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The Hunger Games
Written by Suzanne Collins
The Gist: Dystopian young adult fiction series set in what used to be the United States where annually each of the twelve districts (which are like city-states and where most of the citizens are impoverished) must send a male and female tribute to the lavish Capitol as punishment for a failed rebellion to participate in the Hunger Games, a competition to the death of all but one.
Story Summary: The protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is a pragmatic sixteen year old girl who volunteers to save her twelve year old sister Primrose–something that is unheard of in the poverty-stricken District 12. The stage is set very early on for something even bigger than Katniss surviving the Games: paranoia over being watched/heard is normal, the government is trying to keep their citizens weak (dangerous jobs, crappy pay, no hunting or gathering food off the land, no leaving the “safety” of the fenced in district to hunt or gather more food, etc.). Peeta Mellark is the male tribute from District 12 and with his nationally televised declaration of love for Katniss he innocently sets off a chain reaction that leads to Katniss defying the Capitol on mandatory-to-watch national television.
Story Review: Most of the book is spent in the Capitol with flashbacks to District 12 as needed. What’s interesting is how Collins is able to create a love triangle when one of the members, Gale, exists only in Katniss’s memories. The characters are so distinct that the protagonist and the antagonist can be boiled down to ideals: Peeta is hope and Katniss is survival.
I loved this book. I go back to read sections of it over and over because of how smart the language is (when all we know about the District 5 female tribute is the nickname Katniss gives her, Foxface, we already think she’s clever because the connotation we have of the word fox) and how well the language is used to tell a story that works well on a personal character level and on a universal ideal level.
Immersion Activity Ideas:
Cook GOOD food (Food is easily one of Katniss’s major focuses.)
Learn to hunt
Learn what edible plants grow in the wild in your community and start gathering
Learn archery
Participate in the Hunger Games movie hype (It feels like its everywhere, but that website is definitely my favorite thus far.)
Marvel at the things we take for granted (running hot and cold water for example)
Play a Hunger Games inspired paintball game (I’ve been working on creating something like that. Now all I need is the courage to ask my favorite paintball place here, Dosser Works, if there is a way we could play it.)
Visit the Coliseum
House of Many Ways
Written by Diana Wynne Jones
The Gist: Charmain had led a very sheltered life and for the first time is allowed to do things as she wishes–whether they be respectable or not.
Story Review: Charmain isn’t allowed to do anything that according to her mother is not respectable– this means Charmain never learns to cook (although her father is the best cook in town), do dishes, or wash laundry and until Charmain meets Peter while housesitting she doesn’t realize that there are a great many useful things one cannot learn in a book. However because of this limited perspective she has courage to try things no one else would (like volunteering to help in the Royal Library) and she is resourceful enough to know where to find help (getting cookbooks from her father since Peter is also a little sheltered and neither of them know how to cook).
I like that as Charmain is around more people she begins to recognize things in herself–like trying to be nicer to and more patient with Peter. One of my favorite descriptions of Charmain paints her perfectly as an analytical overthinker stating “She knew there was earth under the plants and that the earth contained worms. She shuddered.” I also liked that Charmain has absolutely no interest in getting married, in fact at one point a spell comes up to give her a handsome prince and her first thought is along the lines of what would I want with one of those? Even though I know not every fictional female character is itching to get married (or in a love standoff… I mean, love triangle), lately it feel like that’s all I’ve been reading.
Overall the book is a fun romp for its age group (middle schoolers) and much like in Jones’ other Howl’s Moving Castle ‘sequel’ Castle in the Air Sophie and Howl (the main characters from Howl’s Moving Castle) are supporting characters in this book. It’s a fun way to give the story a broader backstory while also getting to explore new characters (that coincidentally are much closer to the age range of the intended audience).
Immersion Activity Ideas:
Be courageous for 30 seconds and something great will happen (alright I stole the wording from We Bought A Zoo, but it just so happens to work for the book as well)
Read a book
Discover and create an adventure outside of books
Cook for yourself (relatively from scratch, microwaving a Hot Pocket doesn’t count)
Wash dishes (not in a machine)
Wash laundry (not in a machine)
Create you own family tree (resplendent with interesting notes about the family members)
Adopt a dog (or let a dog adopt you)
Don’t let no knowledge stand in your way of trying
Castle in the Air
Written by Diana Wynne Jones
The Gist: In a land where prophecies must always come to pass, a young carpet seller defies all odds to meet, fall in love, and fight for the privilege to marry a princess.
Story Review: Abdullah, a young carpet seller, meets Flower-in-the-Night, a sheltered but highly intelligent princess and in true storybook fashion the two immediately fall in love. After Flower-in-the-Night is abducted by a djinn, Abdullah is determined to get her back. In his quest Abdullah finds that everything is not always as black-and-white as a simple prophecy and while being flexible can gain good things, he must also trust himself to make the right decisions.
I liked the very different setting and perspective of this book, although it greatly reminded me of C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy in a Westerner’s take on Middle Eastern culture (specifically the judgement on how marriage is viewed). Overall though I liked that this book introduced me to a world of fantastical creatures that us Westerners don’t really see (although this past year I’ve been hearing lots about djinns). I also loved how Abdullah doesn’t seem to notice that the more he bends over backward to accommodate others, the crankier and often less helpful he is.
Immersion Activity Ideas:
Go to a bazaar/open air market
Visit a large flower or botanical garden
Plant a flower garden (Bonus points if you use a lot of bluebells.)
Relax, take in a sunset and play the “What does this cloud look like?” game
Go camping
Travel to foreign countries (But unlike the book, do not be xenophobic.)
Howl’s Moving Castle
Written by Diana Wynne Jones
The Gist: In a world where magic is as normal as royalty, a young woman seeks to reverse the curses that plague her.
Story Review: Sophie is the oldest of three and fully believe the superstition that the eldest of three will be a failure. Whenever things do go wrong, she automatically blames this superstition, but when things are going well Sophie forgets about the eldest curse. I love that once Sophie is aged (due to a curse from the truly bad Witch of the Waste) she becomes fearless– even though she still holds onto the superstitions she is no longer the meek and scared Sophie. This is the woman that leaves the comforts of home to find a way to break her curse, who enters into a deal with Calcifer (a fire demon), and who meddles in the wizard Howl’s affairs. Once she stops being so scared of trying, life starts opening up to her. However Sophie’s curses continue to haunt her because she doesn’t realize only she has the power to break them.
This book is a wonderful tryst into fantasy without all the tangles and difficulty that comes with high fantasy books. Perfect for middle schooler (I picked the book up in the children’s section of my library) with quite an extensive and awesome use of vocabulary (higgledy-piggledy, hale, heaves, etc.).
Immersion Activity Ideas:
Celebrate May Day
Make/mend your own clothes (I suggest ThreadBanger and BurdaStyle)
Make you your hats
Throughly clean your home
Plant a garden (My personal favorites are Turtle Tree seeds and the Seed Saver Exchange)
Plant a flower garden (See suggestions above)
Be vain. (Or at least treat yourself right: manicure, pedicure, facials, etc.)
Visit Wales
Oh, the THINKS You Can Think!
Written and Illustrated by Dr. Seuss (Warning: the site is noisy!)
The General Gist: The other Oh, You Can book that tells you to think outside the box.
Story Review: Simplistic rhyme scheme with whimsical (although typical) Seuss drawings, language, and message. I like that made up words are set apart by being in all caps the first time around and I love the message that you can think anything. The illustrations on the page aren’t only dreamy, they’re impossible ideas right in front of you eyes, and because there is no protagonist, the thinker is you the reader. Now if only there was a rubber meets road part to the part I would be completely over the moon.
Immersion Activity Ideas:
Visit Seuss’s Sculpture garden in Springfield, MA
Visit Theodore Geisel’s childhood home (and to think it is on Mulberry St. in Springfield)
Encourage your (or your child’s) imagination. (Paint, sing, cook, dance, work on your big dream, and of course PLAY)
The Talking Eggs
Written by Robert D. San Souci
Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
The General Gist: A Creole twist on the “being a good person will get you good things” fairytale.
Story Review: This is perhaps my favorite iteration of this tale of the mean mom and older sister/a kind younger sister and elderly woman who judges the other characters in this book. There are quite a few reasons why I love this version the most but I’ll start with the most obvious one: the characters all look they could belong to my family. This stems from the fact that this is the Creole version of the tale. San Souci’s story is great: folk dancing rabbits, braying cows, talking eggs but since this story is made for a predominantly illiterate/beginner reading group, it’s the artwork that gets most of the attention. Which is great because this book is filled with the most delicious art. I’m a huge fan of Jerry Pinkney’s artwork and his watercolors in this book are no exception. In a few pages on the book the writing is nest in the art and it made me wish for a font other than Times (I think, I’m not a font expert) that would blend and complement Pinkney’s artwork better.
Immersion Activity Ideas:
Pay It Forward
Volunteer
Cook dinner for your family (or help your parents cook)
Start a garden (It might not the right time of year for that right now, but give it a couple of months. Planting season is right around the corner.)
Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey
Directed by Dwayne Dunham
Written by Sheila Burnford (the novel The Incredible Journey), Caroline Thompson, and Linda Woolverton
The Gist: Chance, Shadow and Sassy are the pets of Jamie, Peter and Hope. After their mother is married, the human part of the family temporarily moves to San Francisco while the animal part is moved to a family friend’s farm. The animals, Shadow in particular, don’t take too kindly to being abandoned and all three escape to go home. THough Shadow, Sassy and Chance start the journey as individuals, they quickly learn to rely on one another as a family in order to survive.
Story Review: Another children’s story that is good at any age who is a part of a family, bonus points if it’s dysfunctional. Nice parallels between Chance being the new dog needing to find his place in the family as Bob, the man marries into the family at the beginning of movie tries to find his place in the family.
Immersion Activity Ideas:
Visit an animal shelter
Speak with an animal shelter worker/volunteer
Take a hike
Go camping
Learn about/go birdwatching
In The Hobbit, Tolkien writes a phrase made up by Bilbo Baggins, “Saved from wolves to be eaten by trolls” which Tolkien translates into our English to mean, “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.” That got me thinking about all the different ways people can express the same thing, depending on their cultural differences. I am not a linguist or an anthropologist or a lexicographer, however I do love how playful and fun language can be. A good auditory and visual example can be heard and seen if you click on the link which leads to a minute and a half video of Ziva on CBS’s NCIS continually getting English idioms wrong. This may be the wordsmith in me, but I love how in every language there are metaphors built in to everyday understanding. My favorite is the French phrase “l’esprit d’escalier,” which literally translates in English to “the spirit of the stairwell” but means a witty remark that comes to you after the opportunity to use it has passed. However I use the term to mean any idea that hits you after the time of its usefulness has passed. A friend and former roommate of mine spent her senior year of high school in Hungary, and her favorite word in Hungarian is “lohalalaban” which roughly translates to the phrase, “running as fast as a horse who runs so fast it dies.”
For anyone else who find language to be playful, I’ve found a few cool websites that might be of interest:
Word Detective: Run by Evan Morris, the writer of “The Word Detective” column that is syndicated in newspapers around the globe.
Phrases Finder: Run by Gary Martin, who writes the Meanings and Origins section as well as the Phrase a Week posts for the site. On first blush this site is less robust than the others, but that is because the homepage for the site is set up in four directory-esque sections (Origins and Meanings, The Phrases Thesaurus, A Phrase a Week email sign up, and Famous Last Words).
World Wide Words: Run by Michael Quinion, a Brit who has written numerous books on language (“Port Out, Starboard Home: And Other Language Myths”, “Galliumfry”, and “Why is Q Always Followed by U?”) as well as books about hard cider (which in England is just called cider).
I originally got this list of English exploration websites above from BootsNAll’s article, “It’s All Greek to Me: The Origins of 15 Popular Travel Expressions Explained”. So, anybody want to share their favorite phrase or word?
The Hobbit
Written by J.R.R. Tolkien
The premise: The protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is a hobbit–who as a race are sociable hermits. Hobbits are a reliable and predictable people–adventures are frowned upon by all respectable members of society. Though Baggins hadn’t meant to go on an adventure, that is what he did.
Story Review: A stand alone prelude to the Lord of the Rings series. Tolkien does a great job of providing in depth characterizations in single sentences. The only quibble I have with the book is that all the good guys seem to speak the same language until Tolkien mentions that the Wargs are speaking a different language.
While I’m not a big fan of poetry I did like a few of Tolkien’s poems–especially the one the woods-elves sing which appears to be directions he needs but is too panicked to listen to. I also enjoyed the roads goes ever ever on (mainly from a traveling perspective).
There is a lot of cultural information about each race the audience meets–which is generally one every chapter for approximately the first ten chapters.
Hobbits: social hermits who generally keep to themselves in their own land
Dwarves: good, calculating people–non-heroic and give great value to money. Decent enough people as long as too much isn’t expected. (Chapter 12)
Trolls: large, ill-mannered beings who plunder and must be underground by dawn, otherwise they “go back to the stuff of mountains they are made of and never move again.” (Chapter 2)
Elves: beautiful, general lighthearted beings who “…know what is going on among peoples of the land…” (Chapter 3)
Goblins: mean-spirited, plundering beings who hate everyone and everything. They like to take the easy route and work with machines to lighten their load. (Tolkien makes this sound like an awful thing. Chapter 4)
Wargs: first beings to have their own language mentioned, but they are animals and evil. In league with goblins.
Eagles: “…are not kindly birds. Some are cowardly and cruel. But the ancient race of the northern mountains were the greatest of all bird; there were proud and strong and noble-hearted.” (Chapter 6)
Giant Spiders: wicked beings who feast on other intelligent beings, often hunting to catch their prey unawares.
Wood-elves: did not go to Faerie and stayed in the Wide World, making them less wise than other types of elves. (Chapter 8)
Men: generally good, only race that gets to be both good and bad in nature. It does seem like how honorable a person is depends on where/who they originate from.
The narrator, who is not Baggins, goes less into detail about the places they visit, unless there are no people about to focus on.
Places Visited:
Green Dragon Inn, Bywater
Lonelands
Wilderlands
The Misty Mountains
The Last Homely House, Rivendell
Inside the Misty Mountains, in the Goblins’ Lair/tunnels
Eagles Eyrie
Beorn’s Home
Mirkwood, northern part (Giant Spiders, Elvenking’s underground city)
Lake-town
Lonely Mountain
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Different proverbs for different cultures.
Immersion Activities:
Having an adventure with friends (or strangers, who preferably become friends)
Visit a museum exhibit about mythical creatures, like the ones that inhabit this book
Take a hike
Read other Tolkien books (or if you’re a more visual type, a few have been made into movies)
Visit the set (or at least view the location where) The Hobbit (which is being released as a Part One and Part Two dealie) is being filmed
Watch the older, animated version of The Hobbit
Got any suggestions I may have missed for immersion activities? Tell ‘em to me in the comments (or if you’re the more private type email them to me)
The Grumpling
Written by Stephen Cosgrove
Illustrated by Robin James
The Gist: A children’s story using anthropomorphic (personified) animals to teach the value of manners.
Story Review: Growing up I loved all of the Serendipity books my dad would bring home. Even though I knew they were teaching lessons like manners and kindness, I was so young it wasn’t as in-your-face as it is to an adult. While I don’t believe that manners have much to do with a person’s outward appearance, (Grumpling is disheveled and dirty, which makes him a bad person. That sends the signal to children that people who look like the homeless are bad) I do believe that teaching kids manners is important. I do love Buttermilk, a baking bunny that rivals Martha Stewart in domestic artistry. She’s the bunny that has the brilliant idea to invite Grumpling to tea and has the gumption to teach him the proper manners to live in the land of Amenity. The points lost in ridiculousness are definitely made up in the story’s authentic feel and the general message behind the story.
The penciled illustrations are gorgeous. The large eyes and color palette appeal to children and the child in every adult.
Immersion Activity Ideas:
Tea Party (High Tea, Afternoon Tea, a themed party where tea is served, etc.)
Etiquette Classes
Bake the different goodies in the book (sugar crumb cookies, caramel crumpets, assorted cakes)
Use your manners, even when you don’t think it will be reciprocated
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