As I’ve mentioned, I’m using The Hunger Games this year in my ENG 111 (Expository writing) classes. I was just puttering about finding some images to use in class discussion when I came across some interesting material on Katniss’s namesake. So I thought it might be fun to flip a few pages of the treasured family plant book to ponder why Katniss’s name is both symbolic and prophetic while also looking at a few other pertinent wild botanical samples that crop up as people and themes in the books.
Professor Sprout Goes to District 12 and the Arena: Some ‘Hunger Games’ Plant and Berry Thoughts
September 17, 2010 by 4 Comments
From the Mailbag: A Student’s Senior Thesis
September 16, 2010 by 10 Comments
I get on average a letter every other day from a reader who accepts the invitation to write me that I put in the introductions to my books. Most of them are very kind — I guess folks who hate books prefer to vent to the world on a tome’s Amazon page rather than to the author — and some ask questions or for help. The bulk of the help requests come, as you might expect, from students. It takes more time than I want to admit to answer these notes, but, of course, the whole Gilderoy experience is so flattering that it is a delight I can’t resist.
Earlier this week I received this kind of email note from a student, a Christian attending a Classical School who is writing her senior thesis on the artistic merits and spiritual content of the Hogwarts Saga. She has met some resistance at the school in even speaking about Harry Potter and asked for some advice and ideas. Here is her letter and my response:
Reading Ideas: The Knife of Never Letting Go
September 14, 2010 by 13 Comments
The first book we will be reading in the Hogwarts Professor Book Club is Patrick Ness’ Monsters of Men, which will be published on 28 September. The thing is that Monsters is not a stand alone work; it’s the final novel in Mr. Ness’ Chaos Walking trilogy. If you haven’t read the first two book, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and The Answer, then you have a bunch of great reading to do in the next two weeks.
The bad news is “time is short!” The good news is that that’s the only bad news; the novels are wonderfully well written, challenging, and promise a huge pay-off ( a Monster pay-off?) in the series finale. My job this week and next is to provide “reading ideas,” questions and thoughts for your reflection on your first or second trip through the first and second books, ideas to foster return trips to the book that are spoiler free. In the days just prior to Monsters of Men‘s publication, I’ll put up some speculative notes about the last book that will assume you’ve read Knife and The Ask.
Here are my first five ideas to spur your thinking:
A Curious Cat: Mockingjay’s Tigris As More Than Just Another Freak in the Capitol Circus
September 14, 2010 by 6 Comments
Last week, when our esteemed headmaster, John, sent along his amazing three-part series on Unlocking Mockingjay, I was, like John, and several others, still puzzling over Tigris. She’s a peculiar character, and not just because she has had more plastic surgery than everyone on the cover of the latest tabloid put together. In order to get beneath the stripey surface of this intriguing safe-house keeper, it seems we need to look at three possible purposes that she represents outside her mechanical function as plot-propelling individual who takes in Katniss and the remnants of the Star Squad. [Read more…]
9/11/1857: The Mountain Meadows Massacre
September 13, 2010 by 1 Comment
It’s mid September, so our thoughts return to the events of 9/11 — and, if we’re serious Twilight readers, to the first 9/11 massacre, the unprovoked attack of Latter-day Saints on an Arkansas wagon train passing through Southern Utah in 1857 on that date, the so-called Mountain Meadows Massacre. If you wondered why Carlisle Cullen has a picture of a mountain meadow in his office and why every Twilight novel features a scene of revelation or conflict in a mountain meadow, the answer in large part comes back to this historical event and books about it published the year Mrs. Meyer had her vampire-with girlfriend-in-circular-meadow dream.
One of the more bizarre events in my Walter Mitty existence as an author happened this February in Oklahoma City. I was speaking at the C. S. Lewis conference there and spent the night in the home of a friend’s parents. The father was wonderfully hospitable, and, being a serious reader, our conversation on the drive to his house turned to talk about books and my work as a critic. I shared a copy of Spotlight: A Close-Up Look at the Artistry and Meaning of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga with him and explained its two parts. I mentioned to him what I said above: that a large part of Twilight’s inspiration, Mrs. Meyer’s dream, is in the LDS community’s response to three histories of the Mountain Meadows Massacre that were published in the year she had her dream.
He held up his hand and said, kindly but firmly, as we pulled into his driveway, “Stop right there. Don’t say anything more about that.” [Read more…]
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