March 22 - Black and White

As I read this book and write an answer to the Blog topic, I cannot help but think of the character Zero from Holes. The crime and punishment that goes on in the story reminds me of that of Zero -- he is the true criminal who tried to steal the shoes that Stanley takes the blame for. In Holes, the roles are reversed, as Stanley is the poor white kid who is wrongly punished for a crime, and Zero is the true criminal who escapes punishment for the original crime, but is caught stealing shoes shortly thereafter. I think that the blame follows Marcus in Black and White for a combination of race and wealth reasons -- while Eddie can afford an appropriate lawyer, Marcus uses one that is provided to him (an example of being disadvantaged due to money).

March 7 - Thompson Article

February 28 - Fairytales

When I first think of fairy tales, I think of the genre that is made-up of old paper-back books like Rumpelstiltskin or Rapunzel. Although I love this genre today and really enjoyed it back when I was a child (in fact, those two fairy tales were my favorites because they were so bazaar), I do not find it to have a huge affect on my childhood. But when you think of fairy tales like the Disney versions that became movies, it is a different case. Disney's Mulan was one of my favorites and made me think automatically that I could sing, just like Mulan and the rest of the princesses. I would sing and sing all day long, just like the princesses did as they narrated their daily duties. Luckily, I realized that my singing abilities were not great early enough, and I stopped the habit. Other ways that fairy tales affected me would be that they caused me to look for a moral in stories -- when I was really young we did a unit of Alsop's Fables and I learned lessons in the end of each story. Fairy tales like Aladdin and Little Mermaid made me think that all women dressed in tight-fitting and scandalous costumes, and so I was pretty shocked to realize that not all women looked like Jasmine in real life. I remember wrapping myself in my bed sheet really tight around my legs so that my make-shift dress-up costume would look more like the 'real deal' when I was pretending to be Jasmine -- now I realize that Disney was just putting an image in my head and succeeded in making me think that beautiful was skin-deep and that displaying your body was the way to get a man.

February 21 - Park Article

I think that reading a piece specifically because of the author's fame is ridiculous. The celebrity-author craze is a money-making scheme, of course, that has no right to impose upon young readers. I don't think that adolescent literature deserves to be littered by pieces written by celebrities just for the sake of their fame, but if the piece itself is actually good, maybe it should be considered. I do not think that a person's fame should discredit them as an author automatically, but I think that the literature should be able to exist as good writing without the author's influence.