes in order to convince his younger brother Will who is five, that everyone around him is not a vampire. This book connects with current cultural trends and fads that are prevalent in our youth by connecting for example to the Twilight series in the short story ‘Draclia.’ The author uses this as a platform to deliver morals and guidance to the reader.

Another short story incorporated into this novel called Tickled Onions, puts across the moral to always be aware of other people’s situations, and look at the positives in your own life. This was prevalent with Clyde who was embarrassed about his parents constantly creating rather embarrassing meals for his lunch box at school. However, he soon realises a much more serious situation when he begins a friendship with a fellow class mate who has lost his mum, and is ridiculed for his obesity by his peers.  

The author uses many adverbs and verbs throughout this novel to paint a picture in the readers mind, and give the text a more interesting appeal. This makes Gleitzman’s books a suitable choice for children as it enriches their understanding of literature. This book would be suitable for a upper primary/middle class due to the more in depth social concepts that the book uses as its foundation for the narratives.

Hamish's Adolescent Novel 4/5

Mary Jane

Written by Dorothy Sterling, Mary Jane is a short novel that revolves around a high school girl named Mary Jane. Mary is a Negro child who is about to be the first ever Negro student to attend the junior high school called Wilson High. She has been encouraged to attend Wilson High, and will be one of two non-white students for a newly integrated school. Mary finds herself out of her comfort zone as for her entire life up to this point she has been sheltered from the world of racism, prejudice and judgemental people.  She becomes an ambassador for the school which she resents at first, but gradually becomes content with the position, where she forms a sound relationship with her fellow peers over time when they view her abilities and see her skills and intellect in action.

This book was published in 1959, and highlights the current cultural implications of this era in relation to the acceptance of Negro citizens in a predominantly white society. Even though in this story Mary Jane came from a well-educated and successful family, she was still ridiculed and became the victim of racial remarks and physical behaviour. From this young adolescent novel, the author is conveying across to the adolescent reader perceptions, feelings, and emotions from a highly subjective point of view which is constructed by Sterling, allowing for the reader to engage in deeper thinking about how different coloured people were miss treated in the past.

This novel is predominately written in third person narration throughout the entire story, and focuses on the viewpoints of Mary Jane, and some of the characters she closely associates with like her grandpa.

Mary Jane would best suit a upper primary/middle year level, where students have developed critical literacy skills. This novel could be integrated into a history lesson when introducing to students the topic of racism.

Hamish's Adolescent Novel 3/5

Goosebumps

How I got my Shrunken Head

Written by R.L. Stine, How I got my Shrunken Head is a young adolescent novel written in third person narration for the entire duration of the story, and following conventional narrative structure with an orientation, complication and resolution. 

The story begins by introducing the main character, Mark, who is an avid 12 year old video game player who has a fascination with wildlife and jungles which was predominately established from the influence of his Aunty Carolyn who works on a remote island as a scientist. Mark is given a present from her, which is leathery shrunken head which unaware to him at the time, possesses a mysterious power. Mark finds himself travelling over to the island where his aunt is located on to visit her, but on his arrival, he is greeted by his Aunty Carolyn’s colleagues who explain that she has gone missing on the island. 

Mark eventually finds his Aunt’s journal which explains that her colleagues are evil, and are trying to find and capture this mysterious and magical power which has been placed in the shrunken head that Mark now has in his possession. 

Mark escapes from his Aunt’s colleagues who were trying to detain him, and attempting to extract the magic from his shrunken head. When he escapes he finds his aunt deep in the jungle and saves her. Along the way he encounters and overcomes various obstacles like giant ants that attack him, and also the deception of his Aunt’s colleagues. 

This book would suite a middle to upper primary reader as it is quite an enjoyable book to read that is fast paced, utilizing a simple language structures. Stine, like fellow children’s author Morris Gleitzman, uses simple and short sentences in is novels. This basic writing style used will help a young developing reader to grasp and develop a better understanding of literacy skills. This allows students to still learn about the grammatical aspects of literacy in a meaningful light when reading such a book as this one, because students are engaged into the narrative of the novel, with specific parts of the book being able to be analysed in further detail to improve grammatical abilities. 

Week 4 workshop preparation and taks

Week 4: Writing

Readings

Winch et al Chapter 14
Key points

·        Writing is an expression of ideas, many different formats of writing exist each with a different purpose.

·        Teaching English and literacy typically involves focusing on these common text-type structures:

o   Recount- Retelling of an event, they typically include the who, what, where and when of the story, the writer usually shows their opinion on the event through their language and comments.

o   Procedure- A formative style of writing, describing a list of sequential steps to achieve a directed goal and includes a list of materials required.

o   Information Report- Presents information in a structured manner, the content is structured into paragraphs with topic sentences and elaborative detail.

o   Explanation- Used in scientific and technical field, this text-type is intended to explain how and/or why certain phenomenon happen, the information is sequenced logically following the format of cause and effect over a set time period.

o   Exposition- A form of text that presents an argument apposing or supporting an issue providing evidence to demonstrate the authors reasoning.

Winch et al Chapter 15
Key points

·        An individual’s writing development is a process that starts at birth and is on-going through their experiences with range of multimodal texts.

·        This process is called the writing continuum and is categorised into the following phases:

o   Writing before school

o   Experimental/early writing

o   The developing writer

o   The proficient writer

·         Students should be exposed to writing of many different forms of text before reaching school so that they become familiar at a simplistic understanding level the function of writing, what texts look like and what language is appropriate for what corresponding context.

·         Constructivist approaching writing, teachers need to consider what language and understanding each different student comes into the classroom with and how these understandings can be cognitively built on.

·         Assessing students writing and progress is an important part of ensuring development. Assessment is a means of the teacher monitoring a student’s progress against a list of criteria, from this teachers can derive how the results compare to the students previous performance, goals and their peers.

Workshop tasks and preparation discussion

As preparation for this workshop we were directed to answer a number of questions from Winch et al and collect three different text-types to discuss in class. The questions from Winch et al were focused on a small insert of text written by a nine year old and asked the text-type, grammar mistakes that exist, the tone and suggestions for improvement. This exercise got us thinking about the importance of monitoring a students work and the type of question that we need to think about when examining work samples. Collecting three different text types and answering questions about each was an excellent task, as it allowed us as teachers to realise the existence of different text types in everyday life and in many forms. This also facilitates connections with experiences outside the classroom for students who do a similar or identical activity. Each group member brought in a variety of text-types making it easy to observe the relevance of teaching about text types due to their commonplace in the world.

Matthew's Adolescents Text 5/5

Egyptology

By Emily Sands

'Egyptology' is an informative in the form of a journal text focusing on the history of Egypt and the Egyptians. The illistrations, text and interactive segments are all arranged neatly integrated onto the pages. The book is broken up into journal entries with segments of information sketches and other features. While learning about ancient Egypt the students are developing ideas about the structure of a journal and what it looks like and is meant to contain.It is important for students to explore and study texts of formats other than narritives, as they will need to be familiar with them for future acedemic writing and critical reading.

Matthew's Adolescents Text 4/5

Finders Keepers

By Emily Rodda

This text centres on the teenage boy protagonist Patrick, who longs for adventure and excitement. While using his computer Patrick is issued an invitation to join a game named 'Finders Keepers' on a channel he knows to be non-existent. He is pulled through barrier which defies the linear nature of time to completely different world. Patrick is given clues, hints and riddles as means to find treasures which have passed through the barrier never to be seen again.

Rodda employs the literary device foreshadowing to hint to the audience events that will occur later in the plot. In ‘Finders Keepers’, the main character Patrick is accused of stealing his sister’s sunglasses and earrings. This foreshadows the game of ‘finders keepers’ he later plays, whereby objects are lost into a universe that exists parallel to our own. As this is a book containing puzzles and riddles, it could easily be used as inspiration for a in class experience involving quizzes, students could design thier own quizzes or the whole class could be quizzed in groups using a point system.

Matthew's Adolescents Text 3/5

Deltora Quest: City of Rats

By Emily Rodda

This novel is the third in an eight part series collectively titled ‘Deltora Quest’. The three young and brave protagonists Lief, Barda and Jasmine are on a long and perilous quest to retrieve the seven stones of the magic Belt of Deltora in order to overthrow the tyrannical rule of Shadow Lord. In this section of the story the group seek the opal gem. To retrieve this precious item, the companions must travel to the city of the rats and defeat a terrifying enemy, with another few challenges along the way.

Emily Rodda has a simple and direct writing style. The language she uses in her children’s and teen novels adheres to a literacy competence appropriate for those at these age groups, while still maintaining an engaging imagery description and character monologue and dialogue for example. As a result her extremely inclusive as it can be easily understood even by those with restrictive vocabularies. Rodda writes from a third person perspective. She uses emotive language through her narration to convey her subjective feelings towards the characters and events that occur for example ‘In moments, elven hideous, grinning creatures were capering on the track below the tree.’ (Rodda 2000)

The three protagonists are faced with several circumstances in which they are forced to kill their enemies. Both Reeah and ten of Thaegan's eleven children become fatalities along the quest. (Rodda 2000) Although these characters are portrayed as evil and necessary casualties in order for the protagonists to survive, the slaying of these characters brings into question a heroes respect for life and its fragility. This question is not answered through Rodda’s text, but leaves the reader to contemplate, as there is really no right answer, it is all down to perspective. Young learners need to consider the shades of grey in life that are encompassed by black and white, this text and others by Rodda facilitate this reflection.

Matthew's Adolescents Text 2/5

James and the Giant Peach

By Roald Dahl

Traditionally Roald Dahl's novels are grand and obscure, 'James and thr Giant Peach' is no exception. The protagonist James, is young boy forced to live with his two horrible aunts who treat him like a slave after his parents befell a tragedy being eaten by an escaped rhino. One day James encounters an old man who offers him some mysterious green glowing crocodile tongues. James follows the old mans instructions to make a potion with the tongues but trips and falls splilling it all over a peach tree. Enchanted by the concoction one of the peaches on the tree grows to a gargantuan size. Naturally his two Aunts proclaim the peach as belonging to them and the fruit becomes a major attraction. One night James sneaks outside to have a bite of the peach and ends up inside with an assortment of giant insects. James and the Insects travel across the ocean to the Empire States building where he confronts his greatest fear.


The language Dahl uses is simple and succinct, without over discriptive sentences, allowing the story to be very easy to follow. The book is devided into 36 chapters, consisting of two to three pages per chapter. Using small chapters allows the reader to feel a greater sense of achievement progressing through the novel, especially younger readers. The illistrations in the book although simple and black and white really bring the characters to life, even those that are not human and convey the tone of the story at each impass.
This novel follows the story structure of a journey, in this case away from misery towards belonging. Understanding the idea of a journey is important to students as it is an example of a transition and they can take many metaphorical and/or literal forms. The book repeatedly underlines the theme of 'belonging', through James plight to find where he belongs. This is an important theme to address in adolescent literature as many readers of that age demographic are just starting to think about where they fit into the world.

Matthew's Adolescents Text 1/5

Rowan of Rin

By Emily Rodda

This novel describes the journey of a young timid boy named Rowan to save his town from impending destruction. Rowan’s town of Rin is facing starvation and the helplessness when their main source of food and trade the bukshah’s water supply is dwindling. The buksha’s special water originates from a mountain where a dragon is said to live. The people of the village Rin devise an expedition to resolve this problem.  Against the wishes of his six companions, Rowan becomes a necessity for this quest when the wise woman Sheeba dictates a prophecy including him. The fellowship climbs the mountain, encountering challenge after challenge, each time losing a member of their group. Until only Rowan remains against the apparently un-mythological creature, Rowan proves his courage and defeats the dragon and restores the flow of water to the town becoming the hero that the town needed.

 

Rowan begins the book being perceived by his associates as being comparable to a ‘…poor little skinny rabbit…’ (Rodda 1993, pg. 18), which he himself believed. Oppositely upon the conclusion of the story Rowan was named “…the strongest and bravest...” out of all of his companions. This transition demonstrates an apparent example of a change from innocence to experience. This theme is so emphasised because growing up is a process that everyone must face at one time or another in their life, consequently young readers are able to identify with this process, perhaps even come to the realisation that it is difficult and sometimes even confronting.

 

The text describes the relationship between the bukshah and the surrounding ecosystem. The buksha drink only a certain type of water, and if this water is not available which is the situation befalling the village that Rowan lives in, the bukshah will die of thirst. This would also cause a shortage of dairy products and woollen materials for the village people. (Rodda 1993) Although composed of imaginary elements, this representation of an ecosystem implants in the minds of the readers attributes of a biosphere and the effects disturbances can have when introduced. This could easily be connected to biology strand of science. A teacher could use the study of this book to integrate science and English. An activity that could further develop this idea of ecosystems is for students to construct their own ecosystems including five or more elements, being prepared to explain the consequences of the addition or removal of certain features.

Matthew's Childrens Book 7/8

Letters from Felix

By Annette Langen & Constanza Droop

This is another Childrens Book that incooperates an interactive component into the narritive. This book tells the story of Felix, a toy rabbit who was misplaced at the airport by his owner Sophie. As he is her favourite toy Sophie is distruaght when he can not be found. But to her suprise she gets a letter from Felix who had ended up on a plane to England. The letter Sophie recieves is three dimensional on the reverse side of the page containing a real letter, the hand written, or paw written, letter displays the structure of a common letter structure. The letter includes a partial date and country of origin, the name of the recipient and author and cultural detail about England. The book continues as Felix travels to various other contries and a letter for each. Through this process children are not only learning about formative writing structure but also learning about different cultures in an engaging and fun way The story concludes seeing Felix arrive back home to Sophie with a number of souvenirs in the form of stickers that can re-inforce the learning that occured throughout the book.