Back to classes!

It's back to school at ISU this week.  Syllabi for my ENG 272 classes, Literature for the Middle Grades, are on the website page for that course.  The syllabi for the graduate course will be up shortly.  But there's already a page on this website for the course and you can look at the book list.

Raising Your Kids Right review

Just wanted to note that my review of Michelle Ann Abate's Raising Your Kids Right: Children's Literature and American Conservatism (2010) is now posted on the Teachers College Record website -- review here.

Abate's book is an interesting overview of children's literature creations by contemporary conservatives, including Bill O'Reilly and William Bennett.  Abate wrote this study to examine whether these recent books had value or merit for a broader audience and whether they could hold up to books by non-conservatives. Abate astutely takes seriously this perhaps overlooked, but significant, trend of conservatives addressing children. I also contrast this book with Julia Mickenberg's excellent Learning from the Left: Children's Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States (2006).

Weetzie Bat film?

Weetzie Bat, the imaginative adolescent book about creative kids in LA by Fransceca Lia Block, reads like a film script.  So it's exciting that there's a possibility it will finally become a film.  While teaching Block's book in Adolescent Literature, I found several Internet sources about the production.

In September 2010 actors, including Chelsea Staub and Corbin Bernsen, read the Script for Weetzie Bat and the Dangerous Angel in bookstore with Block.  Part 1  Part 2 Part 3  YT videos about 11 min each 

The film has potential for success given the popularity of similar type films for adolescents, especially based on the success of the Stephenie Meyers' Twilight series and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Weetzie Bat, however, is a more poetic, slightly more surreal and perhaps more controversial.  Those ingredients have the potential for a big hit if marketed right to teenage girls.

Here is a short video based on film outtakes.  5 min

Production and Design photos for film 

Block's notes on scriptwriting

Link to Brian Gaskill's web page.  He is directing the film.

Here's the cast list, with links to their IMDB pages.

Weetzie Bat - Chelsea Staub

  

Charlie Bat (Weetzie's dad) - Corbin Bernsen

Brandy-Lynn (Weetzie's mom)  - Shannon Sturges

Dirk (Weetzie's best friend, who is gay) - Brant Daugherty

Grandma Fifi (Dirk's grandmother) - EG Daily  
She will also be reading several other characters as well as singing. 

Valentine - Dwight Ewell
He will also be reading several other characters.

Max/secret agent lover man  - Aaron Ashmore

Vixxanne - Crystal Mantecon

Buzz Cut - Jason Seitz
He will also be reading several the character of Bam Bam, Duck's friend.

Duck (surfer) - Kurt Collins

ENG 375 Summer School

Next week. my section of ENG 375: Adolescent Literature starts.  If you want to get ahead on the reading, you can review how I've taught this course before.  The summer version will be somewhat different, but this should give you a sense of how you can prepare ahead of time.

First, check out the Course Description for ENG 375 to be taught at ISU Summer 2011 in an intensive four week session from 5/16/11- 6/9/11 during Monday-Thursday 1-3:50 p.m.

Then do the following:

• Check out a syllabus for a previous version of how I've taught this course.  Here's the link to one of my previous  ENG 375 syllabi in .pdf
• Start reading J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye

See you on Monday!



Quidditch at ISU

ISU's new Quidditch team plays an amazing season of rough-and-tumble Quidditch.  My family and I enjoyed watching the lively games rendered for Muggle-style as the teams played hard last fall on the ISU Quad. The season seems to have two parts, fall and spring. Here's a link to the team's Facebook page.

Since this week we're studying Harry Potter in one of my classes, I thought I'd post a few photos from a match we saw last fall. The team is definitely worth checking out.  It's an amazing mash-up of book fans with a curiously interesting real game that's a cross between rugby, lacrosse, soccer and broom ball.

Instead of having the golden snitch a flying ball, in the Muggle version it's a person dressed as gold who runs around and hides.The players ride broomsticks while trying to get balls through the hoops.The play can get intense.

The fans are enthusiastic and creative as well.