READ, REVIEW, RECOMMEND: Fostering LOVE OF READING
How It Started? Our students love to read. They ask me to recommend the “next” book in a series, a book with a type of character like they just read in another text, etc. To help me in this process, I started to create a matrix with characters along corresponding works. The matrix will be populated with students’ choices. The works could be classical ones, legends and fairy tales, popular texts, movies and songs, all based on the same progenitor work, like Romeo and Juliette by Shakespeare. This work, for example, was used by Tchaikovsky in his ballet, and many others to create original overtures, stories, and films of their own.
The Process. Students read self-selected texts, review, vote, and recommend their BEST BOOKS for the months of… The recommendation is based on students’ voting. These selected books are discussed in small groups in the Library. Many English Department teachers welcome this project and have already agreed to serve as in-resident coaches.
Types of characters | Works: examples |
Young lovers | Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare). Tchaikovsky’s ballet. Twilight. |
Prince, the charming | Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Snow White. Sleeping Beauty. |
The orphan | Cinderella. |
The fool | Also see medieval jesters, the Shakespearian “fool” in King Lear, As You Like It, The Tempest. |
Wicked stepmother | Snow White. Cinderella. |
Strong women | Anne Frank; Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Charlotte Doyle. |
Young beautiful maiden | Rapunzel |
Alienated | Kafka, The Castle. Saramago, The Cave. |
Person doesn’t fit in | The Ugly Duckling. |
Cliques | The Clique. |
Student – teacher relationship | J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace. |
Adventure | Twain’s Tom Sawyer |
Strong teens in wars | Esther and Nejma in The Wandering Star (J.M.G. Le Clezio) |
Exploited children | Dickens. Gender and class in American fiction. |
Vampires, witches | Meyer’s New Moon, Eclipse, Twilight. Bella and the gorgeous vampire (Edward Cullen). Beauty and the Beast. Mother Gothel. |
Scapegoat | The real thief; The Gorilla did it; It's not my fault; chicken Sunday, etc. |
Your character(tba) | Title(s) of works that include character(s) |
Science fiction; Harry Potter; graphic novels, comic books. | The "atomic" era (space travel, invasion, mutants, mad scientists, computers and cyberpunks, virtual reality, viruses, pollution and ecology themes); |
zorana.ercegovac@yourschool.org