It's Saturday...

...and that means sleeping in until seven, working in my classroom to catch up on everything I haven't had time to do all week, and The Saturday Review of Books.

The Constant Princess

Book #17 of this year is The Constant Princess, by Philippa Gregory.

I've read lots of novels about the Tudors, and Katherine of Aragon is a familiar figure to me. However, this book put her in a whole new light. That's what I've enjoyed most about these Philippa Gregory books - she takes a story you thought you knew all about, and then shows you something you never considered before.

For example, of course everyone knows Katherine of Aragon was from Spain. I've read before about the intrigue with her ambassadors, the messages smuggled out of England, the upright Catholicism which guided her every action. But I'd never really thought about what some of the influences on her must have been. Gregory calls her "Catalina" - see, doesn't that make a difference already in the way you see her? She tells about her childhood growing up as the daughter of the warrior queen, Isabella of Spain, and her husband Ferdinand. She even brings in the Moorish influence which must have been part of her childhood, since she was quite young when her parents conquered the legendary stronghold of Islam, Granada. In Gregory's version, the Moors themselves are thrown out of Spain, but the royal family benefits from many of their inventions, such as running water (and, thus, frequent bathing). There's even a scene where Catalina sings a Moorish song she learned from a servant. I don't know if this ever happened, of course (and to some it may smack of political correctness), but I find the thought absolutely delicious.

In most versions of Katherine's story, her marriage to Arthur, Henry VIII's older brother, is glossed over quickly. After all, Arthur died just a couple of months after the wedding, and Henry is the husband that history remembers. But Gregory turns Catalina and Arthur's marriage into a love story, giving a fascinating interpretation to the historical controversy that follows - was the young couple truly married? Whether they were or not was important because of getting a dispensation for Henry to marry his brother's wife, and again became very important when Henry wanted to divorce his first wife to marry Anne Boleyn.

I'm tempted to go on and on, but I don't want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read it yet. I enjoyed this book the most of the three Philippa Gregory books I've read so far.

Here's some of what Gregory has to say about the background of this novel.

Great Readalouds

I'm finishing up two readalouds at the end of this week, both of which have been an enormous success.

With my seventh graders, I've been reading The Book of Three, and with my eighth graders, I've been reading Al Capone Does My Shirts.

The Book of Three is wonderful for its character development. It's fun when the students start picking up on the quirks of all the different characters, to the point that they can recognize who's talking before the name is mentioned. You can talk about how the author makes the characters come alive. One of the kids said the other day, "You know, every time Eilonwy talks, she always...you know, compares things." Similes, anyone? And I like to tell the kids, as they go to break, "Enjoy your crunchings and munchings!" There are lots of other things to discuss, too. I love the way the characters have expectations of each other, most of which turn out to be wrong. Taran's ideas of heroism, before and after he goes on his own adventures, are an example of this. Another is everyone's concept of what exactly an Assistant Pig-Keeper is like.

Al Capone Does My Shirts is popular with my eighth graders in spite of the historical setting, which they usually don't appreciate much. It's not the distant past - just the 30's - but that might as well be the middle ages as far as they are concerned. But they like the quirky setting (Alcatraz) and the autistic sister, Natalie. Most of them beg for more when I quit reading each day (with some notable exceptions, I have to confess - not all of them are quite that impressed).

Does anybody else have some readalouds that kids of this age have especially enjoyed?

Carnival Time Again

Somehow a week has gone by, and it's time for another Carnival. Check it out here.

Super Bowl Roundup

OK, I know the Super Bowl is already over. Somebody told me who won but I don't remember. And frankly, I care very little.

But some other people posted some good stuff about the Super Bowl, so I'm going to link you to it.

Troy didn't get to watch it. (Notice that his focus is in the right place, though - on the snacks.)

Alana shares how nerds watch football. I would feel right at home at that Super Bowl party.

And Ms. Cornelius passes on this fascinating story about Super Bowl parties and how they may actually be illegal under certain circumstances. I'm a strict constructionist when it comes to copyright. I'm always arguing with people who say, "But Tecwil didn't sign the international copyright agreement." My response: "So? It's a moral issue not to steal people's livelihood by making illegal copies of their books and movies and music." But even I don't understand how watching something that is broadcast on network television could be construed as violating copyright.

And that's all about the Super Bowl. Now we don't have to think about it again until next year. Isn't that great?

Daily Photos

I like to go to the Daily City Photo Blog site, where you can see thumbnails of the latest photos posted on the DP blogs. I click on the ones that catch my eye. Here are some that you can see there right now:

Yesterday's photo from Anderson, South Carolina.

Today's from Port Vila, Vanuatu. (There are lots of gorgeous photos here - Here's my favorite.)

Today's from Mumbai.

And, of course, here's today's from Sharon, CT.

Reading Update

Book #14 of the year: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. I enjoyed it but I recommend it a bit more hesitantly than The Virgin's Lover because it is considerably more bawdy. (Surprisingly, given the titles of the two books.) The Other Boleyn Girl is about Mary Boleyn, who was Henry VIII's mistress before her sister, Anne Boleyn, who became Henry's second wife. Today I started The Constant Princess, about Katherine of Aragon, which I'm enjoying hugely. I'll post about it when I'm finished. And yes, I'm reading them in reverse chronological order. That wasn't planned that way!

Book #15: Specials. I'm planning a post about the whole trilogy, so for now I'll just say I liked this one the least of the three.

To see what others are reading and reviewing, take a look at today's Saturday Review of Books.

Guest Speaker

My eighth graders are writing informational articles right now, and I invited a journalist to come to speak to them. I've been wanting to have a professional writer visit class for a while, and particularly a male one. Most of the teachers at our school are female, as is fairly typical, I believe, and I wanted my kids to see that you can make a living writing and that real men sometimes do so.

This visit went so well that I will repeat it every year if my guest will agree to come back. My students listened politely at first but got more and more interested as he went on. When he was finished they were full of questions. Not only did he say some of the same things about writing that I've been saying to them, but he did a wonderful job of conveying what it's like to be a journalist here in Tecwil. Read: extremely dangerous but just about the most exciting thing you can imagine.

Hooray for my guest speaker!

Annoying Cities

The first of every month is Theme Day on the DP Blogs. Tomorrow, February 1st, the theme is "Something that really annoys you in your city." Eric at Paris DP has already posted what really annoys him about Paris. Yeah, it is pretty annoying. He also has links to the other 51 blogs that are participating. Some of the posts will already be up, but others won't, depending on time zone.

If I had to post what annoys me most about the city where I live, hmmm....there are just so many things to choose from. For a start, the things on the ground here make Eric's photo look positively pleasing. :-)

104th Carnival

This week's Carnival of Education is up at The Median Sib. Go take a look!

An American Rhapsody

We watched An American Rhapsody last night on DVD. The children watched it, too - there was one brief violent scene where we covered some eyes.

A family is escaping from 1950s Communist Hungary. It's too dangerous to take their baby, Suzanne, over the border because she might make noise and give them away, so they make a plan to have her brought afterwards. The plan falls through and the baby is taken to the countryside to be raised by a childless peasant couple. Then, finally, the parents, settled in Los Angeles, manage to arrange for Suzanne, now six, to join them. They all try to take up where they left off, but of course, it doesn't quite work out that way. Eventually, Suzanne's feeling that she doesn't fit in in the United States or with her birth family takes her back to Hungary to see the couple that took care of her as a young child.

All of this is based on a true story, and the DVD includes some commentary by the woman whose story it is. The movie is terribly sad - I cried through most of it - but there are some funny moments. For example, the older sister "helps" Suzanne learn English by teaching her a crude expression which, of course, comes out of the little girl's mouth at the most inopportune moment. (OK, admit it, my MK friends - you've all done this, haven't you?)

The teenage Suzanne is played by Scarlett Johansson, who gives an amazing performance. Tony Goldwyn and Natassja Kinski are also very good as her parents. But the star is the little girl who plays 6-year-old Suzanne, Kelly Endresz-Banlaki.

I highly recommend this movie, especially to people like me who have lived in several different cultures. I always like stories about how people pass from one culture to another - what they keep and what they lose. It's fascinating to watch how the family interacts once reunited. You can feel the mother's misery as she tries to connect with this little girl that she has missed so desperately. The ending is satisfying as Suzanne has the experience all parents wish their kids would have - she comes to understand a little bit about what her parents have gone through, and therefore to forgive them for the mistakes they have made. "We've all made mistakes out of love," says a character in the movie. How wonderful if we can acknowledge that, and forgive, and move forward.

Bye Bye, Purgatorio?

Marc hasn't actually said that Purgatorio is no more. He's calling it a hiatus, but his hiatus sounds pretty permanent to me. It's those fatal words: "I'll leave the blog up for a time."

So anyway, go check out Purgatorio while you still have the chance. It's billed as "a panoply of evangelical eccentricities, un-orthodox oddities & christian cultural curiosities." I often find the comments offensive, but just as often I laugh until I cry.

Here's my favorite post of all time.

103rd Education Carnival

Once again, lots of great stuff to read at The Education Carnival. It's hosted this week by The Education Wonks.

Where Do I Get All the Books?

My brother asked me how I manage to find so many books, living as I do in a place where English books are not readily available in every store?

When we first moved here, this was a big preoccupation of mine - finding stuff to read. When we would go over to someone's house, I would greedily scan the bookshelves and beg to borrow books. When we traveled, I would bring back as many books as I could. I read books from our school library, too, of course.

A big breakthrough was finding the subscription library I belong to. A group of Americans started it back in the 20s and it is still going strong. Now, even though I still borrow books from everyone who will loan them (and in return, I loan my books out freely), I don't panic as much about what I'm going to read next.

Lately, I've finished the following books: Love That Dog, by Sharon Creech, and The Seville Communion, by Arturo Perez-Reverte. (Those are Books #12 and #13 of 2007.)

Anonymity

A few weeks ago one of my students walked in to my class and said, "Oh, I've been reading your blog! It's funny!"

Many of the teacher bloggers I read would immediately gasp with horror, but I thought about it for a minute and realized it was OK. I don't write for my students, but I also am careful not to write anything that would embarrass them. (Unlike someone I know who posted the complete text of a love note a kid passed in class, but don't worry, I won't name you!)

This student is the daughter of friends of mine, so that's how she came to see my blog. I don't think any of my other students are reading. But if they are, hi there!

Kidnap

Each day I get an email from Merriam-Webster. Actually, I get two, since I've subscribed to two Word-of-the-Day lists. One is a daily word, complete with etymology, and the other is especially for English language learners. The second doesn't have etymology but it does have a link you can click on to hear the word pronounced and it includes some information on how to use it. (You can find information on these lists here.)

One day last week the word from the second list was "kidnap." But really, that's not a word I need to teach my students, even those for whom English is a second, or third, language. They all know what it means. Not because I taught it to them, but because life taught it to them.

Last year we gathered as a middle school to pray together for three separate kidnappings. This is not to say that these were the only kidnappings that happened to people our kids were close to - these were just the closest ones. One was a parent of one of my students.

When I first thought about writing a post on kidnappings I thought that would give away where I live, but when I did a quick search of Google News for stories about the topic, Tecwil didn't even come up in the pages I looked at. Probably that's because of all the stories about kidnapping in the United States over the past few days. But the stories weren't just about the United States - lots of other countries have this problem to varying degrees.

Right now we are waiting for news of a young child who has been kidnapped. I don't want to say any more about the situation here, just that it's such a horrible crime. Here it's all about money. All about terrifying people and destroying their peace of mind in return for money.

And part of you always thinks, a bit guiltily because it seems so self-absorbed, that could be me. And much, much worse, that could be...I can't even type it. I try not to think it.

This is a vocabulary word I wish none of my students knew. Oh, Lord, don't let us have to meet as a middle school again this year, praying for someone's release.

The Virgin's Lover

Book #11 of the year is The Virgin's Lover, by Philippa Gregory. It's the story of Elizabeth I of England and Robert Dudley.

The challenge of a book like this is to make suspenseful something that is part of historical record. I've read several versions of the story - it's really irresistible to a novelist, since the characters are so vivid and the plot twists more exciting than anything you can make up - so I know exactly how it's going to turn out.

Yet this book held my interest right until the last page. Yes, it still happened the way history tells us it did, but Gregory is fabulous at showing us all the quirks and mixed-up motivations of the three-dimensional people she writes about, so that you feel for every single one. Elizabeth and Dudley are stars, of course, but Amy (Robert's neglected wife) is unbearably poignant as well. Gregory has her own version of the mystery - what happened to Amy - and explains in an afterword that she did research in contemporary sources to come to her conclusion.

I'm looking forward to reading more of Philippa Gregory.

Hint on Dealing with Difficult People

Don't tell the New York Times all about them. Evil HR Lady explains why.

Saturday

I had big plans for today but am not feeling well so they are all cancelled and I'm going to stay home and rest.

Take a look at today's Saturday Review of Books to see what others are reading and reviewing.

A couple of days ago I finished book #10 of the year; it was Waiting, by Ha Jin. It was a fascinating read because of the insights into the way people live in China.

Reading Update

In recent days, I've finished the following books (#7, #8, and #9):

My Brother Sam is Dead
Uglies
Pretties

I hope to post reviews at some point.