Miss Jay's Reading & Writing Corner

SHORT STORY/NOVEL STUDIES

 1st Quarter

"Three Skeleton Key" by George Toudouze 

 

Man of Many Interests: George G. Toudouze was born in France and grew up to develop many literary interests--he was a playwright, an essayist and an illustrator. He also had a great interest in the sea and worked on a history of the French navy. "Three Skeleton Key" was first published in Esquire, a magazine that was once famous for its adventure stories.

Great Storyteller

One critic says of Toudouze's storytelling style, “It has the impact of a powerful man at the fair who, for the fun of it, takes the hammer and at one blow sends the machine to the top, rings the bell, and walks off."

BRIEF OVERVIEW

On an island off the coast of South America a fierce battle rages between man and nature. An army is attacking three lighthouse keepers…not an army of men, but…of rats!!

 

"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling

English poet, short-story writer, and novelist : During the Victorian Era, British author Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was both respected as a journalist and lauded as "The Poet of the [British] Empire." In his fiction, though, he blended the best of both skills and was ultimately awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas, and remarkable talent for narration which characterizes [his] creations." "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," a short story from The Jungle Book (1894), is an engaging example of Kipling's ability to mix scientific and historical fact with imaginative characterizations to create a believable and entertaining tale.           

BRIEF OVERVIEWA song-like poem serves as prologue to ‘‘Rikki- Tikki-Tavi,’’ prefiguring the battle between the mongoose Rikki-tikki-tavi and Nag, the king cobra. The struggle between the mongoose and snake is the central focus of the story and the poem, which foreshadows the conflict but only hints at its resolution and creates a sense of suspense and expectation before the story even begins.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

• "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" was adapted as an animated film in 1975. It was directed by Chuck Jones, narrated by Orson Welles, and is available on VHS from Family Home Entertainment (reissued 2001).
• A downloadable audio recording of stories from The Jungle Books, including "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," is available at http://www.audible.com and is narrated by Flo Gibson.

~Novel Study~

2nd Quarter

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton 

Three brothers struggle to stay together after their parents' death, as they search for an identity among the conflicting values of their adolescent society in which they find themselves "outsiders."

Themes: action, families, gangs, identity 

3rd Quarter                                                                    Animal Farm by George Orwell (pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair)    There are a number of conflicts in Animal Farm—the animals versus Mr. Jones, Snowball versus Napoleon, the common animals versus the pigs, Animal Farm versus the neighboring humans—but all of them are expressions of the underlying tension between the exploited and exploiting classes and between the lofty ideals and harsh realities of socialism.         

Themes: The corruption of socialist ideals in the Soviet Union; the societal tendency toward class stratification; the danger of a naïve working class; the abuse of language as instrumental to the abuse of power.

4th Quarter                                                                            Nothing but the Truth by Avi                                

Nothing but the Truth is a documentary-style novel that addresses such issues as relations among students, teachers, and schools; the complex nature of truth; and the exploitation of “hot button” issues by politicians and the media.