Ah, a children’s classic. I was really excited to read this book as I had only watched the Disney animated movie as a child over and over again because I loved it so much. What I loved most about the book was the nonsense aspect of it. Nothing makes sense, the entirety of Wonderland is one big universe of nonsense. As much as I love the story as a whole, I never considered any meaning behind it nor hidden messages, so when discussing the book with other readers in my class I was baffled at the conclusions we had drawn.

First, we looked at the theme of innocence. When discussing this, concluded that while Carroll does tackle innocence, the focus is on the loss of it. In the book, Alice experiences so many changes to her body which makes her uncomfortable. This reminded us of the changes every young adult goes through during puberty. The way she grows and shrinks by eating or drinking magic cakes or fluids, Carroll paints a picture of the way a child could feel when their body starts growing when they hit puberty.

Then, we looked at symbolism. We discussed the Mad Hatter and concluded that he probably suffers from dementia but I wanted to do my own further research on the matter because the Hatter wasn’t the only character we had identified with an illness. I found a very interesting article which revealed that the majority of the characters seem to have various psychological disorders although mental health is not explicitly mentioned in the book. Characteristics given to the heroes we know and love are symptoms of their disorders, for example, the Mad Hatter is associated with symptoms of bipolar disorder as well as PTSD (Miclau, 2017). Alice herself seems to show symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia (Miclau, 2017).

When reading this, I had a totally different view of my favorite part of the book in which the Mad Hatter asks:

“Have I gone mad?” to which Alice responds, “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.” (Carroll, 1865). And that’s not the only quote I have changed my view on! The following excerpt has made it crystal clear to me that Alice was schizophrenic.

“Who are YOU?” said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I–I hardly know, sir, just at present– at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” (Carroll, 1865). This shows a clear identity crisis, a clear cut sign of her mental disorder.

When looking at the adults in the book, it is clear that whenever an adult was present in the book, their advice and orders for Alice were absurd, ridiculous – even cruel, for example the Duchess saying “Off with her head!”. What’s interesting about this, is while I was reading Appleyard’s insights on the young reader’s world (Appleyard, n.d.), he mentions that a child has to construct a meaningful world out of experience different from what they are used to in their early childhood – such as schooling. The child then leaves a familiar environment of family and is suddenly places in a social world of peers and non-familiar adults. Here, the child encounters the adult world and its rules. I would say when reading Alice in Wonderland, this would be difficult for the young reader. The adult world is utter nonsense in this book.

Finally, I thought of the age group and took a look at Erikson’s stages. Firstly I looked at Alice and decided she fit in the fourth development stage, in which there is a battle between industry vs. inferiority. A child in this stage is between the age of 6 and 11 years old. School and social interaction is a vital part of the child’s life (Erikson, n.d.). In the book, Alice talks about the importance of school quite a few times but she also is learning how to interact with everybody around her.

Looking at the target audience of the book, I found the book hard to follow sometimes. Sometimes the sentence structure could be unclear to a second language learning student at that age because of its complexity. The story as it is could be too ridiculous for teenagers and so they most probably wouldn’t take it seriously. Personally, I wouldn’t use it for my own students.

I enjoyed reading the book nevertheless.

Hello, fellow book lovers. My name is Marianna and in this blog, I will be writing about books I’m reading during my literature course.

I love reading. Always have and always will. My love emerged from the moment I was able to read by myself. I’m trilingual so my mother always read Dutch books to me before bed to enforce the language. I went to a Greek school where I read plenty of Greek novels and mythologies. However, I found that I loved the English written word more than any book I’d read in either Greek or Dutch. 

I started reading at quite a young age and my mother and my Dutch teacher always encouraged me to read, which is how I fell in love with books. As a child, I loved the “De Griezelbus” series written by Paul van Loon. I enjoyed jumping in a world filled with fantasy and mysterious events. 

Later on, I started reading more crime novels such as “Mr. Mercedes” by Stephen King and every now and then I would pick up a palette cleanser – young adult romance novels. And so, for the majority of my teens, “Paper Towns” by John Green was my favorite young adult novel. 

I kept switching between these two. Once more grown up, I started to find it more challenging to jump into a fictional world where the reality is augmented or filled with surreal realities. My interest really lay in characters who struggled with something internally, whether it be a mental illness or any other inner conflict. I loved Stephen King’s effortless writing skills and I was easily gripped by his stories. After all, I am a horror lover and so, to jump into a world with evil for the entertainment part of it was fascinating to me.

To this day, I explicitly read books in English. I find the English language much easier to follow, and English written word just has a nicer ring to my mind. I read less than I used to, I find myself more encompassed in worlds of video games but once I jump into a novel that has me reading non-stop, I am reminded of how much I actually love that books are a way to go to a different world and connect with characters to a great extent.

During this course, I am revisiting some novels I loved as a teenager and I will get to read several other books that I just didn’t get round to reading when I was younger.

This week’s topic was “escape” and this book couldn’t be more suitable for that. Percy keeps escaping monsters and mythological figures, as well as death. The first time I read this, I had read it in Greek when I was about 11-12 years old and I absolutely loved it. It was fun revisiting it now that I’m older, and reading it in English because I gained new insights. I thought the story was quite cliché, a boy who is utterly oblivious as to what his blood really is – a demigod. My favourite cliché quote has got to be “The real world is where the monsters are.”(Riordan, 2005). It’s just something that comes forward in so many stories where the world is at stake. But let’s move on.

When I discussed this book with a classmate, the first thing we looked at was age group. Percy Jackson himself is 12 years old in this book, we find that out firsthand on the very first page of the book “My name is Percy Jackson. I am twelve years old.” (Riordan, 2005). This puts Percy in the 5^th stage of Erikson’s psychosocial development. In the story we see that Percy is struggling with himself as he thought he knew himself to be, just a regular kid who has ADHD and weird visions. But once he finds out he is a demigod, it becomes much more challenging for him to find what each young adult in that stage strives for, a sense of self and identity (Erikson, n.d.).

We found that this book is excellent for young adults ranging from the age of 12 to 16. At first we wanted to rule out that young adults over the age of 16 would like to read this book but according to Appleyard (1991) most voluntary reading done is largely fiction and mostly novels – mystery, adventure, romance, historical fiction and sci-fi.

But say a young adult non-native picked up this book, it could be quite challenging. There are abundant Greek mythology terms in there that they would have to look up. Moreover, the sentence structure is quite complex from time to time for a second language learner. So in the class discussion, we concluded that this book would be best discussed in a HAVO class, where students are more skilled in their use and understanding of the language.

The characters in this book are very likeable. Percy is a bit awkward and is trying to find his way in this new life he’s suddenly found himself in. His friend Grover is a total sweetheart who only has Percy’s best interest and had tried to protect him from day one. Annabeth is this cool girl, tough looking on the outside and has a refreshing depiction in the few clichés in this novel. Now let’s look at the adults. Percy’s mother kind of comes off as a pushover at the start, she’s married to an alcoholic loser who is Percy’s stepfather. Later on though, we find out she’s done this because that was a way to cover Percy’s demigod scent. As her character develops, we see she is very caring and has gone to long lengths to provide Percy with an as normal as possible life for as long as possible. Chiron is the closest to a father figure that Percy could get and he is extremely likeable for his ways and his snarky remarks. “Chiron looked surprised. “I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.” (Riordan, 2005).

As cliché as I found this book to be from time to time, it really is a captivating story. The setting changes consistently, which keeps it interesting and according to Appleyard (1991) a changing setting is seen a lot in children’s books. There’s also a pattern in this book, where Percy receives new information and has to process that, then once that’s all settled and he’s developed a new power he discovers – there’s a whole new load of information.

Overall, I like this book. Cliché stories aren’t necessarily bad stories. I wouldn’t recommend it to my current students, seeing though they are 12 years old and still very ill skilled in the English language.

This week, I’ve read Wonder by R.J. Palacio and I’ve got to say that it is such a sweet book. I loved it because it was so different from the standard YA novels you can find in the market, boy meets girl, girl and boy fall in love – you know the drill. This was a simple story about a boy who just wants to be included despite what society might think of the way he looks. R.J. Palacio presents Auggie in such a way that you come to connect with him, and really root for him as his character development unfolds.

This week, our theme was “first love”. To be honest, I struggle to find this theme in the book other than the Via and Justin love story which I also find really sweet. However this book really is about Auggie so we didn’t discuss the Via and Justin relationship in our group. Overall we agreed that this book is an easy read, Auggie is the main narrator of the story and the language used is fairly simple.

According to Erikson (n.d., pg. 4), during the 5th stage of psychosocial development, young adults feel confused and perhaps insecure about themselves and how exactly they fit in to society. Now Auggie is born with a birth defect which has left his face looking unusual to the “normal” human face. In the book, it is clear that Auggie is in this stage of his psychosocial development.

“I wish every day could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we go to see what we looked like under the masks.” Auggie – Part I, pg. 73

In the quote above we see the constant inner conflict present in Auggie’s character. People look on the outside of him as a person and dislike him as a whole, when underneath the surface he is a great friend and a very funny kid. This quote clearly depicts Auggie’s one and only wish. For his looks not to matter so much, for him to be able to blend in. In the book, Julian starts a game called “The Plague”, where if a kid touches Auggie they have “The Plague”, creating an isolating environment for Auggie (but he eventually becomes friends with Jack and Summer).

Because of this, when discussing the matter of bullying in our group, we found that this book would be very relatable to many teens who are dealing or have dealt with being bullied. And Appleyard (n.d., pg. 21) said that the more common expression of involvement is not so explicitly a matter of emotion, but rather of identification with the characters and the situations they are in.

We then looked at the role of parents and adults in general in the book. Honestly, most of the adults are really nice and supportive towards Auggie. His parents are certainly protective of him but they also support him and encourage him to do things outside of his comfort zone.  Mr. Tushman, the principal, is a great character. He tried his best to make Auggie feel welcome and included in the school from day one by getting the boys to show him around the school. And when Julian’s parents ask him to remove Auggie from the school because “he gives Julian nightmares”, he stood up to them and said that it is an inclusive school.

“If every single person in this room made it a rule that wherever you are, wherever you can, you will try to act a little kinder than is necessary—the world really would be a better place.” – Mr. Tushman – Section VIII, pg. 301

So, finally who is this book suitable for? I think that this book is suitable for children aged 12 and up, maybe even younger. I think there are younger children who would be able to identify with Auggie and look up to him. This book is a great palette cleanser from the YA romance novels, and I think it’s very valuable in what the reader can learn from it.

I recommend it!

I’m not going to lie to you. As soon as the Hunger Games became a big hype, I didn’t jump on the hype train. It wasn’t my cup of tea and to be honest, at first I wasn’t really on the edge of my seat. But, I decided to give it a chance, and lo and behold: I finished reading the book and had what many book enthusiasts call a book hangover. I couldn’t pick up another book for a few weeks because I was still so sucked in the world of the Hunger Games. I loved the love story between Peeta and Katniss and the action of it that had gripped me as soon as the characters entered the Capitol and things got real.

Looking at this book, the theme of disillusion and disappointment is definitely present. Katniss is a character who has been let down most of her life because of her mother. When her father passed away – we see that the mother of the Everdeen girls falls into depression and is unable to provide for her children. This boiled up feelings of resentment and disappointment in Katniss and so ‘took over as head of the family’ (Collins, 2008, p. 31), became as independent as possible and did the work herself.

To me, the disillusion present in this book is how corrupt the Capitol truly is and how the wealthy citizens of Panem do not grasp this at all. The Hunger Games are just an annual event – as if it’s the Super Bowl! Effie Trinket says ‘Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.’ (Collins, 2008) as if it’s no big deal that kids are literally killing themselves for entertainment of others.

When looking at adults and parental figures in this book, there are adults who have had great impact on the characters, and these are figures you wouldn’t expect at first. Consider Haymitch, the personal trainer of Katniss and Peeta. At first, he is painted as a pathetic drunk who cannot get a grip on himself. I disliked him and his poisonous habit. But as the story unfolds, and after his first conflict with Peeta, in which Peeta angrily smashes a glass from Haymitch’s hand and Haymitch says ‘Well, what’s this? Did I actually get a pair of fighters this year?’ (Collins, 2008) he becomes this great mentor. If anything he is the first parental figure in the life of Katniss since her father’s passing and her mother’s depression – and this I admired greatly. For the first time in years, Katniss has an adult she can rely on.

Now, let’s back up here. This is a book which was very well received by young adults. It was all I could hear about when I was a teenager. And oh dear, when the movies came out?! The excitement was everywhere. The quotes from the book, all over my feed on the blogging site I was using. Now it is clear to me – young adults love this book for more than just its story.

Katniss is easily in stage 5 of Erikson’s psychological development (Erikson, n.d.). She is 16 years old and it is crucial in this stage that the adolescent develops a personal identity. Social relationships are very important and there is a conflict between identity and role confusion as an individual. Katniss has a very strong character. She is brave, stubborn and quite blunt. She is true to herself, except for when she doubts herself in the Games (this is a pattern my peers and I have identified when discussing the book). Teenagers who read this book definitely could view Katniss as a role model. I feel like Katniss has reached the foreclosure status, as Erikson (n.d.) explains it, she has made a commitment without having worked on identity exploration and Erikson characterizes this by dependence. She has depended on herself to be brave, to not show emotion, to provide for her family and keep on fighting. Everything that defines her as a strong character.

Keeping Katniss in mind, Appleyard (n.d.) mentions that teenagers feel that involvement and identification with the character is why they read. I can see why teens would identify with Katniss. How many adolescents feel they cannot rely on their parents, or any adult ever? The heroine of this book deals with so many realistic struggles and this is what appeals to what young adults look for in reading (Appleyard, p.6).

I think this book is a great read for teens aged 13 and up. I feel like they could learn a lot from Katniss and maybe some teens would feel less alone in their own struggles.

It is an amazing read and truly food for thought.

Hello, fellow book lovers. My name is Marianna and in this blog, I will be writing about books I’m reading during my literature course.

I love reading. Always have and always will. My love emerged from the moment I was able to read by myself. I’m trilingual so my mother always read Dutch books to me before bed to enforce the language. I went to a Greek school where I read plenty of Greek novels and mythologies. However, I found that I loved the English written word more than any book I’d read in either Greek or Dutch. 

I started reading at quite a young age and my mother and my Dutch teacher always encouraged me to read, which is how I fell in love with books. As a child, I loved the “De Griezelbus” series written by Paul van Loon. I enjoyed jumping in a world filled with fantasy and mysterious events. 

Later on, I started reading more crime novels such as “Mr. Mercedes” by Stephen King and every now and then I would pick up a palette cleanser – young adult romance novels. And so, for the majority of my teens, “Paper Towns” by John Green was my favorite young adult novel. 

I kept switching between these two. Once more grown up, I started to find it more challenging to jump into a fictional world where the reality is augmented or filled with surreal realities. My interest really lay in characters who struggled with something internally, whether it be a mental illness or any other inner conflict. I loved Stephen King’s effortless writing skills and I was easily gripped by his stories. After all, I am a horror lover and so, to jump into a world with evil for the entertainment part of it was fascinating to me.

To this day, I explicitly read books in English. I find the English language much easier to follow, and English written word just has a nicer ring to my mind. I read less than I used to, I find myself more encompassed in worlds of video games but once I jump into a novel that has me reading non-stop, I am reminded of how much I actually love that books are a way to go to a different world and connect with characters to a great extent.

During this course, I am revisiting some novels I loved as a teenager and I will get to read several other books that I just didn’t get round to reading when I was younger.