Ratings:
Age Group: 10/11 + Availability: 5/10 Cleanliness: 8/10 Overall: ****
Review:
Goodnight Mister Tom is set in a small English village during the Second World War. A poor abused boy from London is evacuated there and meets Tom Oakley who shows the boy the only love he's ever experienced. At first, Willie, the boy, hardly knows what to make of 'Mister Tom', but soon grows to love him like a father and the man finds his own affection for Willie growing, ending with him adopting Willie as his own. Through many events the boy finds out that he is worth something and is not as horrible a child as his mother tells him he is.
The book has many admirable qualities and the narrative is told very well and with an open, easily understandable style. The story itself is inspiring and quite touching, being one of the very few books which have made me cry. I literally read it cover to cover in one sitting the first time I read it and it continues to be a favourite despite its slightly younger audience aim.
Goodnight Mister Tom is a classic wartime story definitely worth reading. My edition is even part of the 'Puffin Modern Classics' series. It is suitable for children aged around ten and up and would make a good read-aloud for those so inclined. For teens, it is a good book to read when studying WWII to give a better picture of Home Front life.
Goodnight Mister Tom, by Michelle Magorian. Copyright 1981. It is available in most good libraries and bookshops.
Friday, 12 August 2011
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
New!
As you may have noticed, I have changed the background picture. You can't see it vey well behind the writing, so here it is:
Quite nice, isn't it!
At the moment I'm forging ahead through all 1000+ pages of The Count Of Monte Cristo, so I shall be reviewing shorter things in the meantime until I finish it. So far it's very good and I can hardly put it down. Anyway, enough writing! There's more reading to be done...
~ Alice
P.S. Stay alert for a review in the next few days!
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
An Essay
Here's one of my persuasive essays for my English Two course. Its about how what we read affects our actions and I got 98% for it! Hope you like it. It helps to sum up what Boni Libri is all about.
Essay Question – Read Don Quixote.
Using examples from the excerpt in the text and other sources, defend this statement: “You are what you read.”
READING AND THE HUMAN MIND
Have you ever wondered why children pretend to be knights after reading King Arthur or cowboys after reading books about the Wild West? It is because what they read affects how they think and act. Don’t think, however, that only children do this either: whatever we fill our minds with becomes what comes out of our mouths and shows in all our actions. As Luke 6:45 says: “A good person brings good out of the treasure of good things in his heart; a bad person brings bad out of his treasure of bad things. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”[1]
Everything the human body takes in has some effect on it. Food makes you not hungry, horror films scare you, jokes make you laugh, music invokes emotion, discipline teaches you what is right and wrong and many other things influence your thinking. Does what you read have the same effect? Of course! When you read, like little children, what you learn or absorb comes out in your actions and words.
This concept can be easily observed in the character of Don Quixote. When all he read was chivalric stories and knightly legends he began to believe himself a knight and started acting like one too. His thinking was so skewed that he could not see the real world in any light but that of the stories he read. “In short, our gentleman became so immersed in his reading […], his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind. He had filled his imagination with everything that he had read, […] and as a result had come to believe that all of these fictitious happenings were true; they were more real to him than anything else in the world.”[2] Later, his thoughts turned into actions. “…and so, carried away by the strange pleasure he derived from these agreeable thoughts, he hastened to translate his desires into action.”[3] Finally, Don Quixote’s chivalry-filled mind slowly made him believe he himself was a knight in shining armour and then act that way as well.
Reading can influence the human mind in a good way as well as a bad. Reading the Bible is a good way to do it and there are many other ways to educate the mind by reading as well. Read philosophy and be a person who can think for himself, read inspiring stories and be a stronger person, read anything that is wholesome, educating and makes you think and evaluate yourself, but above all, don’t ‘dry up your brain’ as Don Quixote did by reading only fluff. Exercise your mind, don’t let it become fat and lazy. As is noted in the classic How To Read a Book,
“If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only [they] will make you stretch you mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.” [4]
While reading and having an active imagination is a great thing, there is such a thing as going too far as Don Quixote did and we must be careful to guard our hearts. Whatever we fill our hearts and minds with is what is going to come out on the outside. The story of Don Quixote is the ultimate cautionary tale. Be careful in what you read, it is what you are. If what you want to be is jousting windmills like poor Don Quixote, go ahead. I prefer to eschew the fluff that modern “literature” offers and become the embodiment of the good books I read. Care to join me?
Bibliography
Adler, Mortimer J. and Van Doren, Charles. How To Read A Book, Simon & Schuster Publishing, 1972.
Cervantes, Miguel de, trans. Putnam, Samuel. “Don Quixote,” World Literature, A Beka Book, 2010. Pg. 451-460.
Cervantes, Miguel de, trans. Cohen, J.M. Don Quixote, Penguin Books, 1988.
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