You can't talk about the Harlem Renaissance without talking about Zora Neale Hurston. And would these African-American authors have found their voices without her to blaze the trail: Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.
0 Comments
The fog comes
on little cat feet. It sits looking over ... (from "Fog") Hog Butcher for the World, Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders... (from "Chicago") Pile the bodies high... Shovel them under and let me work-- I am the grass; I cover all... (from "Grass") If I should pass the tomb of Jonah I would stop there and sit for awhile; Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark And came out alive after all. (from "Losers") Fitzgerald or Hemingway?
Rhett or Ashley? For that matter, Scarlett or Melanie? Jay Gatsby or Tom Buchanan? George Wickham or Fitzwilliam Darcy? (Pride and Prejudice) In the 90's update: Daniel Cleaver or Mark Darcy? (Bridget Jones's Diary) May Welland or Ellen Olenska? (The Age of Innocence) Arthur or Lancelot? Charles Darnay or Sydney Carton? (A Tale of Two Cities) Heathcliff or Edgar Linton? (Wuthering Heights) Tonya or Lara? (Doctor Zhivago) Florentino Ariza or Juvenal Urbino? (Love in the Time of Cholera) Betty or Veronica? Louis or Lestat? (Interview with a Vampire) Dracula or Frankenstein? Sauron or Voldemort? Today marks the 227th anniversary of the birth of Jacob Grimm in Hanau, Germany. Without him and his brother, Wilhelm, we might be without priceless folktales such as Rapunzel, The Fisherman and His Wife, Little Red Cap, The Bremen Towne Musicians, Rumpelstiltskin and Hansel & Gretel. To celebrate, read a folktale, either to your favorite child or just for your own pleasure!
The world of children's literature lost another light with the passing of author/illustrator Simms Taback, who passed away on December 25th at the age of 79. Taback won the Caldecott Medal for Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (2000) and a Caldecott Honor for one of my favorite read alouds, There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, with its amazing die-cut illustrations. He also created the illustrations for the first McDonald's Happy Meal Box in 1977! Are you watching TV, answering email, text messaging and reading this blog all at the same time? Stop! Now! Choose one thing and do it well and with focus, then move on to the next task, and so on. Multi-tasking is bad for you. Okay, so you won't take my word for it? Here's more than a decade's worth of research on the subject from such stalwart institutions as Stanford University, the University of Michigan and UCLA. And the research all points to this fact: juggling multiple tasks, ubiquitous in our tech-laden world, hurts learning and performance as it divides attention. The Stanford researchers set out to tackle the assumption that it is impossible for the brain to process more than one string of information at a time. They theorized that maybe people who appear to multitask must have superior control over how they focus and what they focus on. So they went hunting for the secret. But after studying 100 students, they discovered that the multitaskers don't have a special "gift," and they are, in fact, losing mental acuity. The researchers divided their test subject into two groups: those who do media multitasking on a regular basis and those who do not. They conducted three different tests which involved ignoring irrelevant information, organizing memories and switching tasks. The heavy multitaskers underperformed on all three tasks: they were, as one researcher put it, "suckers for irrelevancy;" they were unable to filter out information unnecessary to the task at hand; and their capacity to store information to help complete a task was diminished. The UCLA researchers examined how multitasking affects our ability to learn. In short, it does! Adversely! It may just be common sense, but it would certainly seem that the best way to learn and improve your memory is to pay attention to the things you want to remember! Like stuff you want to learn! Duh! So the next time I hear a fellow educator talk about the wonderful ability of today's students to multitask, I think I am going to scream! And then I will refer him or her to these research studies. Wow, what a concept: maybe we could achieve more by doing less. Since I doubt if I could write it any better, for your enjoyment, I pass along this link to Alexandra Petri's column in The Washington Post. Happy 2012!
|
AuthorTo find out more about me, click on the Not Your Average Jo tab. Archives
February 2024
Categories
All
|