Sonnet 130

We talked about this poem in class today, so here it is:

SONNET 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

Plastic

Plastic is a great short film and it is relevant to our recent discussions on media messages. At the beginning of the film Anna is nervously preparing for date with Henry, a man she has clearly loved for years but hasn’t seen for some time. She ransacks her wardrobe but she has nothing that she wants to wear, she has a big pimple and feels fat. All she wants is to look like the models in the glossy magazines …

Parental Control

Over Terms Two and Three, 20 issues of The College Herald will be published each Tuesday. In each issue, approximately 20 pieces of students work will be published. In all, 400 students will feature, so you have an excellent chance of getting published, getting your message out there and winning one of the prizes.

Every week, The College Herald will focus on a Weekly Theme. Five pieces of work will be published each week under the Weekly Theme category. Students can address one of these themes, or all of them, in any way they feel is appropriate.

They’re looking for all kinds of work, written and visual, from secondary students.

Written work can be in the form of modified essays or essay excerpts, feature writing, creative pieces, articles, reviews, poems, letters, interviews or investigative journalism.

Graphic and visual work includes artwork, photography, cartoons and illustrations.

Week One

Publication date: May 10

Deadline for submission to reach The New Zealand Herald: April 19

Raising children is one of the most important and demanding jobs we’ll ever have but there’s often little training for it. The first five years of a child’s life largely determines their physical, social and intellectual development. The teenage years can be the most testing for both children and parents as values are challenged and boundaries tested.

• How would you describe the way you were raised? What worked well for you and your parents and what was less successful? Has your relationship changed as you’ve got older?

• What advice would you give to parents to help them raise well-balanced children? What is the best advice your parents have ever given you? Did you recognise the value of that advice at the time?

• Should more be done to prepare people for parenthood? Some people have suggested parents should have to get a licence. If that were the case, what should it entail?

• New Zealand has a problem with child abuse. What are your feelings about this? What could be done to address this?

Suggestions: Create a parenting licence. Talk to your parents or grandparents about how they were raised. Take a photo that reflects your ideas about good parenting.

Puffin Short Story Awards

Here is something for all you keen writers. The Puffin Short Story Awards 2011 is underway  so why don’t you add your entry? There is no set theme for the competition so you can let your imagination go wild. There is an intermediate and a senior section so students in Years 7-11 can enter. The competition closes on June 3. More details can be found here.

The Rights of the Reader

Love this!

NZ Book Month at KKC

March is NZ Book Month and here at Katikati College we will have an extra focus on reading for its duration. New Zealand Book Month is an annual campaign to encourage us all to celebrate books and reading. New Zealand Book Month is the perfect time to discover your next life-changing book, pick up a recommended read, share a favourite book with your friends and family, to start a book club …

You can see what is happening on this blog and here.

The book that changed my life

I know some of you are prolific readers but is there a book that you feel really changed your life? A book that made you decide what you wanted to do or helped you to be who you are?

It might be a treasured childhood book, a coming-of-age story, a classic novel or even a ‘how to’ book, a book that made you think or one that made you laugh… Whatever it is, tell me about “the book that changed your life”!

Here’s an example from Stormbreaker writer Anthony Horowitz:

It would have to be Dr No by Ian Fleming. It was 1967. I was about 12, trapped in the weird and miserable bubble of prep-school life where my experience of sexual desire and violence edging on sadism was largely restricted to my French teacher. The book introduced me to a whole new world. Even the Jamaican setting seemed impossibly exotic.

This one is about The Faraway Tree and it is from Roald Dahl’s granddaughter and writer in her own right Sophie Dahl:

It was the first book I read by myself when I was about six. It made me long for bedtime, even though it was summer and still light outside. The Faraway Tree was buried deep in an enchanted wood, at whose edge lived the children Bessie, Fanny, Jo and later, cousin Dick (in his new PC incarnation unfortunately renamed Rick). One day the children stumble upon a magical tree inhabited by a clutch of fairy folk, among them Moon Face, Silky the fairy, Dame Washalot, the Angry Pixie and the Saucepan Man, a creature rendered deaf as a post because of the constant clang of the saucepans he wears. As with most Enid Blyton books, food is integral to the story, and the children are incessantly eating delicious sweets and biscuits and having picnics. As an immensely greedy child, my plump imagination was on overload due to the graphic descriptions of said feasts, and it was probably my first exposure to food writing, which has stuck with me ever since.

The Enchanted Wood fueled my imagination, appetite (for food and reading), and perhaps most importantly, uncovered a lifelong voracious leaning towards happy endings.

For writer Jacqueline Wilson it was Lolita:

I’d have to choose Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, which I first read when I was 13. My dad bought it eagerly but gave up on it a few chapters in. My mum had a go then, but found Nabokov’s baroque style irritatingly impenetrable. I asked to read it and my parents said absolutely not. I didn’t waste my breath arguing. I simply waited till I had the opportunity to whip the distinctive yellow dustwrapper off Lolita and rejacket it with the Catherine Cookson novel I was reading. I spent the next week reading in the bath, in bed, at playtimes, at school. It was a total revelation to me. I hadn’t realised you could use language in such a rich and elegant way, and I was amazed at the subject matter. I thought it the most wonderful and exciting book I’d ever read. I realised that literature could be outrageous and mind-stretching and utterly extraordinary.

 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

I have just finished re-reading this book and I think it is one that many of you would find a rewarding read. The book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” by Sherman Alexie, is an award-winning story of a 14-year-old American Indian who leaves his school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white high school. It is both funny and moving, a story about a boy who doesn’t fit in anywhere, who has to fight for a place, and still feels like an outsider. Major themes in the book include death, poverty, racism, and alcoholism. I know that sounds depressing but Alexie writes in such a way that the book is both heartbreaking and funny.

‘The Absolutely True Diary’ is used widely as a class reader but it is not without controversy. Some parents at Antioch High School wanted the book pulled from the school’s shelves and the curriculum because they believe it uses foul, racist language and describes sexual acts according to an article in the Chicago Tribune.

“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” has won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and was named one of the Los Angeles Times’ Favorite Children’s Books of 2007 and New York Times’ Notable Children’s Books of 2007.

Have you got your reading face on?

Hope everyone has re-read their book. If you haven’t time to start!

Night Revision

Hopefully, you have spent some time in the holidays re-reading and revising Elie Wiesel’s Night. Remember the book is a memoir and you circle non-fiction in your extended text booklet. A couple of terms I would like to clarify are ‘Holocaust’ and ‘Shoah’. The term ‘Holocaust’ came originally from the Greek word ‘holokauston’ which means ‘sacrifice by fire’ and it refers to the Nazi’s persecution and planned slaughter of the Jewish people. Please note the capital letter for the Holocaust. The Hebrew word ‘Shoah’ means ‘devastation, ruin, or waste’ and it is also used for this genocide.