I started His Dark Material the other day and I am almost half way through the second book. I thought I should get a head start so when the test rolls around I wont be pulling an all nighter. I really do love the book though. I had seen the movie and when I started the book I was thinking it was going to be similar yet there are so many differences. Obviously the writers had to clean it up a little bit and couldnt add all the little side parts of how Lyra's clothing was made from all these different animal insides. It was a little more graphic in the book then it was in the movie. I wont go into so much detail for those that have not read it yet but it is much different then the book.

I really an curious as to how Phill Pullman is going to kill God in the book. I know there is some connection between Dust and God but I am not sure how that connection is made. As far as I have gotten it seems to me that Dust is something that is good. The animal Daemons are the connection between Dust and people. And from that I think the Daemons are good. I really like Pan and I don't like to think that he symbolizes something evil. Unless the connection between Dust and People is not what I think it is.
I know there is some controversy between the book and the Church and I can see some examples of that. The Church in the Golden Compass is attempting to keep the people ignorant and prevent them from growing into adults and becoming free thinkers. There is some connection between the fall of man and the Daemons once they commit to a shape. And the Church attempts to separate their Daemons from the children in order to stop that fall and maintain the innocence of child hood. I think that would be a good topic to think about for a paper and talk about the loss of innocence in children.
I dont know how it is going to play out but I am really excited to finish.

So I am about 210 pages into Alice In Sunderland and I am definitely struggling to remain interested. Its not completely horrible, I do like it but there are times when I find myself bearly able to keep reading. The great thing about the book is that as soon as it starts to bet boring something catches my interest again and I keep reading. One thing that I find interesting is the way the writer puts himself into the story and the differen narrators there are. Some times I get confused as to when the narrator changed and who they all are but I think that it is really interesting. It sort of reads like a history book but combined with all the pictures its not as horrible.

One part I really like in the book is when the Mad Hatter talks about killing time and he has a bunch of neat ways and cleaver sayings about how he is going to do it.

I really do like the book and I think its a great way of telling a little bit of history and adding some interesting side stories.

I found the official fan site and saw what others thought of the story.

I am not really sure how to write about the movie My Book and Heart Shall Never Part. For the entire semester we have talked about it and to finnaly have seen it was great. After having discussed it so much in class I do think that I was over prepared. Its almost like a preiew that shows the eintire movie. But there is a good side to knowing so much. Because I knew what was coming I was able to focus on the different pictures and sounds. One thing in the movie I did like was when they talked about Anima means soul and how Animal uses that stem . It made me think about the book the Golden Compass in the His Dark Materials book and how the Animals were a symbol of the Characters soul. I thought it was interesting and I had never made that connection before.

All in all I thnk that the movie was great, I couldnt believe how many little books we looked at and I never thought of how teaching and learning grows through our culture. I thought it was really cool to see the coin mark in the childs penny book. It really makes me think about the kid and why he or she put the coin in the book. It was one thing that really made me think about who this person was.

During the summer I worked in a day care and became pretty familiar with children and what they like to read. It seemed like no matter what I did they never tired of the same book over and over. Their favorite book was a small princess book that was full of little pictures with small pieces of fabric they could touch. It was amazing to see how many times a day they could read that book without getting board.
When we were given the assignment to find out the difference between a child and nature I remembered a time when I was at the day care and a few of the little boys were telling each other what they wanted to do when they grew up. A few said the predictable answer of firemen and policeman but a couple said they wanted to be tractors and dinosaurs. I think that is one major difference between adults and children. Children are still Innocent to imagine themselves as being something like a tractor and a dinosaur.

The Little Mermaid.

When we talked about the the different versions of Little Mermaid I spoke of a version I used to watch when I was younger. It is an anime version of the Little Mermaid. They keep the the story rather well. You can watch the entire thing on youtube. Click here. The music is great! when I watched it on youtube that was one the things that stood out to me the most. It was one of the only things I remember from the entire movie.

William Wordsworth
Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

To see the Rest click Here.

You have to Break the Rules if you want a Story!

New moral "Talk to Strangers"

When we talked about how every one is drawn to adventure it was neat to see how many movies and stories consist of people being forced into an adventure. The one example that came to me was Frodo in The Lord Of The Rings. Throughout the movie you can easily identify the three elements of the Universal Quest. He is Separated from his family and forced to leave the Shire. He then has to accept the task of holding the ring and through his painful Initiation he proves himself worthy. Finally after his grueling journey he is able to Return home and live safely with his family, changed by his heroic adventure.

Since this is such a long complex story almost every Archetypal hero is also seen, The Hero, The Mentor, The Trickster, ect. I think that Lord of the Rings is a great example.

When I read the Story East of the Sun and West of the Moon I remembered a version of that story I had seen when I was younger. It was a movie we used to watch during the weekends with my mom. The movie is called the The Polar Bear King. There are a few differences but the story is pretty much the same. The movie took place in Two different lands. The land of North and the land of the South. The prince from the land of the South is turned into a Polar bear when he refuses the marry the Wicked sorceress. Only when he finds a woman who can love him as a beast will the spell be broken, but even when he finds her she is not allowed to look at him when he changes into his human at midnight. When he reaches the North he finds young girl who can speak with animals. They fall in love and he brings her to his kingdom in the South. As the young bride lives with her polar bear husband in the land of the South she begins to miss the cold and snow of the North. So one day her father sends her a small package with a snowball, so when ever she is homesick she can open the box and remember home. I wont give away the ending or what happens. I watched most of it on youtube, but the rest wasn't on there. Its a great story and I recommend watching it.