A Long Walk to Water

Link to video about the book

Book trailer

Video on the Lost Boys of the Sudan. There is some disturbing images

March Book: The Chronicles of Harris Burdick

We're doing something a little different in March: The Chronicles of Harris Burdick is a collection of fourteen short stories by different well known writers. Each story accompanies an illustration (and caption) by a mysterious man known as Harris Burdick.

When we meet in March, be prepared to answer the following questions:

Which story did you like best?
Which story did you like least?
Which story best matched it's illustration?
Which story least matched it's illustration?
Which story was the creepiest?
Which story was the happiest?
Are you interested in reading more by one of the authors in this book?

Over Sea: Discussion Questions

Over Sea, Under Stone: Discussion Questions

1. The knights of King Arthur lived by strict codes of ethics. What rules do the Drew children follow?

2. What power does Hastings have over his followers? Is Mrs.Palk one of his followers?

3. Do you think this book would have been different if it had been written in 2013 instead of 1965? If yes, then it what ways would it have been different?

4. How frightening was the villain in the story? What did Cooper do to make Hastings seem evil?

5. What is meant by the sentence, "The battle that is never won, but is never totally lost"?

6. Early in the book, great-uncle Merry says that "magic is only a word". Do you agree? Are there things that happen in the story that seem magical?

7. Do the Drew children learn some thing by the end of the book? Did they change?

8. Did this story remind you of other books you have read or movies you have seen?  

Furry dance

The Trewissick "Floral Dance" is said to be the same as the Helston Furry Dance.

Click Here to see and hear the Helston Furry Dance.

Over Sea: The Dark is Rising Series

When Susan Cooper wrote Over Sea, Under Stone she wasn't sure if she wanted to carry it on as a series. She left the ending open to future books, and ended up writing five books in what has come to be known as The Dark is Rising sequence. They are:

Over sea, Under Stone
The Dark is Rising
Greenwitch
The Grey King
Silver on the Tree

The second book book was made into a movie in 2007, but Susan Cooper war reported to be disappointed that the movie bore little resemblance to her novel.

Movie Trailer "The Dark is Rising"

Over Sea: About the Author

Susan Cooper was born May 23, 1935 in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, England.

Susan Cooper started to write a lot during WWII, because it helped her to escape from everything going on around her. She later went to school at the University of Oxford in England. Susan writes fantasy, because when she was three years old she was surrounded by fairy tales, myths and folklore in England and she enjoyed all the stories.

Before writing her novels, Susan was a reporter for The Sunday Times in London. The reason Susan moved to America is because she married an American. In America, she felt homesick and started reading a lot more about Britain and it's history and stories. Then she started to get many ideas for the books. Most of her books take place in real British locations.

Source: http://susancooper.weebly.com/index.html

I have found a video interview with Susan Cooper.

Over Sea: Just where is Trewissick?

Over Sea, Under Stone is set in a fictional town, Trewissick. When Susan Cooper was a child she used to take summer vactions in Mevagissey - a Cornish coastal town. Mevagissey is close to the real town of St. Austell, which is mentioned in the book as being close to Trewissick.

Below is a map of England, which to me kind of looks like a bagpipe without all the pipes sticking out the top. Cornwall is that pointy bit down in the bottom left. If England was a bagpipe, Cornwall would be the bit you blow in. 

 

So here is a map of Cornwall. Mevagissy (Trewissick) is mid way along the south shore:

 

 

So now you know!

 



 



February Book: Over Sea, Under Stone

February book: Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper.

 

If you have not got your copy yet we still have a couple of books available. Just ask the staff at the information desk and they will check one out for you.

 

See you February 5th!

 



Chasing Vermeer: Discussion Questions

Would you like to have a teacher like Ms. Hussey? Why or why not?

We are told that Charles Fort, author of Lo! does not believe coincidence. Do you believe in coincidence?

Did any one decode the "Reader's Challenge" Puzzle?

Petra says that yellow is the colour of surprise. Do you agree? Do other colours have symbolic meaning in the book? What do you think red is the colour of? Green? Blue?

At the end of the book Calder discovers twelve people have twelve letters in their names. Is there anyone else with twelve letters in their name that has a connection to the book?

Have you ever gotten a letter that you will never forget? A piece of mail that changes your life?

Petra dreams about A Lady Writing and thinks that she is getting messages, or at least encouragement, from the Lady. Have you had a dream that sent you a message?

"X the experts" becomes a slogan as people the world over respond to the letters the Vermeer thief has written. What does that mean? Can you think of examples when the "experts" got something wrong?

In what ways are Petra and Calder different? In what ways are they the same? Are you more like Petra or Calder?

Calder and Tommy communicate by a code they have invented. Have you ever made up a code?

Chasing Vermeer: The Power of Dreams

Since reading Chasing Vermeer I have been thinking a lot about dreams. Petra dreams about A Lady Writing and thinks that she is getting messages, or at least encouragement, from the Lady.

Have you had a dream that changed your life in some way? A dream that sent you a message?

Are there any examples of dreams guiding people? There are plenty. The first one that pops to my mind is that of James D. Watson, the man who partnered with Francis Crick to discover the structure of DNA in 1953. Watson and Crick had been puzzled about how the various protein strands that make up DNA could fit together. After puzzling it over for a long time, Watson went to bed one night and had a dream of two snakes who slithered together and twisted themselves around each other. When he awoke, Watson realized his dream had given him the answer - the two strands of DNA twisted around each other in a "double helix." The discovery of the DNA model has been called the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th Century.

Paul McCartney said that the song Yesterday came to him in a dream. When we woke he wrote it all down while having breakfast*. He was afraid he had just remembered a song that someone else had already written, and so for two weeks we sang it to everyone he knew and asked them if they had ever heard it before. When he was sure it was his own creation, he recorded it with his band, the Beatles, and it became a Number one hit. Yesterday has been named the best pop song of the 20th Century by both MTV and Rolling Stone Magazine, and holds the Guinness World Record as the most recorded song of all time.

Yesterday

* In his dream McCartney heard the music, but not the words. He had to write the words later, so over breakfast he just used any words that came to him. The first version he wrote was called Scrambled Eggs.

Vermeer: Paintings

The painting at the center of the book is Vemeer's A Lady Writing. As is indicated in Chasing Vermeer, this painting is usually on display at the National Gallery in Washington D.C., along with three other of Vermeer's works. Details from this small painting (it is only 45 cm by 40 cm) are posted below.

 

A really great website to visit if you are interested in Vermeer and his works is Essentialvermeer.com

Vermeer: The Art of Painting

While smurfing the interweb, I came across this five part BBC production on Vermeer and his painting The Art of Painting.

The Art of Painting Part One
The Art of Painting Part Two
The Art of Painting Part Three
The Art of Painting Part Four
The Art of Painting Part Five

About the Author: Blue Balliett

Blue Balliett has a website where you can learn more about her and her books:

http://www.blueballiettbooks.com/

The following questions and answers are from Blue Balliett's author profile on the Scholastic books website:

http://www.scholastic.com/blueballiett/blueballiett_bio.htm

Q&A About Writing

Find out from the author why she likes to write and how she does it.

Why do you like to write?
I love playing around with words, and trying to get them in a just-right kind of sentence. It’s hard and it can be very frustrating, but when you manage to say something in a way that pleases you, it feels great.

How do you write your ideas down?
I have a writing notebook at home that I can scribble down ideas or quotes in. I also carry a really small notebook and pen so that I can do some writing and thinking — on paper — whenever I want to. Lots of plot ideas have begun in a coffee shop, a plane, or a train. I sometimes get ideas just as I’m falling asleep at night.

Where do you write?
I write in our laundry room at home. When I began Chasing Vermeer, I liked working on a spare bed that was always covered with a mound of clean blue jeans and socks (no one in the family likes folding laundry). My back got tired of that, so I now work on a table. I like the coziness of the space, and sometimes I even like the shushing noise of the washing machine.

Do you listen to music when you write?
I like quiet when I’m writing — it’s easier for me to hear my thoughts.

What’s your favorite time of day to write?
I like to bring my morning coffee to the laundry room and get to work first thing in the morning. When I’m writing, I hardly ever answer the phone.

When you were writing Chasing Vermeer did you make a writing schedule for yourself?
No, because for years I just wrote whenever there was a quiet moment. I was still teaching full-time when I wrote the first draft, and because my son is a drummer and my kids had lots of friends in and out of the house, I wrote at funny times. Mostly I worked on the book during school breaks or on weekend mornings. 

Who do you contact with questions and how do they help you?
If I have a question I can’t find an answer to, sometimes I have called an expert, like a curator in a museum. My experience is that they are usually very helpful once they understand you are writing a book for kids.

You can also view an interview with her on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHUFuHt4goQ