The English Fast Track

mathslounge » REVISION

2008-11-08T15:50:00.000Z

His Dark Materials , Phillip Pullman

2008-05-10T10:12:00.005+01:00

For those of you who have heard about Phillip Pullman you would probably have heard that he is an amazing author. Reading a couple of his books I thought he was a good author but maybe amazing was an exaggeration. However, after reading Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass I realised that in actual fact he was more than good.
The triolgy follows the journey of Lyra Belequa who is only a child but she has an unknown responsibility that can hange the whole world and either bring it to hope or to destruction. She gets herself caught in sticky ends but with determination and pereseverance manages to get herself out with the help of her daemon and her friends.
For those of you who love fantasy you will love this book. Maybe The Golden Compass film wasn't all that but the book that it came from is fantastic; you have to give it a go.

Chandra by Frances Mary Hendry

2008-02-24T14:05:00.003Z

Looking at the cover you can sort of guess a little about what will happen in the story. When I first looked at it I knew it was going to be about a child bride. Chandra at eleven gets married to a boy called Roop (at the age of sixteen).She is full of joy when she meets him as he seems like such a lovely boy and a caring husband. However when she goes to live with his family things aren’t as they seem.

This story is a real eye opener of what happens in some societies and is a fantastic and gripping novel.

At last the final ceremony arrived. They rose to their feet her money helping Chandra up, for she was stiff with sitting for so long. In a blare of trumpets and drums, a chorus of chanted prayers and blessings, Roop led her seven times clockwise around the sacred fire. When they sat down again, she sat on her husband’s left; she was married.

If this sounds good to you give it a go.It's short and straight to the point and has you completely absorbed.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

2008-02-24T14:02:00.003Z

“Enter freely and of your own will”

These are the words written at the back of the book Dracula written by Bram Stoker. When Dracula comes into mind you always think that it’s going to be a story about a scary vampire going around killing people and then they turn into vampires and so on and so forth. However this book not only offers this but in a more original way. This story has never ending twists and turns in the plot and if your like me and enjoy reading books with suspense and thriller or maybe even a bit of horror this book is definitely for you.

I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The fair girls went on her knees, and bent over, fairly gloating. The was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat.

Sounds good doesn’t it. Do you dare to read on? Go one you won’t regret it.

2008-01-27T20:34:00.000Z

I like to recommend this book because it is full of misunderstanding.

This book is called high school musical 2 by Peter Barsocchini.

Goodbye, classroom! Hello, summer! But for Troy, Gabriella, Chad and Taylor, this vacation is no day at the beach; they're all working at a country club founded by none other than Ryan and Sharpay's grandfather! And with the club's annual Midsummer Night's Musical right around the corner, Sharpay's competitive instincts are sizzling. If she can manage to win the Star Dazzle Award just one more time, the country club will name it after Sharpay, and it will be hers forever. But this year, Sharpay faces some tough competition?Gabriella! To have any hope of coming out on top, Sharpay knows that she'll need a secret weapon.

She dumps Ryan and starts wooing Troy to be her new partner. Gabriella is less than thrilled that Troy has fallen under Sharpay's spell. How could he do that to her? Things are heating up on the lawns of high society. Will Troy and Gabriella realize that they're meant to be? Or is it already too late for them to sing one last song together?

2008-01-27T18:12:00.001Z

I like to recommend this book because when i just read the first chapter i wouldn't stop reading it.

This book is called High School Musical by Peter Barsocchini.

This book is about a high school basketball boy called Troy Bolten. His dad is the coach of the wildcats basketball team. On New Years Eve Troy had to go to a party, he thought it would be so boring, but eventually it wasn't. He had to sing a song in the party with a girl called Gabriella Montez. He knew he couldn't sing, when he sang Gabriella sang as well, everyone turned there heads to see who was singing. Troy and Gabriella forgot there nervousness and started to sing more boldly, they realised they had a talent.

It was time for Troy to go back to his school, he had a championship to win in two weeks time. There was a new girl coming to Troy's class, Troy couldn't believe his eyes, it was the girl who sang with him on New Years Eve, Gabriella couldn't believe her eyes as well. so they decided whether to join the school musical or not . On the other hand Sharpay and her brother Ryan hated Gabriella and was part of the school musical. Troys teammates got fed up of troy having to sing so Gabriella's friends and Troy's teammates decided to break the relationship, so when Troy and Gabriella broke up every one was depressed, Troys teammates decided to rejoin Troy and Gabriella.

When the basketball championship game and the school musical Audition was on the same day Gabriella's Friends and Troys Friends planned to set a fire drill while the basketball game was on, so Troy and Gabriella sang so beautifully in front of the whole school, and they won the basketball cup and the musical, Troy and Gabriella were so thrilled.

Checkmate by Malorie Blackman

2008-01-20T11:50:00.000Z

Checkmate concludes the story of Callum, Sephy and their daughter, Callie Rose. For those of you who have read Noughts and Crosses and Knife-edge will know that this book does not disappoint. For those who haven’t read the books I won’t say too much to spoil it for you but just that you do not know what you have been missing. For those who love romantic novels or novels about prejudice and discrimination, then this book and the two before should have a place in your hands.

2008-01-18T19:03:00.001Z

This book is called Final Cut, by David Belbin. I would like to recommend this book.
This book is about a seventeen year-old girl called Sarah Wood who is a model. She is offered a starring role in a film. Her brother Jon asks her to find him a job for him with her, so Sarah finds him a message job which you have to send messages to the director Leo Fitzgerald. Sarah is Malissa in the play, a movie star called Luke Kelly is Aidan and Brett is Matthew.
Something bad goes wrong, a camera technician called Karen dies when a camera tied to a tree falls on top of her head, not only that when Sarah and Brett are on a speed boat, it caught on fire and explodes and then when everyone is acting out a fire scene it all goes wrong, someone put petrol on the fire so it can burn faster, luckily they were all safe.
At the end Luke dies from falling of a cliff. Jon looked like Luke so Leo said he can play Luke's part. When finally the film was made, the whole world of Luke's fan couldn't wait to watch it. The film came out one month after they acted it out. Sadly at the end Brett got stabbed by a gangster.

2008-01-18T17:11:00.000Z

I like to recommend this book because it is full of mystery and excitement. This book is called Holes by Louis Sachar.

This book is about a boy called Stanley Yelnats, the reason why his name was that because it spells the same way backwards and it was names after his father. Stanley was arrested of something he didn't do, the police thought he stole a pair of trainers by some one famous, bot really when he got out of school he say they hit him on his head out of the sky. So the judge gave him a choice, either go to jail or live in a boys camp which you have to dig a holes each day, 5 metres high and across. So when he stars digging the first day he was so tired, gradually the days past and he got skinny and strong.

He met a friend called Zero and they both ran away, they climbed a mountain called The gods thumb, on the top there was water and onions to eat. Next they climbed down to dig an hole and Stanley however dug out a treasure chest. It said his name on it and he gave half of it to his best friend Zero.

The Hobbit, also called There and Back Again

2007-12-14T20:42:00.000Z

It has been a while since anyone posted anything. Since theres nothing new I'll just post a review on one of my favourite books. I can't remember the last time I read this but anyways...

For those who enjoy a bit of fantasy and adventure, this book might just interest you. Written by the author of the infamous Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien, this book is filled with the main aspects of a traditional fantasy story i.e dwarves, orcs, fairies, goblins, wizards etc. The figurative language made it interesting and a game happened to be made for it too.
It made me read on and i hope it'll be the same to you too. Heres an extract from one of my favourite chapters in the book:

Riddles in the Dark

''I am Mr Bilbo Baggins. I have lost the dwarves and i lost the wizard, and i dont know where i am; and i dont want to know, if only i can get away.''
''what's he got in his handses?'' sadi Gollum, looking at the sword, which he did not quite like.
''A sword, a blade which came out of Gondolin!''
''Sssss,'' said Golloum, and became quite polite.''Praps ye sits here and chats with it a bitsy, my preciousss. It like riddles, praps it does, does it?'' He was anxious to appear friendly, at any rate for the moment, and until he found out more about the sword and the hobbit, whether he was quite alone really, whether he was good to eat, and whether Gollum was really hungry. Riddles were all he could think of. Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in thier holes long,long ago, before he lost all his friends and was driven away, alone, and crept down, down, into the dark under the mountains.

''Very well,'' said Bilbo, who was anxious to agree, until he found out more about the creature, whether he was quite alone, whether he was fierce or hungry, and whether he was a friend of the goblins.
''You at first,'' he said, because he had not had time to think of a riddle.
So Gollum hissed:

what has roots as nobody sees,

is taller than trees

up,up it goes,

and yet never grows?

''Easy!'' said Bilbo. '' Mountain, I suppose.''

''Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, My precious! IF precious asks, and it doesn't answer, then we does what it wants, eh? Weshows it the way out, yes!''
''All right!'' said Bilbo, not daring to disagree, and nearly bursting his brain to think of riddles that could save him from being eaten.

Thirty white horses on a red hill,

first they champ,

then they stamp,

then they stand still.

That was all he could think of to ask- the idea of eating was rather on his mind. It was rather an old one too, and Gollum knew the answer as well as you do.

''Chestnuts, chestnuts,'' he hissed. ''Teeth! teeth! my preciousss, but we has only six!'' Then he asked his second:

Voiceless it cries,

wingless it flutters,

toothless bites,

mouthless mutters...

Well i hope youve enjoyed the extract, there happened to be a game for but i do recommend this book if you like fantasy or any of J.R.R Tolkien's stories likeThe silmarillion, The Lord Of The Rings,Farmer Giles of Ham and The Father Christmas Letters.

shizzle

2007-11-28T11:35:00.001Z

Myspace Glitter Graphics

Asylum-Seeking Daleks!!!

2007-10-28T20:09:00.000Z

I love this poem, and I hope you will too. Its irreverent and accessible attack on prejudice and bigotry in all its forms is like a breath of fresh air. Even better, click here to hear the poet reading it live. (And you can visit the poet's website here.) Now for the poem:

ASYLUM SEEKING DALEKS!
by Attila The Stockbroker

They claim their planet's dying:
that soon it's going to blow
And so they're coming here - they say
they've nowhere else to go....
With their strange computer voices
and their one eye on a pole
They're moving in next door and then
they're signing on the dole.....

Asylum seeking Daleks
are landing here at noon!
Why can't we simply send them back
or stick them on the moon?
It says here in the Daily Mail
they're coming here to stay -
The Loony Lefties let them in!
The middle class will pay......

They say that they're all pacifists:
that doesn't wash with me!
The last time I saw one I hid
Weeks behind the settee...
Good Lord - they're pink. With purple bumps!
There's photos of them here!
Not just extra-terrestial....
The bloody things are queer!

Yes! Homosexual Daleks
And they're sponging off the State!
With huge Arts Council grants
to teach delinquents how to skate!
It's all here in the paper -
I'd better tell the wife!
For soon they will EXTERMINATE
Our British way of life.....

This satire on crass ignorance
and tabloid-fostered fear
Is at an end. Now let me give
One message, loud and clear.
Golf course, shop floor or BNP:
Smash bigotry and hate!
Asylum seekers - welcome here.
You racists: emigrate!

Empire of the Sun

2007-10-24T20:18:00.000+01:00

Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard

The heartrending story of a British boy's four-year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on J. G. Ballard's own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy's life in Japanese-occupied wartime Shanghai - a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.

The book was the subject of an oscar-winning 1987 film directed by Stephen Spielberg (and starring a very young Christian Bale).

Here is the opening of the novel:

WARS CAME EARLY to Shanghai, over-taking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins cast adrift from the funeral piers of the Chinese bund.

Jim had begun to dream of wars. At night the same silent films seemed to flicker against the wall of his bedroom in Amherst avenue, and transformed his sleeping mind into a deserted newsreel theater. During the winter of 1941 everyone in Shanghai was showing war films. Fragments of his dreams followed Jim around the city; in the foyers of the department stores and hotels the images of Dunkirk and Tobruk, Barbarossa and the Rape of Nanking sprang loose from his crowded head.

To Jim’s dismay, even the Dean of Shanghai Cathedral had equipped himself with an antique projector. After morning service on Sunday, December 7, the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the choirboys were stopped before they could leave for home and were marched down to the crypt. Still wearing their cossacks, they sat in a row of deck chairs requisitioned from the Shanghai Yacht Club and watched a year-old March of Time.

Thinking of his unsettled dreams, and puzzled by their missing sound track, Jim tugged at his ruffled collar. The organ voluntary drummed like a headache through the cement roof, and the screen trembled with the familiar images of tank battles and aerial dogfights. Jim was eager to prepare for the fancy-dress Christmas party being held that afternoon by Dr. Lockwood, the vice-chairman of the British Residents Association. There would be the drive through the Japanese lines to Hungjao, and then Chinese conjurers, fireworks and yet more newsreels, but Jim had his own reasons for wanting to go to Dr. Lockwood’s party.

Knife Edge by Malorie Blackman

2007-10-23T21:57:00.001+01:00

The intensely moving sequel to Noughts and Crosses.

Sephy a cross,one of the privileged ones in society gives birth to a daughter who has a nought father.
Jude is a nought.The bitterness inside him blames Sephy for the losses in his family and has absolute hatred for her kind.
The sequel to the Romeo and Juliet like Noughts and Crosses takes a different turn unlike the prequel Knife Edge is the book of Hatred and if you thought there was a lot of hatred in Noughts and Crosses think again because that was the book of love.
Sephy has a baby Callie Rose and decides to live with Callie's grandmother Meggie McGregor Callum and Jude's mother.However now that the truth has come out about Sephy's life will she be able to cope and how will Jude take it that Sephy is living with HIS mother.

This is as exciting as the first book and I highly recommend it to everyone.

John Hegley

2007-10-23T20:07:00.001+01:00

I was lucky enough to spend two hours on Saturday evening at the Stratford Circus (just between the Theatre Royal and the Stratford Picturehouse) listening to the poet JOHN HEGLEY perform loads of his poems to a delighted audience (one of whom was also my 7-year-old son, Thomas, who even performed one of the poems himself when John Hegley picked him out from the audience and asked him).

One of the poems Hegley performed was a variation on one of his most popular - essentially a simile poem about NEED. What I love about this poem is not only the wonderfully original approach he takes to composing similes, but also the fantastic way in which he subverts the conventions of RHYME to give the poem a rhythm that is typical of his idiosyncratic style.

Here is a previous version of the poem:

I need you like a novel needs a plot.
I need you like the greedy needs a lot.
I need you like a hovel needs a certain level of grottiness
to qualify.
I need you like acne cream needs spottiness.
Like a calendar needs a week.
Like a colander needs a leek.
Like people need to seek out what life on Mars is.
Like hospitals need vases.
I need you.
I need you like a zoo needs a giraffe.
I need you like a psycho needs a path.
I need you like King Arthur needed a table
that was for more than just for one.
I need you like a kiwi needs a fruit.
I need you like a wee wee needs a route out of the body.
I need you like Noddy needed little ears,
just for the contrast.
I need you like bone needs marrow.
I need you like straight needs narrow.
I need you like the broadest bean needs something else on the plate
before it can participate
in what you might describe as a decent meal.
I need you like a cappucino needs froth.
I need you like a candle needs a moth
if it’s going to burn its wings off.

Click here to visit the poet's website.

And click here to listen to the poet perform his poem, 'Jesus Isn't Just For Christmas'...

Noughts and Crosses

2007-10-21T12:17:00.000+01:00

A thought provoking love story that adds racism and prejudice into it is a recipe for an engaging book.Winner of the Lancashire Children's book awards Noughts and crosses is definitely a book that I would recommend.
This book is about a black girl Sephy daughter of the most respected politician and about a white boy, Callum who is one of those in an under privileged society.Yes in this book the black people are in charge and the white people are not.
Sephy and Callum are childhood friends and say that even through thick and thin they will stay together.However the hierarchy gets too tough for some to handle and so the question is through thick and thin, will Callum and Sephy still remain Friends?
This book offers so many twists in the tale so for someone who doesn't like a soppy love story but one with a lot of strong emotions and twists and turns, this is the book for you.

The Breadwinner

2007-10-07T18:26:00.000+01:00

Recommendations come at a highly profound cost. Seeing as everyone has a certain view of the world and how everything goes about it. Recommending a book with true emotion and depth is everything a person needs to relish themselves into, and that is exactly what I'm
doing.

The Breadwinner caught me from the first moment I read it. This book follows the life of Parvana, a young girl living in Afghanistan during it's Taliban rein and the difficulties that the ever increasing war has brought upon her. Her family care about and love her, but one Taliban abduction left her life torn and shattered in a way that no teenage girl would ever imagine. Her father.

Between the time that it took for the family to hit realisation, and the time it took them to understand, they had already fallen into the state of poverty. Minutes seemed like hours, and hours seemed like days.

But as time ran out for hope and wishes, someone had to do something. Parvana, with a heart of stone and a mind of matter, had to be the one to lift her life up.

With extreme circumstances and a brave heart, Parvana soon realised that life was for living, and she was never going to give it up.

Losing the life you had before was never going to be easy, but;

Dressed as a boy in the market, I soon found out that I was not watching the life of this poor young girl, I was her.

Parvana is the breadwinner in the market.

And The Breadwinner is a truely amazing insight into what happens in places of war and anguish.

Capturing the life of an eleven year old girl, Deborah Ellis is one author that I have to say, may wonder into a topic which none other has tried to explore before. The minds of children and young adults are hard to capture and maintain, but Deborah achieves this with no extra help or power. The trilogy carries on, and I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to carry on reading. Since reading this in year six, I have always been aware that someone out there is always less better off than I am, and I can not recommend it enough.

Avenging Angel

2007-10-07T12:51:00.000+01:00

I like to recommend this book which is called Avenging Angel by David Belbin,

This is a review about it:

This book is about a boy called Angelo who was riding his bike and suddenly he saw a car coming so fast towards him but he was too late, the car knocked over his bike and he fell on the road with his bike on top of him, and car drove away. It was a hit and run accident. All Angelo said before he died was the word 'blaze'.

His sister Clare cannot rest until she finds the truth who ran over him, so she tells her friend PC Neil. He finds two suspect, one of them had a colour green car that Angelo was killed with and the other had the same colour car and there was a bike shape mark on the car but when both of them was in court they both was proved innocent.

After two weeks she saw a group of young gang of Angelo's friend and one of them name was blaze, so she finally found the culprit.

Love is...

2007-10-05T14:15:00.000+01:00

Here is a poem by Liverpudlian poet, the late Adrian Henri. When you read it, look closely at the wonderful (and original) use he makes of METAPHOR in the poem. Metaphor is something lots of students find difficult - unlike similes, which are easy. But you could do worse than look to this poem to teach you all you need to know about metaphors. And about love too... (Oh, and the picture is of a couple of manatees: can't animals love too?)

Love Is...

Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained hands
Love is.

Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don't put out the light
Love is

Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you're feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is

Love is white panties lying all forlorn
Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm
Love is when you have to leave at dawn
Love is

Love is you and love is me
Love is prison and love is free
Love's what's there when you are away from me
Love is...

'Carrie' by Stephen King

2007-10-04T15:45:00.000+01:00

I like to recommend a book and film called 'Carrie' by Stephen King. Here is my review on the book:

The book is about a girl called Carrie White, who is no ordinary girl. She has a gift called 'Telekinesis' this enables her to do things with her mind. The story starts off with Carrie in school in the school showers, something unusual happens, all the girls mock her. A girl called Christine Hargensen was the main ringleader and the starter of all the other girls mocking her. Another girl called Sue Snell who was part of this shame felt sorry for Carrie. Later in the story Sue Snell asks her boyfriend Tommy Ross to ask Carrie to the school prom. This is Carries dream, she rejects at first then she finally agrees. She tells her mother, her mother is an absolute freak she is so religious.

And throughout the story you would learn that on several occasions her mother has sent her to a tiny cupboard, which she calls the prayer cupboard. Carrie begins to prepare for the prom; she makes her own prom dress. Only of she knew the prom would take a decidedly macabre turn on that horrifying and endless night. Christine Hargesen and her boyfriend Billy Nolan switched all the prom winners’ cards to make Carrie and Tommy win prom king and queen. When they were going up to the stage, Christine and Billy were hiding underneath the stage with a rope in their hands leading to a bucket on the ceiling full of pigs blood, the blood splattered all over Carrie. Everyone started to laugh; to their horror she stood up using her gift she locked all the doors and windows of the prom hall. She set the entire hall on fire causing everyone to scream for his or her lives.

After everyone was burnt Carrie left, leaving a trail of pigs blood. As she was going home she was causing destruction all the way. She went home destroying everything as she entered; her mum was sitting in the kitchen with a knife. Carrie told her mum she was going to kill her, her mum said lets pray and began reading religious things. Carrie killed her mum then took her body to the prayer room and the whole house collapsed upon them. In my opinion Stephen Kings imagination is vast, he knows how to engage the deepest sympathies of his readers. This book is a horror book, and it can truly make the flesh creep and cringe.

Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

2007-09-27T22:00:00.000+01:00

When I was at Oxford university, one of the most eminent professors of English there came to our college one day to lead a seminar on someone he regarded to be the best poet writing in the English language for at least 150 years. Imagine our surprise, therefore, when he started off by playing a song by 1960s (and onwards) folk hero, Bob Dylan. However, if you look at the lyrics below, I hope you will agree they show as much depth and skill as anything else you have read of English poetry. And there are many more where this comes from too...

'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' by Bob Dylan (1963)

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin',
I saw a white ladder all covered with water,
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony,
I met a white man who walked a black dog,
I met a young woman whose body was burning,
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow,
I met one man who was wounded in love,
I met another man who was wounded with hatred,
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Coram Boy

2007-09-27T21:22:00.000+01:00

The harsh realities of 18th century life, of slavery, of prejudice, of tragedy, of corruption, of the haves and the have nots are woven together incredibly intricately and yet quite simply told too. Rest assured this book will have a significant impact on any teenager; and you may well find it impossible to put down...

It was a well-deserved winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award in 2000.

'A fine lady went to Stowe Fair. She was pregnant for the first time and, keen to know what the future held for her, she consulted an old gypsy woman.
'"Why, my dear, I do believe you will have seven babies," said the gypsy woman studying her hand. The fine lady went away and thought no more about it.
'When the time came for her child to be born, a midwife was summoned to attend the labour. "What have we here?" she exclaimed as she delivered first one baby, then another and another.
'"Oh no!" cried the young wife, remembering the gypsy's prophecy. "That can't be so!" She wept. But sure enough, one by one, seven little baby girls were born and laid into a basket.
'The fine lady was upset fit to die. "I don't care what the gypsy prophesied; I will only keep one baby. Take the other six away," she begged the midwife. "Drown them in the river, but whatever you do, don't tell my husband," and she pressed a purse of silver into her hand.

To download and read the rest of the first chapter for free, click here.

The Fast Track BLOG is changing...

2007-09-15T10:13:00.000+01:00

The GCSE results are out; the tears (of joy and of disappointment) have been dried; and a new Year 11 is in its throne. But the message - as far as GCSE English is concerned - is simple: the more challenging and frequent your reading, the higher your grade will be.

Last year, our average point score this year was the highest of all the core subjects; and we got over 10% more students to a Grade C or higher - a record improvement and wonderful news especially for those who desperately needed that magical C grade to get into their chosen courses at 6th Form College.

But there was NOBODY who achieved an A or A* grade in English - high B grades yes, but not a single A or A*. Why? Well, not enough of the most able students were producing enough timed essays; not enough were really stretching themselves; and not enough were making sufficient use of the wikis and blogs at their disposal. BUT I would say the BIGGEST reason was that not enough of the most able students in last year's Year 11 were reading - and I mean really reading - like their lives depended on it.

Reading is the answer. And, unlike much exam preparation, reading is fun. Choose the right book, and it simply doesn't feel like WORK at all, as you are whisked away to a parallel world and wrapped in a mesmerising narrative.

All members of the English Fast Track should be reading for a minimum of 45 minutes EVERY night. This should become part of your daily routine, something you would not miss out any more than you would eating dinner or cleaning your teeth in the morning.

And this BLOG? Well, I would like to hand it over ENTIRELY for book reviews. WHENEVER you finish reading a book, just spend 10 minutes or so writing a brief review of it on the Fast Track BLOG, so that other people can learn from your experience.

At the end of each term, there will be a £10 prize for:

The BEST book review of the term;
The MOST book reviews written.

To help you, members of the English Department will also post regular reviews of books we have read and enjoyed.

And you can also find a detailed reading list by clicking here and getting your parents to register. Not only will you then be able to download excerpts from ALL the books listed, but you will also be able to buy them at a special discounted rate, if you choose to do so.

So get reading straight away!

And we look forward to reading the first book review in the very near future.

The George Mitchell English Department

Look into my eyes

2007-07-24T20:28:00.000+01:00

This poem was written by a Palestinian teenager and was later made into a song by Outlandish(which you can listen to on the internet).It is a very emotional poem and leaves you thinking about others less fortunate than ourselves.

Look into my eyes
Tell me what you see
You don't see a damn thing
'cause you can't relate to me
You're blinded by our differences
My life makes no sense to you
I'm the persecuted one
You're the red, white and blue

Each day you wake in tranquility
No fears to cross your eyes
Each day I wake in gratitude
Thanking God He let me rise
You worry about your education
And the bills you have to pay
I worry about my vulnerable life
And if I'll survive another day
Your biggest fear is getting a ticket
As you cruise your Cadillac
My fear is that the tank that has just left
Will turn around and come back

Yet, do you know the truth of where your money goes?
Do you let the media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth nobody, nobody, nobody knows?
Has our world gone all blind?

Yet, do you know the truth of where your money goes?
Do you let the media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth nobody, nobody, nobody knows?
Someone tell me ...

Ooohh, let's not cry tonight
I promise you one day it's through
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters
Ooohh, shine a light for every soul that ain't with us no more
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters

See I've known terror for quite some time
57 years so cruel
Terror breathes the air I breathe
It's the checkpoint on my way to school
Terror is the robbery of my land
And the torture of my mother
The imprisonment of my innocent father
The bullet in my baby brother
The bulldozers and the tanks
The gases and the guns
The bombs that fall outside my door
All due to your funds
You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of my enemies
I'm terrorized in my own land (what)
And I'm the terrorist?

Yet, do you know the truth of where your money goes?
Do you let the media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth nobody, nobody, nobody knows?
Has our world gone all blind?

Yet, do you know the truth of where your money goes?
Do you let the media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth nobody, nobody, nobody knows?
Someone tell me ...

Ooohh, let's not cry tonight, I promise you one day it's through
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters,
Ooohh, shine a light for every soul that ain't with us no more
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters,

American , do you realize that the taxes that you pay
Feed the forces that traumatize my every living day
So if I won't be here tomorrow
It's written in my fate
May the future bring a brighter day
The end of our wait

Ooohh, let's not cry tonight, I promise you one day it's through
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters,
Ooohh, shine a light for every soul that ain't with us no more
Ohh my brothers, Ohh my sisters,

Ohh let's not cry tonight I promise you one day is through
Ohh my brothers! Ohh my sisters!
Ooh shine a light for every soul that ain't with us no more
Ohh my brothers! Ohh my sisters!

The Brief Facts; Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.

2007-07-24T11:20:00.000+01:00

Everyone has been waiting for the arrival of Harry's final journey, and sicne I woke up at 7o'clock in the morning on Saturday the 21st to get this book, I thought I might as well share my views on how brilliant Harry's ending was.

This is not a fully pledged review like your average one.
I have chosen to make it very thin, as not to reveal too much. I am sure people who have read it will agree with me.
I am only just giving you the facts that may help you understand the story. It took me a while to fully understand the many plots and twists. Once you do, you will also feel the way I do.

If the Half Blood Prince left you with many questions, be sure that your answers will be revealed.
The wonder of the Horcruxes has been enbedded in many minds, including my own. Know very well that the magnificent story plots reveal these. We were left with the knowledge of seven horcruxes. This was revealed very thoroughly by Dumbledore before his death.
The Horcruxes played a huge part throughout this book.
A Horcrux being this; An object that gave Voldemort the capability to place part of his soul into safe keeping. The horcruxes were mostly valuable items to Voldemort. Whether they were entwined in his life as a young student at Hogwarts, or something that was somehow involved with him deeply.
They could be hidden, anywhere. As we found out in book six.
I am only giving clues/facts that we already know from the past books, for I want to give a chance for those who haven't finished it yet.

Slytherin's Locket (enclosed) is the first locket that Harry destroys in this book, since it was left off from the last book. But with what I am not saying.
During the last six books, two of the horcruxes were already destroyed. Tom Riddle's Diary (Chamber of Secrets) and Graunt's Ring (Half Blood Prince), the one Dumbledore had the pleasure of wearing.
The remaining four will slowly reveal themselves, one clue to help solve some; Hufflepuff.

The idea of the Hallows intrigued me very much, it proved that J K Rowling was more intelligent than I thought she was. Clever enough to place side by side this one question; Hallows or Horcruxes? I will not explain the Hallows, for I believe it is one of the more important sides of the story, and it is for you to unveal.
The clue for this one; The cover. At the very top of the spine. That is all I will say.

Two deaths? J K Rowling knew that these deaths would effect us all. It shocked me also when one of my friends told me before I had read the part. It seems sad, that we all suspect the main characters, who I will not announce, to die. But it is even more upsetting when we find out the people who did die, who gave their life to save one person. Prepare yourselves, death may mourn your minds as well as the characters.

Despite all of these large plots, the journey that Harry, Ron, Hermione and co. go on is the best. Love, tradgedy, failure, sucession, just some of the things you will feel.
You will truly feel the power of Lord Voldemort, and the hate and anger he brings to the world of magic. You will see the mind of the 'boy who lived' and understand why his journey has been such a long and tiring one.
I enjoyed it so very much. More than I imagined. I plunged my heart this book for three whole days just to find out the glorious ending that came across Harry. It does also upset me, that there will not be another story to intrigue me anymore. I feel a sense of loss, for over these past ten years or so, I have always had something to look forward to.
I give my praise to J K Rowling, a brilliant author and one that we should all praise for years to come. This is by far the best book, the one that carries the answers and the burden to our questions and hopes.
I do hope you all love this book, for one thing can be sure; Harry is truly, the boy who lives.

Even teachers need a holiday...

2007-07-22T19:40:00.000+01:00

I will not be posting on this blog again until the end of August.
But that does NOT mean it NEEDS to remain EMPTY...

Why not post a BOOK REVIEW of one of the books I have recommended during the year. Click on 'Recommended Reading' in the bar on the right to go back over all the books I have suggested to you.

Or why not post a FILM REVIEW, of one of the many movies I have urged you to see over the past few months. Click on 'Film and Television' to remind yourself.

Or perhaps you could post some of YOUR FAVOURITE POEMS - maybe even by some of the poets I have recommended in the various 'Poem of the Week' posts. Or, better still, post some of your OWN poems instead - and see what some of the other bloggers say about what you have written. Click on 'Student Writing' to read some students' work from a few months ago to inspire you!

All I am saying is that this BLOG belongs to ALL of you, just as much as it does to me. So if the long summer holidays start to drag, there are worse ways to pass the time than to BLOG. :)

And if that is not enough, you can always browse some of the amazing work being produced by students in the English Workshop at wordvoodoo.blogspot.com...

Movies for your Summer Holiday

2007-07-15T12:38:00.000+01:00

Fill your summer with films!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Website
Review
Trailer

The Simpsons Movie
Website
Review
Trailer

Transformers
Website
Review
Trailer

Breach
Website
Review
Trailer

The Bourne Ultimatum
Website
Trailer

Evan Almighty
Website
Review
Trailer

1408
Website
Review
Trailer

I used to be a book burner...

2007-07-15T12:19:00.001+01:00

Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu:
All our dream-worlds may come true.
Fairy lands are fearsome too.
As I wander far from view
Read, and bring me home to you.

This poem was written by Salman Rushdie as the dedication at the beginning of his novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Highly recommended itself (see the previous blog entry here), the novel is particularly relevant now, in the light of all the furore over Rushdie's knighthood.

Notice the acrostic in the poem, which spells the name of Rushdie's son, to whom the novel (and the poem) were directed. In both, he is trying to explain to his only child the madness which erupted around him after the fatwa was announced, and the enduring power of stories to transcend political or religious ideologies.

Why not read more about the furore surrounding Rushdie's knighthood at The Guardian's blog (commentisfree):
Freedom to Offend and I used to be a book burner (both by Inayat Bunglawala, Assistant Secretary-General at the Muslim Council of Britain)
Tender is the Knighthood
Unhelpful Outrage
Sir Salman's Long Journey
He should have realised...

Brick Lane

2007-07-15T11:59:00.000+01:00

Mymensingh District, East Pakistan, 1967
An hour and forty-five minutes before Nazneen's life began - began as it would proceed for quite some time, that is to say uncertainly - her mother Rupban felt an iron fist squeeze her belly. Rupban squatted on a low three-legged stool outside the kitchen hut. She was plucking a chicken because Hamid's cousins had arrived from Jessore and there would be a feast. 'Cheepy-cheepy, you are old and stringy,' she said, calling the bird by name as she always did, 'but I would like to eat you, indigestion or no indigestion. And tomorrow I will have only boiled rice, no parathas.
She pulled some more feathers and watched them float around her toes. 'Aaah,' she said. 'Aaaah. Aaaah.' Things occurred to her. For seven months she had been ripening, like a mango on a tree. Only seven months. She put those things that had occurred to her aside. For a while, an hour and a half, though she did not know it, until the men came in from the fields trailing dust and slapping their stomachs, Rupban clutched Cheepy-cheepy's limp and bony neck and said only coming, coming to all enquiries about the bird. The shadows of the children playing marbles and thumping each other grew long and spiky. The scent of fried cumin and cardamom drifted over the compound. The goats bleated high and thin. Rupban screamed white heat, red blood.
Hamid ran from the latrine, although his business was unfinished. He ran across the vegetable plot, past the towers of rice stalk taller than the tallest building, over the dirt track that bounded the village, back to the compound and grabbed a club to kill the man who was killing his wife. He knew it was her. Who else could break glass with one screech? Rupban was in the sleeping quarters. The bed was unrolled, though she was still standing. With one hand she held Mumtaz's shoulder, with the other a half-plucked chicken.
Mumtaz waved Hamid away. 'Go. Get Banesa. Are you waiting for a rickshaw? Go on, use your legs.'

Nazneen is a teenager forced into an arranged marriage with a man considerably older than her - a man whose expectations of life are so low that misery seems to stretch ahead for her. Fearfully leaving the sultry oppression of her Bangladeshi village, Nazneen finds herself cloistered in a small flat in a high-rise block in the East End of London. Because she speaks no English, she is obliged to depend totally on her husband. But it becomes apparent that, of the two, she is the real survivor: more able to deal with the ways of the world, and a better judge of the vagaries of human behaviour. She makes friends with another Asian girl, Razia, who is the conduit to her understanding of the unsettling ways of her new homeland.

To read a review of Brick Lane by Monica Ali, click here.

Fighting baddies, aliens, thieves... and yourself

2007-07-07T09:43:00.000+01:00

In cinemas this week:
Die Hard 4.0 - Bruce is back, as John McClane gets his own back. Again.

Out on DVD this week:
Them - Terrifying French thriller that will put everyone off buying a nice place in the country...
Flags of our Fathers - Award-winning war movie, in which director Clint Eastwood explores both sides of WW2 in Japan.

And on TV this week...
Fight Club (Today, 11.30pm, BBC2) - Seminal, disturbing movie which explores the dark underside of the modern male psyche.

Open Range (Tuesday, 10.35pm, BBC1) - Beautiful, epic, Kevin Costner western.
The Pink Panther (Tuesday, 6.50pm, Film4) - Hilarious original version of Inspector Clouseau's first accident-ridden outing.
Panic Room (Tuesday, 9.00pm, FiveUS) - Gripping thriller in which Jodie Foster and her daughter are trapped in their own house.

Jean de Florette and Manon Des Sources (Wednesday, 6.40pm & Thursday, 6.50pm, Film4) - Epic and beautiful pair of French films about a precious spring and how it divides and destroys a rural community.
Election (Wednesday, 9.00pm, ITV2) - Satirical high-school movie about a group of teenagers fighting to be school president.
Men in Black II (Thursday, 9.00pm, FiveUS) - Back in black: Will Smith returns to fight lots of slimy aliens.

The Hole in the Sum of my Parts

2007-07-07T09:30:00.000+01:00

'The Hole in the Sum of my Parts'
by Matt Harvey

Part of me is punctual - it turns up right on time
Part of me is functional - though slightly past its prime
Part of me is criminal - it's quite against the law
Part of me's subliminal - and kind of either/or
Part of me is lowly - it lows just like a cow
Part of me is holy - at least holier-than-thou
Part of me is actual - ly more solid than it seems
And part of me is factual
But most of me is dreams

Part of me is truculent: don't look that way at me
Part of me is succulent - suck it and you'll see
Part of me's detestable - or so people have said
And part of me's suggestible - or so people have said
Part of me's competitive - it only wants to win
And part of me's repetitive - or so people have said
Part of me's interminable - it goes on and on and on
And on and on and on and on and on and on (and on)
This part of me's prolific - it writes reams and reams and reams
And part of me's terrific
But most of me is dreams

Parts of me are distant - and yet can seem so near
Parts of me are whispers - which the other parts can't hear
Parts of me are broken - and tremble to the touch
And these parts can be spoken - but I don't speak them much
Part of me is pensive. - I think. But I don't know.
Part of me's defensive .......... so?
Part of me's celestial - it gleams and beams and gleams
And part of me is bestial (grrrrrr)
But most of me is dreams

Part of me is tiny - but not the part you think
Part of me is shiny - and a pleasing shade of pink
Part of me is laudable - it's for a worthy cause
And part of me's inaudible - (like imaginary gorse*) *mouthed silently
Part of me is hairy - to be honest not a lot !
Part of me's contrary - No it's not
Part of me's co-operative - it plays so well in teams
And part of me's inoperative
But most of me is dreams

Parts of me are latent - lurking dormant underneath
Parts of me are blatant - for some reason they're called Keith
Parts of me have stamina - because I do Chi Gung
And part of me's my anima - according to the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung
Part of me is piddling - yet full of cosmic yearning
And part of me is fiddling - while the rest of me is burning
Part of me is fluent - it flows as sure as streams
While part of me plays truant
But most of me - as I've tried to emphasise here - is dreams

To visit the poet's website, click here.

Martyn Pig

2007-07-07T09:17:00.000+01:00

'Did I hate him? Of course I hated him. But I never meant to kill him.' With his father dead, Martyn has a choice. Tell the police what happened - and be suspected of murder. Or get rid of the body and get on with the rest of his life. Simple, right? Not quite. One story leads to another. Secrets and lies become darker and crazier. And Martyn is faced with twists and turns that leave him reeling. Life is never easy. But death is even harder.

To download a free extract from this Carnegie and Branford Boase prize winner, click here.

To find out more about the author, click here.

Hail, King Shrek!

2007-06-30T17:28:00.000+01:00

In cinemas this week:
Even though the reviews are not very good, you might not be able to resist the green allure of everyone's favourite ogre in:
Shrek the Third (PG)

Out on DVD this week:
Nicolas Cage playes stunt rider, Johnny Blaze, who sold his soul to the devil and is now finally having to pay the price in:
Ghost Rider (15)

And on TV this week:
Stealing Beauty (Sunday, 9.00pm, Film4) - 'Coming of age' drama starring Liv Tyler (and directed by the legendary Bernardo Bertolucci)
Die Hard 2 (Monday, 11.0W0pm, ITV1) - 'Die Harder': John McClane is back for more edge-of-your-seat action
Falling Down (Monday, 9.00pm, ITV2) - Violent and disturbing look at the effect of repressed aggression in modern America, starring Michael Douglas.
Road to Perdition (Monday, 9.00pm, Film4) - Bonds of loyalty are put to the test when a hitman's son witnesses what his father does for a living.
Wimbledon (Friday, 8.30pm, ITV1) - Lightweight romantic comedy, which should at least provide an antidote for those fed up of the tennis!

The Children in the Playground

2007-06-30T17:21:00.000+01:00

Tonight I am going to see a poetry performance at the Purcell Rooms in London's South Bank Centre, and one of the poets performing is John Hegley. So I thought that I would post another of his poems as this week's Poem of the Week...

The Children in the Playground

In the playground
the children are playing a game of kiss chase
and one of the children
who seems to want to be chased after
calls out above the screams and laughter
don't chase me!
don't chase me!
and nobody does

A Swift Pure Cry

2007-06-30T16:49:00.000+01:00

A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan Dowd is a beautiful, lyrical novel about teenager, Shell, whose life begins to fall apart when her mother dies. Tired of looking after her younger brother and sister and bored by the routines of school and church, Shell skips school and hangs around with her friends smoking and cracking jokes and looking for chances that will confirm their growing up.

But what follows is not a simple transition into adulthood but the tragedy of Shell’s hidden pregnancy and the stillbirth of her baby, amid the hypercritical and chaotic thinking of the small Irish community in which she is growing up. No wonder this was also the winner of a prestigious prize this year - the Branford Boase Award 2007.

Click here to download a free extract from the novel.

A televisual movie FEAST!!!

2007-06-23T16:53:00.000+01:00

Nothing particularly special out this week at the cinema or on DVD, but that is certainly not the case on TV. This week's television listings boast LOADS of excellent films, of which these are just a selection. (*As always, however, please check with your parents before you watch any of these, as some of them have adult content your parents might not want you to watch.)

The Green Mile (Sunday, 9.00pm, Film 4) - Starring Tom Hanks, this critically acclaimed prison drama was based on a Stephen King short story, just like The Shawshank Redemption (showing at the Film Club in July).
28 Days Later (Sunday, 10.00pm, Channel 4) - The sequel to this terrifying, British 'Zombie' film, 28 Weeks Later, is in cinemas now; see how the 'rage' first began...
The Silence of the Lambs (Sunday, 10.00pm, ITV2) - Terrifying and certainly not for the faint-hearted, this film immortalised Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter, and his taste for human liver...with "a nice Chianti".
Die Hard (Monday, 11.00pm, ITV1) - Die Hard 4.0 is out in cinemas next month; see how it all began, when Bruce Willis' John Maclane was first 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Tuesday, 9.00pm, ITV2) - Kenneth Branagh brings Shelley's gothic horror to the big screen, with a monster made real by Robert De Niro.
East Is East (Tuesday, 10.00pm, More4) - Wonderful film version of Ayub Khan-Din's comedy about a Pakistani family in Salford, and their struggle against the strict Muslim ways their father is trying to preserve.
The King (Tuesday, 10.45pm, Film4) - Gael Garcia Bernal (Babel) plays a prodigal son returning to a Texan town to find his estranged father, with disastrous consequences for the whole family.
Gladiator (Wednesday, 9.00pm, Film4) - Ridley Scott's epic, Oscar-laden depiction of Russel Crowe's Roman 'gladiator' wreaking revenge on the prince who killed his family.
The Magdalene Sisters (Thursday, 9.00pm, Film4) - Three young Irish women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of a Magdalene Sisters Asylum: provocative but compelling.
Out Of Sight (Friday, 10.20pm, ITV2) - Fans of Oceans 11/12/13 will love George Clooney's stylish turn here as an escaped bank robber entwined with Jennifer Lopez's Detroit cop.
The Big Lebowski (Friday, 11.10pm, Film4) - You might not like this one, but I couldn't let it pass without bringing it to your attention; it is one of my top 10 films of all time.

I learn by going where I have to go...

2007-06-22T18:21:00.000+01:00

'The Waking'
by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

from a Portrait of Theodore Roethke (by Mike Nease),
which hangs at Seattle's Blue Moon Tavern

To see more poems by Theodore Roethke, click here.

To find out more about the poet himself, click here.

To read a difficult but fascinating essay about the poem, click here.

The best ever Carnegie award winner!!!

2007-06-22T17:52:00.000+01:00

This week, this year's Carnegie Award winner was announced. The Carnegie award is the country's premier prize for teenage fiction. The 2007 winner is called Just In Case and was written by Meg Rosoff (who also wrote How I Live Now - last week's recommendation).

This is what the Carnegie judges had to say about the book:

A story that deals with anxiety, depression and coming of age that has real emotional resonance. This is a distinctive and outstanding book written in an intelligent, yet spare style. There is an ‘edginess’ to the way the author writes; the result is clever and bold. The character of the teenage boy is conveyed in an interesting way and is not at all stereotypical. This is a story of survival in the modern world that is utterly compelling.

Also, this week, the Carnegie panel looked at ALL the Carnegie award winners over the last 70 years, and decided on the ONE book which they felt outshone ALL the others: the Carnegie of Carnegies! And this prestigious and unprecedented prize went to Northern Lights, the first of Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy.

An extraordinary journey into a fantasy world, it follows Lyra, accompanied by her daemon, Pantalaimon, on a quest to find Lyra's friend, Roger, who has disappeared. Their travels lead them to the bleak splendour of the North where a team of scientists are conducting unspeakably horrible experiments. The novel is soon to hit the silver screen, with The Golden Compass due in cinemas in December.

You can download an EXTRACT from both of these prize-winning novels by clicking here.

To view the whole list of the Top 10 Carnegies EVER, click here.

This week's films...

2007-06-17T14:57:00.000+01:00

Not many great films on TV this week, but I can highly recommend:

Memento (Tue, 9.00pm, Film4) - The story of a man, suffering from short-term memory loss, who uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife; but the amazing thing here is not the story itself, but HOW it is told.

Not much to celebrate at cinemas this week either, but, if you like your action blockbusters, you could try:

Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (PG) - The Fantastic Four learn that they aren't the only super-powered beings in the universe when they square off against the powerful Silver Surfer and the planet-eating Galactus.

And new on DVD this week:

Blood Diamond (15) - Leonardo DiCaprio film about a fisherman, a smuggler, and a syndicate of businessmen who match wits over the possession of a priceless diamond, this is a ruthless indictment of the illegal trade in 'conflict diamonds' which is ripping apart much of the developing world.

...the solving emptiness

2007-06-17T14:40:00.000+01:00

'Ambulances' by Philip Larkin

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there

At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable inside a room
The traffic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.

To read more poems by Philip Larkin, click here.
To find out more about the poet himself, click here.
To watch a Sky TV News piece about Larkin's 'lost tapes', click here.

...everything changed because of Edmond.

2007-06-17T14:26:00.000+01:00

My name is Elizabeth but no one's ever called me that. My father took one look at me when I was born and must have thought I had the face of someone dignified and sad like an old-fashioned queen or a dead person, but what I turned out like is plain, not much there to notice. Even my life so far has been plain. More Daisy than Elizabeth from the word go.

But the summer I went to England to stay with my cousins everything changed. Part of that was because of the war, which supposedly changed lots of things, but I can't remember much about life before the war anyway so it doesn't count in my book, which this is.

Mostly everything changed because of Edmond.

And so here's what happened.

Click here to read the rest of this extract from How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff.
Click here for an excellent review of the novel.
Click here to read about the responses to the book by three different Reading Groups, including one from a secondary school in Debden, not far from Leyton.

Cops and robbers (and some very dangerous monkeys)

2007-06-08T23:30:00.000+01:00

New at cinemas
Ten Canoes (15) - rare, beautiful movie about Aboriginal culture, storytelling (and a bit of romance)
Oceans Thirteen (15) - George, Brad and Matt return with their oh-so-cool band of thieves for a third time

New on DVD
Hot Fuzz (15) - The 'Shaun of the Dead' team return with this hilarious action spoof (which also manages to be a great action film in itself too).
Apocalypto (18) - Mel Gibson does 'the end of the Mayan civilisation' like only Mel can.

On TV this week
The Butterfly Effect (Sat, 10.15pm, Channel 4) - complex, teen sci-fi about chaos theory and the power of time travel
The Last of the Mohicans (Sat, 9.00pm, Film4) - epic, award-winning portrayal of life within warring Native American communities
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Sun, 3.55pm, More4) - classic, oscar-winning, 1961 romance starring Audrey Hepburn
Outbreak (Sun, 6.30pm, ITV2) - virus-spreading thriller, and Dustin Hoffman tries to contain the threat
The Talented Mr Ripley (Mon, 9.00pm, Film4) - gripping thriller about duplicitous, machiavellian master-of-disguises, Tom Ripley
Jack and Sarah (Wed, 6.55pm, Film4) - Jack loses his wife in childbirth, and this romantic comedy sees him learning to be a father - all on his own
Phone Booth (Thu, 9.00pm, Film4) - totally gripping thriller where a rather nasty (and clever) terrorist keeps Colin Farrell literally hanging on the line

I found him in the garage

2007-06-08T21:25:00.000+01:00

I found him in the garage on a Sunday afternoon. It was the day after we moved into Falconer Road. The winter was ending. Mum had said we'd be moving just in time for the spring. Nobody else was there. Just me. The others were inside the house with Dr. Death, worrying about the baby.

He was lying there in the darkness behind the tea chests, in the dust and dirt. It was as if he'd been there forever. He was filthy and pale and dried out and I thought he was dead. I couldn't have been more wrong. I'd soon begin to see the truth about him, that there'd never been another creature like him in the world.

We called it the garage because that's what the real estate agent, Mr. Stone, called it. It was more like a demolition site or a rubbish dump or like one of those ancient warehouses they keep pulling down at the wharf. Stone led us down the garden, tugged the door open, and shined his little flashlight into the gloom. We shoved our heads in at the doorway with him.

"You have to see it with your mind's eye," he said. "See it cleaned, with new doors and the roof repaired. See it as a wonderful two-car garage."

He looked at me with a stupid grin on his face.

"Or something for you, lad-a hideaway for you and your pals. What about that, eh?"

I looked away. I didn't want anything to do with him. All the way round the house it had been the same. Just see it in your mind's eye. Just imagine what could be done. All the way round I kept thinking of the old man, Ernie Myers, that had lived here on his own for years. He'd been dead nearly a week before they found him under the table in the kitchen. That's what I saw when Stone told us about seeing with the mind's eye. He even said it when we got to the dining room and there was an old cracked toilet sitting there in the comer behind a plywood screen. I just wanted him to shut up, but he whispered that toward the end Ernie couldn't manage the stairs. His bed was brought in here and a toilet was put in so everything was easy for him. Stone looked at me like he didn't think I should know about such things. I wanted to get out, to get back to our old house again, but Mum and Dad took it all in. They went on like it was going to be some big adventure. They bought the house. They started cleaning it and scrubbing it and painting it. Then the baby came too early. And here we were.

This is an extract from Skellig by David Almond. Winner of countless awards when it was first published in 2001, it tells the story of Michael, a schoolboy who discovers a miraculous companion hiding in the decrepid remains of his family shed. It's a beautiful, sentimental novel - about hope, love and the power of dreams... Some of you might have read it with me in Y7; to the rest of you, I would highly recommend it. [And we've copies in the stock room to lend you if you so wish...]

To read a review of the novel, click here.
To find out more about the author, David Almond, click here.
To buy the book, click here.

When the black dreams came...

2007-06-08T20:19:00.000+01:00

'Autobiography'
by Louise Macneice (1907-1963)

In my childhood trees were green
And there was plenty to be seen.
Come back early or never come.

My father made the walls resound,
He wore his collar the wrong way round.
Come back early or never come.

My mother wore a yellow dress;
Gentle, gently, gentleness.
Come back early or never come.

When I was five the black dreams came;
Nothing after was quite the same.
Come back early or never come.

The dark was talking to the dead;
The lamp was dark beside my bed.
Come back early or never come.

When I woke they did not care;
Nobody, nobody was there.
Come back early or never come.

When my silent terror cried,
Nobody, nobody replied.
Come back early or never come.

I got up; the chilly sun
Saw me walk away alone.
Come back early or never come.

* * * *

MacNeice's mother suffered gynaecological problems, a mental breakdown, which meant she left the family to go into a nursing-home in 1913, and, finally, death from tuberculosis a year later - when Macneice was only 6 years old. The loss of his mother at such an early age had a profound and lasting effect on him; his sister Elizabeth writes that “His last memory-picture of her walking up and down the garden path in tears seems to have haunted him for the rest of his life”. '

Autobiography', therefore, is exactly that...

To find out loads of interesting things about the poet and his life, click here.
To read more of his poems, click here.

Scary PIRATES, scary TEACHERS and scary SNAKES

2007-05-26T08:43:00.000+01:00

New in Cinemas:

Why not try new Independent Aussie murder thriller, Jindabyne (15)? Or, if you fancy three hours of pure entertainment, Jack is Back: Pirates of the Caribbean (12A) [WARNING: We will be going to see this for a big MLB reward trip after half term, so if you have been heavily involved in MLB this year, try to wait until then...]

New on DVD:

End your fear of spiders with cuddly kids' movie, Charlotte's Web, or look at the dark, underside of teacher-student relationships in Notes on a Scandal.

Films on TV:

Apollo 13 (Today, ITV1, 2.30pm) - classic Space disaster movie starring Tom Hanks
Capturing the Friedmans (Today, More4, 9.30pm) - raw and affecting look at mental illness
Training Day (Today, BBC1, 10.45pm) - Oscar-winning police movie with Ethan Hawke and Denzil Washington
Mission: Impossible (Sunday, ITV1, 3.30pm) - Tom Cruise's FIRST mission
I, Robot (Sunday, Film4, 9pm) - Will Smith battles the robots in this futuristic Sci-Fi
Ocean's Eleven (Monday, ITV1, 9pm) - see George and Brad on their first outing
Enduring Love (Monday, Film4, 9pm) - the film of the book (read more about the book here)
Anaconda (Monday, Five, 11pm) - so-bad-it's-brilliant killer snake movie
Saving Private Ryan (Wednesday, Five, 9pm) - extraordinary Spielberg war movie (especially that first 30 minutes!)

Invisible Friends

2007-05-26T08:32:00.000+01:00

Kellyanne opened the car door and crawled into my bedroom. Her face was puffy and pale and fuzzed-over. She just came in and said: "Ashmol, Pobby and Dingan are maybe-dead." That's how she said it.

"Good," I said. "Perhaps you'll grow up now and stop being such a fruit loop."

Tears started sliding down her face. But I wasn't feeling any sympathy, and neither would you if you'd grown up with Pobby and Dingan.

"Pobby and Dingan aren't dead," I said, hiding my anger in a swig from my can of Mello Yello. "They never existed. Things that never existed can't be dead. Right?"

Kellyanne glared at me through tears the way she did the time I slammed the door of the ute in Dingan's face or the time I walked over to where Pobby was supposed to be sitting and punched the air and kicked the air in the head to show Kellyanne that Pobby was a figment of her imaginings. I don't know how many times I had sat at the dinner table saying: "Mum, why do you have to set places for Pobby and Dingan? They aren't even real." She put food out for them too. She said they were quieter and better behaved than me and deserved the grub.

"They ain't exactly good conversationists, but," I would say.

And at other times when Kellyanne held out Pobby and Dingan were real I would just sit there saying, "Are not. Are not. Are not," until she got bored of saying, "Are. Are. Are," and went running out screaming with her hands over her ears.

And many times I've wanted to kill Pobby and Dingan, I don't mind saying it.

This is an excerpt from a wonderful little book by Ben Rice, called Pobby and Dingan.

To read the rest of the excerpt, click here.
To read a review of the novel, click here.
To buy the book, click here.

You're Beautiful

2007-05-26T08:09:00.000+01:00

You're Beautiful
by Simon Armitage

You're Beautiful

because you're classically trained
I’m ugly because I associate piano wire with strangulation

You’re beautiful because you stop to read cards in newsagent windows
About lost cats and missing dogs.
I’m ugly because of what I did to that jelly fish with a lolly-stick and a big stone

You’re beautiful because for you politeness is instinctive and not a marketing
campaign.
I’m ugly because desperation is impossible to hide

Ugly like he is
Beautiful like hers
Beautiful like venus,
Ugly like his
Beautiful like she is
Ugly like mars

You’re beautiful because you believe in coincidence and the power of thought
I’m ugly because I proved god to be a mathematical impossibility

You’re beautiful because you prefer homemade soup to the packet stuff
I’m ugly because once at a dinner party
I defended the aristocracy and I wasn’t even drunk

You’re beautiful because you can’t work the remote control
I’m ugly because of satellite television and 24 hr rolling news

Ugly like he is
Beautiful like hers
Beautiful like venus,
Ugly like his
Beautiful like she is
Ugly like mars

You’re beautiful because you cry at funerals as well as weddings
I’m ugly because I think of children as a species from a different world

You’re beautiful because you look great in any colour including red
I’m ugly because I think shopping is strictly for the acquisition of material goods

You’re beautiful because when you were born, undiscovered planets
Lined up to peep over your cradle and lay gifts of gravity and light
At your miniature feet

I’m ugly for saying ‘love at first sight’ is another form of mistaken identity,
And the most human of responses is to gloat

Ugly like he is
Beautiful like hers
Beautiful like venus,
Ugly like his
Beautiful like she is
Ugly like mars

You’re beautiful because you’ve never seen the inside of a car-wash
I’m ugly because I always ask for a receipt

You’re beautiful for sending a box of shoes to the third world
I’m ugly because I remember the phone numbers of ex-girlfriends
And the year Schubert was born

You’re beautiful because you sponsored a parrot in a zoo
I’m ugly because I when I sigh it’s like the slow collapse of a circus tent

Ugly like he is
Beautiful like hers
Beautiful like venus,
Ugly like his
Beautiful like she is
Ugly like mars

You’re beautiful because you can point at a man in uniform and laugh
I’m ugly because I was a police informer in a previous life

You’re beautiful because you drink three litres of water and eat three pieces
Of fruit a day.
I’m ugly for taking the line that a meal without meat is a beautiful woman
With one eye

You’re beautiful because you don’t see love as a competition and you know
how to lose
I’m beautiful because I kissed the FA cup and held it up to the crowd

You’re beautiful because of a single buttercup in the top button hole of your
cardigan
I’m ugly because I said the world's strongest woman was a muscle man in a
dress

You’re beautiful because you couldn’t live in a lighthouse.
I’m ugly for making hand-shadows in front of the giant bulb,
So when they
look up,
The captains of vessels in distress see the ears of a rabbit, or a eye of a fox,
Or the legs of a galloping horse.

To hear the poet read this poem out loud, click here.

Click here to visit the author's website.

A pianist, a player (and a couple of magicians...)

2007-05-19T14:10:00.000+01:00

All the good films out at the cinema this week are Certificate 15 or above, so most of you will not be able to see them until they come out on DVD. Click on the film to view a trailer:

Black Snake Moan (15) - the new Samuel L. Jackson film, set in the deep south of the USA, and all passion and god-fearing...
Magicians (15) - a british comedy starring Mitchell and Webb (from TV comedies Peep Show and That Mitchell And Webb Look, and also from the new PC v. Mac adverts) all about two rival magicians.
Zodiac (15) - disturbing thriller from David Fincher, director of seminal movies Fight Club and Se7en, all about an infamous serial killer in 1970s San Francisco.

Not so many good films on terrestrial TV this week (apart from cult British gangster movie, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - Thu 10pm Channel 4). But, if you've got Freeview, you can catch the following:

Vera Drake (Today, 9pm, Film4) - heavy, depressing but brilliant study of one woman's fight to help young women in desperate need to have an abortion.
The Pianist (Sunday, 10.15pm, ITV3) - inspiring, harrowing, Oscar-winning film about the redemptive power of music, set against the backdrop of the Nazi holocaust of Polish Jews.
Manon des Sources (Wednesday, 6.50pm, Film4) - beautiful sequel to French film, Jean de Florette, about a rural community torn apart by a battle over a precious water supply.
Four Weddings and a Funeral (Wednesday, 9.00pm, Film4) and Notting Hill (Wednesday, 11.15pm, Film4) - two classic British romantic comedies which made a star of Hugh Grant and developed the comedic talents of writer, Richard Curtis (Blackadder and Love Actually)
The Player (Friday, 11.10pm, Film4) - important, epic satire of Hollywood, interweaving numerous storylines to show tinseltown in all its cruelty, ugliness and duplicity

And also on television:

Indian School (Wednesday, 8.30pm, BBC4) - fascinating series about the Indian education system, eye-opening and educative
Reader, I married him... (Tuesday, 11.20pm, BBC2) - Documentary exploring the tradition of the romantic novel, from the classics through to the present day.
Balderdash & Piffle (Friday, 10.00pm, BBC2) - study of language and how it develops, focusing this week on euphemisms (and how they end up in the dictionary!)

And out on DVD this week:

Babel (15) - one of the most extraordinary films I have ever seen, this looks at just how rubbish human beings are at really communicating with each other, and the dire consequences it can have, all shot through the mesmerising lens of filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalex Inarritu. WARNING: I will be showing this in FILM CLUB in June, so avoid it until then if you are a film club member!

Wide oceans full of tears...

2007-05-19T13:55:00.000+01:00

I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hand
I had flashes
But you saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

You were there in the turnstiles
With the wind at your heels
You stretched for the stars
And you know how it feels
To reach too high, too far too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truth
You cut through lies
I saw the rain dirty valley
You saw "Brigadoon"
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed and I tried
You just knew
I sighed
And you swooned
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

The torch in your pocket
And the wind on your heels
You climbed on the ladder
And you know how it feels
To get too high, too far, too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

Unicorns and cannonballs
Palaces and piers
Trumpets, towers, and tenaments
Wide oceans full of tears
Flags, rags, ferryboats
Scimitars and scarves
Every precious dream and vision
Underneath the stars

Yes, you climbed on the ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like a comet
Blazing your trail
Too high, too far, too soon
You saw the whole of the moon.

This poem provides the lyrics for the 1985 song, 'The Whole of the Moon' by a band called The Waterboys, and is written by Mike Scott. You can listen to the song here.

I have chosen it because of the way in which the whole poem is built around constant juxtaposition (combining opposites). The narrator finds endlessly creative ways to compare himself with the far superior person to whom he is speaking...

My mother liked to wrestle!

2007-05-19T13:44:00.000+01:00

Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn't mater what. She was in the white corner and that was that.

She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. At election time in a Labour mill town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window.

She had never heard of mixed feelings. There were friends and there were enemies.

Enemies were:
The Devil (in his many forms)
Next Door
Sex (in its many forms)
Slugs

Friends were:
God
Our dog
Auntie Madge
The Novels of Charlotte Brontë
Slug pellets

and me, at first, I had been brought in to join her in a tag match against the Rest of the World. She had a mysterious attitude towards the begetting of children; it wasn't that she couldn't do it, more that she didn't want to do it. She was very bitter about the Virgin Mary getting there first. So she did the next best thing and arranged for a foundling. That was me.

I cannot recall a time when I did not know that I was special. We had no Wise Men because she didn't believe there were any wise men, but we had sheep. One of my earliest memories is me sitting on a sheep at Easter while she told me the story of the Sacrificial Lamb. We had it on Sundays with potato.

This is an excerpt from Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson - a novel about a girl trying to break free from the control of her tyrannical mother and the religious cult to which she belongs.

To read the rest of this excerpt, click here.
To buy the book, click here.
To find it in a local library, click here.
To visit the author's website, click here.

The First Rambo and the Last King

2007-05-12T14:29:00.000+01:00

As requested by many of you in the Web 2.0 survey, each week I will recommend films that you can see a) on terrestrial TV each week; b) on DVD; and c) at the cinema.

Please use the COMMENTS facility to post your own REVIEWS of any of the films each week. And click on the hyperlinks to read reviews of each film; and on the posters to visit imdb.com and find out everything else you need to know...

On TV:
Arlington Road (Sat 12th, 10.40pm, C4) - scary thriller, sure to make you scared of your neighbours
Ray (Tue 15th, 9pm, ITV1) - actor Jamie Foxx brings to life jazz legend, Ray Charles
First Blood (Fri 18th, 11.35pm, BBC1) - iconic, watershed Vietnam movie introducing forgotten veteran Rambo to the silver screen
O (Fri 18th, 12.35am, BBC2) - modern re-telling of Othello, one of Shakespeare's greatest plays

New on DVD:
The Last King of Scotland (15) - Oscar-winning film about the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's regime
Perfume (15) - Perfume-maker turns serial killer in his search for the ultimate

Out at Cinemas:
Bridge to Terabithia (PG) - Narnia-like fantasy, but with a darker edge

Why bother with punctuation and capital letters?!

2007-05-12T10:51:00.000+01:00

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

by e. e. cummings

To read more poems by the miraculous e. e. cummings, click here.

To read about the poet himself, click here.

And to read some famous quotations by cummings, click here.

"Murder, not to put too fine a point on it."

2007-05-12T10:28:00.000+01:00

Shelter:

"You sure?" he says. The light's back, and I can see his little brain working. He's thinking, this guy runs a hostel. Warm beds. Grub. It gets full. but if I'm with him, I'm in, right? "You sure?" he says. I gave him the smile again. "Sure. No prob. It's just round the corner."

And that's all there was to it. I strode out and he trotted at my heels like a ruddy poodle. It was pissing it down and he was sodden by the time he reached the flat. I introduced Sappho, showed him the bathroom, told him to strip off, threw in some stuff I'd got for the purpose - thick sweaters, cord trousers - the sort of stuff do-gooders wear - and went off to heat some tomato soup, and while he was sitting on the sofa scoffing it I slipped up behind him and put him out of his misery.

Cruel? I don't think so. He's neither cold nor hungry now. Nobody wanted him, so nobody will miss him, and there's one less dosser to clutter up the place.

Who loses?

Link:

You can call me Link. It's not my name, but it's what I say when anybody asks, which isn't often. I'm invisible, see? One of the invisible people. Right now, I'm sitting in a doorway watching the passers-by. They avoid looking at me. They're afraid I want something they've got, and they're right. Also, they don't want to think about me. They don't like reminding I exist. Me, and those like me. We're living proof that everything's not all right, and we make the place untidy.

Hang about and I'll tell you the story of my fascinating life.

In 1994, Children's author, Robert Swindells, wrote Stone Cold, a novel about a SERIAL KILLER who calls himself Shelter, and who prowls the streets of London killing all the homeless people he kind find - people like Link...

Buy it here (or borrow a copy from the English Dept stock room at school).
Read some reviews here.
Find out more about the author here.

So how many have YOU read?

2007-05-05T13:09:00.000+01:00

Since September, I have recommended 28 DIFFERENT NOVELS to you.

So how many of the novels have you read?

It would do you no harm to have read ALL of them: perhaps you didn't get round to it at the time; perhaps you meant to but then forgot. Either way, use this post to remind yourself about what you read and what you missed - and decide what you will set aside to read over the coming months.

This week, I would like you to use the blog to post COMMENTS in which you recommend the books and poems you have ENJOYED the most. Give as many reasons as possible, so that other readers can decide what they want to try out too...

Here is what I have recommended (click on each one to read the post itself...)

Novels:

From next week, I shall try to make some changes to this blog, in line with the suggestions you have all made in the survey you completed. So watch this space...

Poem of the Week: 'O Me! O Life!'

2007-04-28T12:07:00.000+01:00

Anyone who has seen the Robin Williams film, Dead Poets Society, will have heard his character, Mr Keating, use this poem to try to inspire his students to 'seize the day' (the Latin phrase for which is carpe diem) and make the most of every second they have.

Walt Whitman was a prolific, American poet in 19th Century America, many of whose poems celebrated humankind and the potential for happiness and fulfilment in life. Although so much of literature gives an opposite message, it is hard not to be uplifted by Whitman's words. Yes, life is difficult; yes, the world is full of fools; yes, there are 101 reasons to be miserable. BUT...

So have a read, and then go and make something amazing of your life too...

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Poem of the Week: 'Into my heart on air that kills'

2007-04-04T19:45:00.000+01:00

Recited at the end of Nicholas Roeg's 1971 film of the book, Walkabout, this poem by A. E. Housman is a beautiful meditation on memory and the past. I won't spoil it by writing much myself - suffice it to say, you can read into it what you like (like most literature). But I read it as a mourning of lost childhood, and the innocence that dies with the inevitable process of "growing up"...

INTO my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Poem of the Week: 'Refugee Blues'

2007-03-24T07:50:00.000Z

This is a photo of the new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, opened in 2005.

Another poem by W.H. Auden ('Night Mail' and 'Stop all the clocks...'). Auden was fascinated and appalled by Hitler's persecution of the Jews in the 1930s - so much so, in fact, that he married Jewish author Thomas Mann's daughter, Erika, only to ensure her escape from Nazi Germany.

In 1939 - the year of the start of World War Two and also the first Jewish ghettoes in Poland - he wrote this poem, the reflection of a Jew addressed to another one about the situation of all Jews in Europe. They are homeless, they are not accepted by anyone, they are persecuted, they are less considered than animals: the archetypal refugees...

Refugee Blues
by W. H. Auden

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said,
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

Poem of the Week: 'Digging'

2007-03-17T09:33:00.000Z

It is ST PATRICK'S DAY today, so I thought it would be appropriate to post a poem by an IRISH poet. The poems of Seamus Heaney, Dublin-based poet and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, appear on many a GCSE syllabus. In this poem, 'Digging', he shows how, as a child, he looked up to his elders - in this case both father and grandfather.

Seeing his father (now old) “straining” to dig “flowerbeds”, the poet recalls him in his prime, digging “potato drills”. And even earlier, he remembers his grandfather, digging peat. He cannot match “men like them” with a spade, but he sees that the pen is (for him) mightier, and with it he will dig into his past and celebrate them.

To listen to some interviews with the poet, click HERE.

To read more about his life and work, click HERE.

And to read from a GCSE study guide on his poetry, click HERE.

Meanwhile, here is the poem:

Digging
by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it.

Poem of the Week: 'The Second Coming'

2007-03-11T10:42:00.000Z

Written in 1919, a year after the end of the catastrophic First World War, 'The Second Coming' is W.B. Yeats' attempt to question the state of the world as he saw it. Amid the apocalyptic climate of post-war Europe, where, in the words of Larkin, there would be "never such innocence" ever again, Yeats could no longer find comfort in the idea of a good, healing 'second coming', but started to wonder, instead, if any such event might well be a far more sinister and violent affair: no heroic Christ, but a hellish monster instead...

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi*
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

* Spiritus Mundi: The phrase "spiritus mundi" (literally "spirit of the world") is a reference to Yeats' belief that each human mind is linked to a single vast intelligence, and that this intelligence causes certain universal symbols to appear in individual minds.

Another Riddle

2007-03-07T22:25:00.000Z

I can't find any other riddle from the same book that hardly uses any Redwall Map thinking like something that sounds burnt but alive between the pond and the orchard and all. So, here's one that hardly uses map thinking. Though it uses a lot of Redwall history......

'Twas I slew the Scourge in days of old,
Then I was one, but now we are two.
We who are dumb, yet sound so bold,
Days and night to order you.
We are those who announce a feast,
Or victories of the brave-hearted.
We are those whose solemn farewell,
Mark sadly a loved one departed.
On our oak see knowledge unfold,
We never speak 'til we're told?
We never speak 'til we're told.

Big Hint: It's something instrumental.

Poem of the Week: 'Not Waving But Drowning'

2007-03-03T20:37:00.000Z

'Not Waving But Drowning' by Stevie Smith tells the short, dark, humorous story of a man whose thrashing - whilst drowning in the sea - is mistaken for waving by people on the shore. It is also clear that this is a metaphor for any situation in which a cry for help is misinterpreted or ignored by friends and family: people only see what they WANT to see.

For a hypertext annotated version of the poem (if you can bear the website's background!), click here.
Listen to the poet reading the poem at the Edinburgh Festival in 1965 here.
Click here for a biography of Florence Margaret 'Stevie' Smith.
And for a slightly happier poem by Smith, click here.

Not Waving But Drowning
by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

INTERNATIONAL WEEK: 'The Bull Moses': a poetry challenge...

2007-02-24T10:24:00.000Z

Ted Hughes, one of the most important poets this country has ever produced (see my previous blog entry on his poem 'The Jaguar'), was OBSESSED with Ancient Egypt and the mythology that surrounded it. As you know, Hughes was also fascinated by nature and animals, and the following poem combines these two obsessions. Whilst, on the surface, it is a poem about a BULL, if you read more deeply, you can see it is also exploring the darker underbelly of egyptian mythology.

This is a VERY difficult poem, and you will need to read it LOTS of times before it starts to make sense. What a PERFECT opportunity to use the COMMENTS facility in this blog to discuss the poem between you, and work out what YOU think it is all about...

'The Bull Moses' by Ted Hughes

A hoist up and I could lean over
The upper edge of the high half-door,
My left foot ledged on the hinge, and look in at the byre’s
Blaze of darkness: a sudden shut-eyed look
Backward into the head.

Blackness is depth
Beyond star. But the warm weight of his breathing,
The ammoniac reek of his litter, the hotly-tongued
Mash of his cud, steamed against me.
Then, slowly, as onto the mind’s eye–
The brow like masonry, the deep-keeled neck:
Something come up there onto the brink of the gulf,
Hadn’t heard of the world, too deep in itself to be called to,
Stood in sleep. He would swing his muzzle at a fly
But the square of sky where I hung, shouting, waving,
Was nothing to him; nothing of our light
Fond any reflection in him.

Each dusk the farmer led him
Down to the pond to drink and smell the air,
And he took no pace but the farmer
Led him to take it, as if he knew nothing
Of the ages and continents of his fathers,
Shut, while he wombed, to a dark shed
And steps between his door and the duckpond;
The weight of the sun and the moon and the world hammered
To a ring of brass through his nostrils.

He would raise
His streaming muzzle and look out over the meadows,
But the grasses whispered nothing awake, the fetch
Of the distance drew nothing to momentum
In the locked black of his powers. He came strolling gently back,
Paused neither toward the pig-pens on his right,
Nor toward the cow-byres on his left: something
Deliberate in his leisure, some beheld the future
Founding in his quiet.

I kept the door wide,
Closed it after him and pushed the bolt.

INTERNATIONAL WEEK: Hieroglyphics

2007-02-24T09:49:00.000Z

It's INTERNATIONAL WEEK. And the English department is looking at EGYPT. So, instead of a Book of the Week this week, I thought you could have a go at something a bit different...

Besides pyramids and sphinxes, the Egyptians are known for hieroglyphics, or a form of picture writing. Hieroglyphics uses small pictures which represent different words, actions, or ideas. There were over 700 of these letters. Some pictures stood for whole words. A series of wavy lines meant "water." All of the letters in heiroglyphcs were consonants. The Egyptians did not write vowels and did not use any punctuation.

Hieroglyphics, is made up of three types of symbols. Alphabetic signs correspond to a letter or sound produced by that sign. Syllabic symbols stand for sounds produced by a group of letters, a syllable. Determinative signs relate to a specific object or idea, such as man, woman, and water. Hieroglyphics can be read from left to right, right to left, or top to bottom. The direction depends on the direction the symbols are facing.

To celebrate INTERNATIONAL WEEK at George Mitchell, why not try writing something in hieroglyphics yourself? You could start by just writing your NAME; or, if you are feeling even more ambitious, you could write someone else a message.

Here are three different sites which will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know:
http://www.kidzone.ws/cultures/egypt/hieroglyph.htm
http://www.seaworld.org/fun-zone/fun-guides/egypt/hieroglyphics.htm
http://www.greatscott.com/hiero/hiero_over.html

And if you want to 'cheat', why not try this ONLINE TRANSLATOR:
http://www.quizland.com/hiero.htm

Poem of the Week: 'Disabled'

2007-02-17T11:15:00.000Z

Those of you working towards your GCSE at the moment will have read some poetry by Wilfred Owen already - but few of his poems are as powerful as this one - a searing indictment of the war, and its total destruction of the ordinary soldier. It would be well worth your while finding the time to read this poem REALLY closely. To help you, why not use the annotated online guide here. And have a look at the original drafts, in Owen's own handwriting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

'Disabled' by Wilfred Owen

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, –
In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands.
All of them touch him like some queer disease.

There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now, he is old; his back will never brace;
He's lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

One time he liked a blood- smear down his leg,
After the matches, carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,
He thought he'd better join. – He wonders why.
Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts,
That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts
He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.

Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,
And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then enquired about his soul.

Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don't they come
And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

Poem of the Week: 'Across the Universe'

2007-02-11T13:38:00.000Z

It is an important fact that much of the poetry which in centuries gone by would have landed on the pages of a poetry magazine, journal or anthology, is, nowadays, channelled into a song lyric. Whilst the majority of modern song lyrics are pretty shallow, turgid stuff, there are a handful which are really quite beautiful poetry.

Whilst I was at Oxford University, I attended a long lecture/seminar with the university's most important, famous English professor; and the subject? 'I Want You', a song by Bob Dylan (the folk/rock singer)! The professor went to great lengths to show that Dylan was showing just as much control and skill in the art of poetry as his predecessors like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron etc., and I was totally convinced.

This week's poem of the week is by two contemporaries of Dylan - Lennon and McCartney (the two songwriters from The Beatles). Try to forget the fact that this is a song (from the 1971 album 'Let It Be') and enjoy the poetry itself:

Across the Universe
By John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world,
Nothing’s gonna change my world.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
That call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world,
Nothing’s gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter shades of earth are ringing
Through my open views inviting and inciting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a
Million suns, it calls me on and on
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing’s gonna change my world,
Nothing’s gonna change my world.

Poem of the Week: 'Night Mail'

2007-02-03T09:54:00.000Z

One of the things that makes poetry often so much more powerful than prose is the SOUND it makes. Whether it is its rhyme, rhythm, alliteration or whatever other sonic device, poetry can have an effect on its reader (or LISTENER) beyond language. In other words, the best poetry can be enjoyed by anyone, even if they don't understand the language it is written in.

When I studied French at A Level, I used to love reading the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, even though many of his poems used French far more difficult than I could actually understand. The SOUND of his poems had a powerful enough effect on me in itself. And this week's poem also relies just as much on its sound (or, specifically, its rhythm) for much of its power and effect.

It is, quite simply, a poem about a train journey. It was commissioned by Royal Mail (or then the GPO or General Post Office) back in the 1936, to accompany a short film they were making about their London-to-Scotland 'mail train'; or, in other words, the GPO, as part of an advertising campaign to increase the number of people writing letters, asked the famous poet, W. H. Auden, to write a poem to help sell their product. Then (as now) most letters are transported by train, and Auden's poem brings the rhythm of the train so powerfully to life that we almost feel like we are on board, like the letters...

Night Mail by W. H. Auden

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

If you want to explore a TUTORIAL about the poem, click here.

Poem of the Week: 'Baby Song'

2007-01-27T12:29:00.000Z

Another poem by Thom Gunn, the American poet whose poem, 'Blackie, the Electric Rembrandt', I posted a couple of months ago...

A first person narrative from the point of view of a newborn baby, it argues passionately that, now it has been born, and left the comfort of the womb, things can only get worse...

'Baby Song' by Thom Gunn

From the private ease of Mother's womb
I fall into the lighted room.

Why don't they simply put me back
Where it is warm amd wet and black?

But one thing follows on another.
Things were different inside Mother.

Padded and jolly I would ride
The perfect comfort of her inside.

They tuck me in a rustling bed -
I lie there, raging, small, and red.

I may sleep soon, I may forget,
But I won't forget that I regret.

A rain of blood poured round her womb,
But all time roars outside this room.

Poem of the Week: 'The Road Not Taken'

2007-01-21T09:13:00.000Z

Featured in the Robin Williams film, Dead Poets Society, this poem by Robert Frost carries a powerful message about life. What sort of person do you want to be? Someone who follows everyone else, only treading safely where others have trodden before? Or someone with the courage and strength to be yourself and take a different direction to those around you? Give in to peer pressure and society, or ignore it all and have a unique, fresh and original life?

'The Road Not Taken'
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A funny poem - Daddy Fell into the Pond

2007-01-16T21:47:00.000Z

Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
And then there seemed to be nothing beyond,
Then Daddy fell into the pond!
And everyone's face grew merry and bright,
And Timothy danced for sheer delight.
"Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!
He's crawling out of the duckweed!" Click!
Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,
And doubled up, shaking silently,
And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft,
And it sounded as if the old drake laughed.
Oh, there wasn't a thing that didn't respond
When Daddy Fell into the pond!

Alfred Noyes

I found this poem on a website (click here) This Website has loads of famous poems from romance to comedy to limericks to love poetry plus more.

I chose this poem because loads of people like funny poems and this is a funny poem.
If you think this poem is good go to the website and there is loads more poetry by famous poets including Alfred Noyes. Also if you like any sort of poetry go to this website.

Huseyin 8M

Poem of the Week: 'Jabberwocky'

2007-01-13T11:26:00.000Z

I hope that many of you are familiar with this poem already; but, for those of you who are not, enjoy your trip into the wild and wonderful world of Carroll's JABBERWOCK. Above all, look how he manages to tell a terrific story and paint a powerful picture - but using mostly his own made-up words...

Personally, I think the poem is far more fun WITHOUT trying to find specific meanings for all the different words - as it seems to work ANYWAY. However, if you are desperate to try and work out exactly what it all means, you might want to look at the wikipedia entry on the poem here. Alternatively, and far more fun, have a look at some of the parodies and, especially, the TRANSLATIONS of the poem on the following site, by clicking here.

And the poem? Here it is:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought--

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Poem of the Week: 'Books Make Good Pets'

2007-01-06T17:18:00.000Z

Books make good pets
by John Agard

Books make good pets
and don't need
going to the vet

You don't have to keep
them on a lead
or throw them a stick.
They'll wag their tails
when you flick
their dog-eared pages.

Books make good pets
and don't need
going to the vet.

One curious look sets
them purring
on the cushion of your eyes
as if to say dear browser
you've picked me up before
and thrown me aside
but I have more than nine lives
and no need to keep twiddling
that piece of string.

Books make good pets
and don't need
going to the vet.

They'll burrow their way
through the dust of your mind
nibble at old ideas
to let in the new
and you don't have to empty
any droppings on a tray.
No thank you.

Books make good pets
and don't need
going to the vet.

They'll hibernate
in the shell of their covers
and patiently wait
as long as centuries
to be rediscovered
in their own good time
when some reader rolls them over
on their cracked spine.

Books make good pets
and don't need going
to the vet.

They're easier to care
than tropical parakeets
and sometime come in pairs
but they prefer to breed
in stacks and piles.
You don't have to feed
them sunflower seed
and just about anywhere
will serve as a nesting site
and from the perch of a shelf
they'll help you take flight
among the branches of yourself.

Books make good pets
and don't need
going to the vet.

They're as colourful as goldfish
in all their stillness
and believe me this is no whim
books can glow and swim

in the bowl of your imagination.

* * * *

John Agard was born in 1949. He came to England from British Guiana in 1977, and, since then, has held some of the most important jobs in poetry, and won some of the most important poetry awards. He lives in Brighton now, with his partner, the poet, Grace Nichols. The poem above celebrates BOOKS and READING - so no surprise why I love it so much. But Agard has also written books of poetry about two other school subjects: Maths (Einstein, the Girl who hated Maths) and Science (Hello H2O). To show that I am not TOTALLY obsessed with English, here is a poem by Agard about Photosynthesis:

When sunlight dances
on the tips
of leaves

and plants for joy
open their lips
and drink it in

and the breeze
makes a violin
of every tree

and even weeds
one by one
cry out for a kiss

of light and carbon -
a sheer spree of green.
Is this what they mean

by photosynthesis?

Poem of the Week: Sunny Prestatyn

2007-01-01T18:09:00.000Z

One of the most popular of all English poets, Philip Larkin has come to represent all that is cynical, sarcastic and pessimistic about the English way of life. I was going to post his poem, 'This Be The Verse', but I shied away from publishing the f*** word on the blog: instead, you will have to click here to read that damning indictment of the human species. Alternatively, I have decided to share with you this slice of Larkinian misanthropy: 'Sunny Prestatyn', a poem about a billboard poster for a sunny, Welsh resort - which has been subjected to so much graffiti its message has been lost. In Larkin's view, we might all wish to find our own Sunny Prestatyn, but what we will inevitably be faced with is something far more grim: or, in other words, life is rubbish...and then you die. I promise to post a more cheerful poem next week! :)

'Sunny Prestatyn'
by Philip Larkin

Come to Sunny Prestatyn
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the sand
In tautened white satin.
Behind her, a hunk of coast, a
Hotel with palms
Seemed to expand from her thighs and
Spread breast-lifting arms.

She was slapped up one day in March.
A couple of weeks, and her face
Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed;
Huge tits and a fissured crotch
Were scored well in, and the space
Between her legs held scrawls
That set her fairly astride
A tuberous cock and balls

Autographed Titch Thomas, while
Someone had used a knife
Or something to stab right through
The moustached lips of her smile.
She was too good for this life.
Very soon, a great transverse tear
Left only a hand and some blue.
Now Fight Cancer is there.

Poem of the Week: 'Spellbound'

2006-12-17T14:09:00.000Z

A winter's poem for a winter's weekend, this was written by Emily Bronte, the most enigmatic of the Bronte sisters (and author of the extraordinary Wuthering Heights). Living in Haworth, on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, Bronte spent many a day wandering the barren wilderness on her doorstep, whatever the season.

This is a poem about the power of nature; but it is also about the way she is attracted by nature at its most wild and dangerous. A wintry night on the moors should, by rights, send her back home to a nice warm fire; but, instead, she is mesmerised by the magic and beauty of the moors in winter. So powerful is the scene in which she finds herself, in fact, that she is almost in a trance:

Spellbound by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Poem of the Week: 'The Way Things Are'

2006-12-10T00:05:00.000Z

Friend of The Beatles back in the 1960s; recent regular on the Stephen Fry panel show 'QI'; and writer of some of the most accessible and yet profound poetry of the past 30 years - liverpudlian Roger McGough wrote this poem in 1999, and it stands as a collection of advice to a child about the strange world in which we all grow up...

The Way Things Are
by Roger McGough

No, the candle is not crying, it cannot feel pain.
Even telescopes, like the rest of us, grow bored.
Bubblegum will not make the hair soft and shiny.
The duller the imagination, the faster the car,
I am your father and this is the way things are.

When the sky is looking the other way,
do not enter the forest. No, the wind
is not caused by the rushing of clouds.
An excuse is as good a reason as any.
A lighthouse, launched, will not go far,
I am your father and this is the way things are.

No, old people do not walk slowly
because they have plenty of time.
Gardening books when buried will not flower.
Though lightly worn, a crown may leave a scar,
I am your father and this is the way things are.

No, the red woolly hat has not been
put on the railing to keep it warm.
When one glove is missing, both are lost.
Today's craft fair is tomorrow's car boot sale.
The guitarist gently weeps, not the guitar,
I am your father and this is the way things are.

Pebbles work best without batteries.
The deckchair will fail as a unit of currency.
Even though your shadow is shortening
it does not mean you are growing smaller.
Moonbeams sadly, will not survive in a jar,
I am your father and this is the way things are.

For centuries the bullet remained quietly confident
that the gun would be invented.
A drowning surrealist will not appreciate
the concrete lifebelt.
No guarantee my last goodbye is au revoir,
I am your father and this is the way things are.

Do not become a prison-officer unless you know
what you're letting someone else in for.
The thrill of being a shower curtain will soon pall.
No trusting hand awaits the falling star.
I am your father, and I am sorry,
but this is the way things are.

Books for Christmas!

2006-12-03T17:39:00.000Z

Don't know what to put in your letter to Santa? Tired of your parents asking you what they should spend all their money on for your Christmas present this year? Stuck for what to suggest to all your friends who desperately want to buy you lots of presents too? Look no further...

Click below and have a look at some of these lists of essential reads, and see if there is anything here that might capture your imagination.

Top 10 books about the darker side of Adolescence...
Top 10 Adult books for Teenagers...
Top 10 characters from children's historical fiction...
Top 10 books for Teens...
Top 10 books to feed the imagination...
Michael Morpurgo's Top 10 favourite books... (Michael Morpurgo is the Children's Laureate)
Eoin Colfer's Top 10 children's books...

And, once you've read any of these, please feel free to recommend the best ones to the other readers of this blog. :)

Poem of the Week: 'I'm nobody! Who are you?'

2006-12-02T18:22:00.000Z

Emily Dickinson was an American poet writing in the 1800s. She felt like a pariah from the religious, conservative society in which she lived, and rebelled against it through the poetry she wrote - poetry which was only published posthumously (i.e. after her death). She wrote it in order to 'survive' and make sense of the strange, cruel, pointless world she often saw before her.

In this poem, she explores the pressure society puts on all of us to fit in and be like everybody else - but, unsurprisingly, she is unwilling to do so. There is an excellent webpage explaining this whole poem in detail and depth here. Click here to find out more about Dickinson's life and to read some more of her poetry. Here is the poem:

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Riddle 2

2006-12-01T19:06:00.000Z

The only Riddles I'll put up are from the Redwall Series. Here's an easy one:

My first is third, like the sound of the sea,
My second's the centre of you, not me,
My third is the end of him but not you,
My fourth starts a picture, not a view,
My fifth is in bean though not in been,
My sixth and seventh starts seldom seen.
Sunrise and sunset, warmth and cold,
Put them together and a sign will unfold.

It's easy, right?

Poem of the Week: 'Mad Girl's Love Song'

2006-11-26T12:02:00.000Z

Few writers have fascinated the teenage mind as much as Sylvia Plath. For more information on her sad and angry life, click here. For more of her poetry, click here. To hear Plath read one of her most famous poems, click here. In the meantime, here is one of her earliest poems:

Mad Girl's Love Song

by Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Riddle

2006-11-23T17:34:00.000Z

Here's a riddle I liked when I was reading Redwall. You must read it VERY carefully to figure it out:

There is a warrior,
Where is a sword?
Peace did he bring,
The fighting Lord.
Shed for him is my fifth tear.
Find it in the title here,
Written in but a single word,
An eye is an eye, until it is heard.

Lines:
One of one.
Eight of two.
One of three.
Three of four.
One of five.
Six of six.
Two of seven.
Four of eight.

Good luck! You'll need it ;D

Panic Button

2006-11-22T17:05:00.000Z

I can hear to noise around me,
A pair of married beings, unloved by each other.
Screaming, raging, red in one corner of the arena,
Blue in the other.
I can only hear anger, fire pain and misery.
Oh how I wish to press the panic button.

It goes on and on,
A gap in time waiting to be closed by the time traveller once returned.
But it carries on, a life-long disease,
Fighting it's way into my head, driving me insane,
I cannot press it yet.

Waiting and waiting,
A young butterfly waiting to spread it's beautiful wings.
I can't take it any longer .
The two dung beetles fighting over a pile of vile doings,
That pile of vile doings is I.
The screaming the shouting has found it's way in,
Dug into my skin, killing me.
I run and hide,
I force myself to fall asleep.
I hit the panic button.

And now I am here,
There's quiet, no noise, just silence.
Free, at last...

This is one of the poem's that I've written in my free time. I would have put one of the others that I wrote, but I thought that this one has the most meaning for me.
You don't have to like it, I just want to know what you think of it.. XD
Thanks Exquisite for convincing me to put this on the blog...

The English Fast Track

mathslounge » REVISION

His Dark Materials , Phillip Pullman

Chandra by Frances Mary Hendry

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Checkmate by Malorie Blackman

Recommended Reading

The Hobbit, also called There and Back Again

shizzle

Asylum-Seeking Daleks!!!

Empire of the Sun

Knife Edge by Malorie Blackman

John Hegley

Noughts and Crosses

The Breadwinner

Avenging Angel

Love is...

'Carrie' by Stephen King

Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

Coram Boy

The Fast Track BLOG is changing...

Look into my eyes

The Brief Facts; Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.

Even teachers need a holiday...

Movies for your Summer Holiday

I used to be a book burner...

Brick Lane

Fighting baddies, aliens, thieves... and yourself

The Hole in the Sum of my Parts

Martyn Pig

Hail, King Shrek!

The Children in the Playground

A Swift Pure Cry

A televisual movie FEAST!!!

I learn by going where I have to go...

The best ever Carnegie award winner!!!

This week's films...

...the solving emptiness

...everything changed because of Edmond.

Cops and robbers (and some very dangerous monkeys)

I found him in the garage

When the black dreams came...

Scary PIRATES, scary TEACHERS and scary SNAKES

Invisible Friends

You're Beautiful

A pianist, a player (and a couple of magicians...)

Wide oceans full of tears...

My mother liked to wrestle!

The First Rambo and the Last King

Why bother with punctuation and capital letters?!

"Murder, not to put too fine a point on it."

So how many have YOU read?

Poem of the Week: 'O Me! O Life!'

Recommended Reading: The Wave

Recommended Reading AND Poem of the Week: Love That Dog

Poem of the Week: 'Into my heart on air that kills'

Recommended Reading: Walkabout

Recommended Reading: The Tulip Touch

Poem of the Week: 'Refugee Blues'

Poem of the Week: 'Digging'

Recommended Reading: Witch Child

Poem of the Week: 'The Second Coming'

Recommended Reading: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Another Riddle

Poem of the Week: 'Not Waving But Drowning'

Recommended Reading: The Bird Artist

INTERNATIONAL WEEK: 'The Bull Moses': a poetry challenge...

INTERNATIONAL WEEK: Hieroglyphics

Poem of the Week: 'Disabled'

Recommended Reading: More 'star-crossed' lovers...

Poem of the Week: 'Across the Universe'

Recommended Reading: The Outsiders

Poem of the Week: 'Night Mail'

Recommended Reading: Difficult Daughters

Poem of the Week: 'Baby Song'

'Baby Song' by Thom Gunn

Recommended Reading: The Wasp Factory

Poem of the Week: 'The Road Not Taken'

Recommended Reading: Enduring Love

A funny poem - Daddy Fell into the Pond