Holes and Onions

Holes is one of my favorites from when I was young. When I saw that this is the book that my next blog would cover, I did not know what I was going to discuss. After I reread this time around, I could not help but note the significance of the holes and the onions.

Onions, typically considered a pungent and harsh vegetable and probably my least favorite veggie at that. In this book, Sachar even makes me want to eat onions. The descriptions of the golden onions and the taste of them makes even my mouth water. Whenever they are mentioned it is focused on the good and healing aspects of the onions. While they were important during the flashbacks in the book, they are also what save Stanley and Zero when they are starving, Zero is suffering from food poisoning and even from the YELLOW SPOTTED LIZARDS!!! It is interesting that Sachar chose the onion to be the healing, good symbol in this book.


Holes, typically dug to bury something or find something that is hidden. No surprise that holes are the negative symbol in this book. A few times the holes are referred to as graves. They represent what the "bad" kids have done and their punishment. They often released their hatred for the dirt and the deep holes that they had to continuously dig by spitting into them. Metaphorically, all the holes must be filled in for the story to resolve itself into a happy ending.

Dicey's Beautiful and Brilliant Song

Over the past few weeks, the books that we have focused on all have one particular likeness. They all focus on children and their individual and unique characteristics.

In Dicey's Song, Cynthia Voight is able to capture the unique qualities in a family of four children. While the story about the Tillerman children is unique itself, Voight is able to follow the lives of the children and share their differences and the challenges and triumphs that they face along the way. While the main character is Dicey, the oldest sister, and she has her own unique qualities, I would like to focus on a less likely character, her little sister.

Maybeth, the youngest sister in the Tillerman family, is introduced as a sweet and quiet child but not long into the story, the reader discovers that she is slow in school and that her teacher and the children in her classroom lack belief that she will ever fully understand how to read.

One part in the novel focuses on a time when Maybeth is made to read in front of her class. She gets nervous and stumbles over her words and loses track, she is not able to make out the words on the page. The children in her class start to laugh at her. It seems that it is one of the first realizations that Maybeth has that she is not like the other children.

While Voight is blunt with the weaknesses of Maybeth, she also takes great strides in developing Maybeth's ability to play the piano. She introduces Maybeth's piano teacher that eventually becomes like family to the Tillermans because of his passion to give Maybeth all of the education in music that she needs.

Voight shows children that even though they might be different or bad at something, they are sure to be good at something else. She is celebrating individuality.

Pippi

I will start my blog by saying that I have never read Pippi Longstocking before and I loved it! My mother always called me Pippi whenever I was little and had my hair in the long braids with freckles on my nose but I never really knew who she was talking about. I feel like if I had known, I would have been so complimented!

I have a few things that I noticed while I was reading that I would like to shine light on. The first being that as I talked about earlier in my postings, the animal companion is relevant to this story as well as the other books that we have read. It is interesting that while Pippi did not have any family, Mr. Nilsson and her horse were essentially like her family. I know that we are focusing on the orphaned children in this section of the class but I would like to note that Pippi can be considered in the heroic classification as well. She does not have parents, she lives alone and is left to fend for herself, she is always involved in one scheme or another. She even has the two companions, Annika and Tommy. Although, I will say that they neither one were brave like Hermione or Ron!

I would also like to focus on how the reader views Pippi. It would be interesting to hear a child's point of view on her because while I was reading, I could not help but pitty her. While she was having a blast throughout the entire book, there is something so sad about a child left to her own means. To think of a child in that situation really breaks my heart. That is why I think it would be insightful to learn how a child feels about Pippi.

Harry Potter =)

In class today, my small group and I were discussing a few things that I felt were note-worthy. The first is the importance of animals and creatures in the three novels that we are reading for the high fantasy section of this class. In Wizards of Earthsea, the only living thing that Ged ever showed much emotion to was to his otak. This otak even pulled Ged back to life after he was chasing the soul of the little boy. In Harry Potter, he has Hedwig. Hedwig is the only tie he has to Hogwarts during the summer break. She not only is necessary for him to mail to and from for his friends but becomes a companion to him through out his growth at Hogwarts. Lyra has Pan, her daemon in the Golden Compass. Pan experiences everything as Lyra does and is not only her protector but he dearest friend. I just thought it was interesting to note that even in all of the differences in the three novels, animals and their relationships with the main characters or the heroes in the novels are animals.

Our second discussion was about the different styles in which LeGuin and Rowling write. We talked about how even though both authors focused on the main tropes for high fantasy, each one has a completely different idea of what a hero is. Ged was primarily alone to fight his own demons while Harry had a constant support system that was always there for him to fight off whatever may come.

Introduction 1/12

My name is Callie Mason. I am a senior broadcast journalism major. I graduate in May and I wanted to take this class because I love fiction literature. Children's literature is very interesting to me because I was always fascinated by children's stories and the way that children absorb the information and characters of these stories. My favorite book as a child was Where the Red Fern Grows and the Shiloh stories. Did I mention that I loved dogs as well?