The Reading Nook

Ben L went to see the Golden Compass, and Mrs. Feldman went to see the movie for the second time….

Regarding the ending:

Deven: I’m kind of happy that it leaves out the ending because if little kids saw it, they would have been scared and the parents would have complained. They also needed to end it like that because if they don’t have a second movie, they will need a closure to this one.

Arman: (Shouting) This is a closure — as all movies have!

Ben: I’m not happy — if they want to give it a different ending, they should re-title the movie. But I’m happy in a way, because I don’t want Roger to die.
Arman/Deven: Re-titled movie will be: The Golden Compass, Remixed (with gestures showing Mrs. Coulter acting like a DJ remixing the disks) In the book, Iorek also had a much more gruesome scene with the King of the Bears.

Ms Feldman: Do they need to kill Roger for the trilogy to work?

Arman: Killing the child is essential to the trilogy because he makes the bridge of Dust.

Ben agrees and believes that they will show Asriel killing Roger in black-and-white as a flashback to the first movie.

Kheyana: The first book ends with such a strong cliffhanger, they should have used the same cliffhanger to grip the audience for the next movie.

Deven: They can still use those scenes in the second movie.

Then we had a Narnia books and movie discussion digression…

Ben is reading THE LAST APPRENTICE series, on the second book.

Kheyana is not reading anything but is recommending The Time Travelers (book one in the GIDEON trilogy) renamed from Gideon the Cutpurse.
Deven is reading the third of the PETER AND THE STARCATCHERS series.

Leighton was reading SQUIRE by Tamora Pierce… Leighton got really loud when she explained why NO ONE should read GRIMM’s Fairy Tales. She said that the stories can carry very unsavory messages — degradation of women and at times very racist. They can be too repetitive as well. Leighton is “sick and tired” of the beautiful girls being always the good hearted ones!

This definitely could be a great discussion for next year’s Lit. Lab.

Deven recommends FIVE ANCESTERS series. He likes how all the stories are tied together nicely.

Since many of us saw The Golden Compass movie over the weekend, it was only natural that EVERYONE wanted to talk about the movie.  I tried to keep the discussion orderly since the passion was strong!  Here’s a rough record of what we had to say:
Zach LL (who didn’t read the book): It was pretty cool with good animation, making the movie realistic even though the concept is abstract. 8.5 out of 10.

Ben G: For the guy who had to do the movie that has a lot of stuff with religion (and people’s reaction) and to be doing it for the fans… I thought it was a great movie.. because it followed the story pretty well. The characters: esp. Lyra and Mrs. Coulter are really well cast. 8.5 out of 10.

Deven: The animation is great: the armored bear really looked like Polar Bears — I had to look closely to see if Iorek is actually animated. When Lyra was running across the bridge, it looked a bit too much like animation. Mrs. Coulter is a great cast. 8.5 out of 10.

Arman: The beginning tells too much about what the trilogy is (multiple universes and such) — AND THEN they didn’t finish the story. It gives you false impression. A lot of the people would be disappointed when they found out what really is going to happen. They showed a lot about the Magisterium and got an extra guy there because they need to feature bad guys. 8 out of 10.

Gabe: My initial reaction: “WHAT?” I understood some of the stuff — but they did it specifically so that if the Movie doesn’t do well, they don’t have to make another movie. They didn’t want to introduce many more complex concepts. They mixed Tony/Billy into one. Then they showed a bear with is jaw ripped off…. (AND THERE IS NOT ENOUGH BLOOD. Actually, you saw almost not a single drop of blood in the movie.  That’s just NOT right! said Mack.) The special effects: the Alethiometer and Daemon deaths are not great — they spent that much money.. they could have done better. 7 out of 10 judged as a movie; and 4.5 out of 10 if against the book.

Mack: Daemons reflect the owners’ personalities — and the cameo appearances of the minor characters’ daemons are very fun.  Like someone’s daemon was a praying mantis — as a brutal kind of insect. One thing that I thought it was wrong is that they didn’t make it clear enough that Daemons cannot be touched and the severing of them is the most terrible thing. Coulter’s golden monkey didn’t work for me because he’s TOO SHRIMPY. I imagined it being a lot bigger and more powerful.  There’s not enough blood… There is almost NO BLOOD in the movie even though there was fighting and many deaths. 7.5 out of 10.

Zach C (who didn’t read the book): I liked the movie. The graphic is very cool. The monkey is kind of creepy. When the bear’s jaw came off, it was cool. Dust is cool. (Dust is sick.) 8 out of 10.

Steven: Mrs. Coulter was not as I imagined at all. She looks too much like Marilyn Monroe. Lose that golden dress. (We all agreed that her first dress in the movie while she went to Jordan College was too flashy and inappropriate.  Her power comes from more than being sexy — being pretty and brutal, yes, but sexy?) Too fancy. Longer hair. Animation in some parts are choppy: the jaw ripping is badly animated; the Bear King’s spiky armor doesn’t work. 7 out of 10.

Deven: they didn’t make clear some points. The anabaric blue light is not clear. I liked how they showed how DUST linked the universes. They left out EVERYTHING connected to Lord Asriel of the book. They needed the happy Disney ending.
Ben G: the ending is the most important thing in the book and they left it out. Give me a WEAPON and I’ll hunt down whoever changed the movie from what it was to now. When Mrs. Coulter slaps the monkey, I understand her reaction to the monkey.

Zach LL: The story line is the exactly as the Chronicles of Narnia!

Leighton: Daemons in the trailer clips don’t work very well.. very choppy. (WE ALL DISAGREED with her and told her to not speak until she has seen the move!)

Those are some points we raised in the lab. And this is my journal entry about seeng the movie: Seen Lyra

Ok, I know that this will seem a little off because Ms.Feldman has not posted her literary review, but I think that the animation for golden compass movie is great. The animation is VERY realistic and believable, (and Mack you should stop swearing). The end.

I read aloud How to Paint a Portrait of a Bird a French poem by Jacques Prevert, translated and newly illustrated by Mordecai Gerstein. It is such a beautiful and perfect book. We discussed what this “surrealistic” poem and the accompanying pictures are trying to “say” to the audience. Someone mentioned that the message could be somewhat like the The Tortoise and the Hare: Slow and Steady Wins the Race. But, Leighton completely rejected this interpretation of the fable, believing that the true moral should be: Don’t be too confident in yourself. So, we decided that “patience” might not be what this poem picture book is about, and talked briefly of the topic of the secret of creating artwork (and writing.)
Kheyana shared her enthusiasm of a new book by Katherine Marsh, an eerie book about the Underworld (read: the Dead AND NYC underground) The protagonist goes to sea dead people, dealing with paranormal phenomena.
Arman then started talking about Asterix and the Mansion of the Gods, then Deven talked about Tintin books. We jumped into a big discussion on the many racially insensitive portrayal of Africans, Native Americans, and Asians in the Tintin series and how people feel about this type of treatment. Mack said that a lot of old comic books have this kind of stereotyping and degrading scenes. He thought that that’s just a trend at the time. Deven said that he found himself annoyed by how India is portrayed as being very poor and everyone’s begging. But the he also understood that when the books were written, people didn’t think twice about putting another culture down. He believed that we have to get past this and enjoy the stories no matter what. Arman does not approve of how the black people are always shown as having very thick lips. He thought that “it’s really cruel to portray African people like freaks.” Most others present agreed that Herge was trying to be funny without intending to be offensive. Anjali thought believed that “these kinds of racially derogatory portrayal are not necessary to the story line.” So, if someone is making a new series today, scenes like this should not be included. Deven did point out that Herge made fun of almost all cultures, including his own.
Leighton claimed that the stupidest thing about Tintin is his YELLOW HAIR.
Mack countered her by shouting, “HIS HAIR IS ORANGE NOT YELLOW!”

Leighton then recommended Nobody’s Princess by Esther Friesner to everyone: This is a story about Helen of Sparta/Helen of Troy from Helen’s perspective.
And Anjali really enjoys the Horrible Histories and Dead Famous series.

Yet another lively and interesting Literary Lab!

The Silver Kiss is a wonderfully intriguing book by Annette Curtis Klause filled with mixed emotions and odd characters. As soon as I started this book I knew that I would like it. The tone is mysterious and personal at the same time, and that makes it all the more interesting. The main characters are Zoe and Simon. Zoe is a 14 year old girl trying to live with the fact that her mother is dying and her father appears to be drifting away just as her mother is. Her very best friend Lorraine is moving away and her fragile life seems to be falling apart. Then, this mystifying boy named Simon steps into the picture and makes everything more complicated, even though he is the only one who really understands her. The twist on this story is that Simon is a vampire. So of course this completely changes Zoe’s impression of him. Simon is mad at himself when Zoe finds out his secret. It’s blow his chance at being her friend. Simon always felt like he was in the shadows, in between life and death, but when he met Zoe finally he felt real. Now she was gone. This books deals with Zoe and Simon’s relationship while try to figure out their true place in life.

Hope was Here is by Joan Bauer and it has 186 pages. Hope Was Here was truly a YA book. It was a very short, but good book and the main character was a teenager. It also talks about things like not living with your parents and always having to move to new places (outcast). Hope the main character has been living with her aunt and working at diner after diner. Even before the story really starts you can see that Hope has already started to mature. Hope is also really intelligent. One thing it doesn’t have a lot of in this book is slangs or cursing. I definitely think this is a Young Adult book because it really puts you in the mood of the character and her life and I think it helps because it is in first person.

I think that this was a really good book considering the fact that I don’t read YA books a lot and they are not my favorite. I think it was enjoyable because it brought you into the characters life. It felt like you experienced the things with her, and I think that it is cool to experience that just by reading a book. I also thought it was really good because of the way it started. From the very beginning it just pulled me into the story and after that it kept going on and it made me want to read more. I think that this was a great book, YA or not and I think that it would appeal more to girls, but I think boys and girls could read it and enjoy.