Little Brother for Week Five

Welcome to Week Five, a busy week.  This week you read Little

Brother, complete a midterm examination, contribute to a discussion thread, and take a quiz.

The video for the week might mention works from a previous manifestation of the class. I replaced, remember, the first four novels:  The Hunger Games Trilogy and Carbon Diaries.  

You will take the midterm examination between July 2, and midnight Saturday, 8 July. 

For a discussion of the examination, see the Announcement for Week Four and the blog page for that week. You will find as well plenty of samples, links, and other items of interest in the Assignment Folder.

The links for the quiz and the discussion thread will remain open until midnight Monday, July 9.

Introduction to Little Brother, a novel about which you will find a lot of information on the internet to use in your discussions:

Quiz for Little Brother:

I include here two links--Part One and Part Two--for a discussion of  Feed, a novel you can use for your essay; if you decide to read this novel, you will find this vocabulary helpful.  

In addition to responding to the discussion threads, you will take a quiz, completing both assignments by Monday at midnight.

This week we move in a different direction and read about young

adults caught in a different kind of invasion in England in the aftermath of a limited nuclear exchange.

 The novel is somewhat controversial in its depiction of the romantic relationship that develops early in the narrative.

You might give the film based on this excellent novel your attention.  And Meg Rosoff  won the highly-acclaimed Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from Swedish Minister for Culture and Democracy

Among other things, Astrid Lindgren wrote that “Everything great that happened in this world happened first in someone’s imagination.”

This week's blog includes an introduction video, a quiz review, and a video about the midterm examination.

Pay attention to the Announcement Page, for I will update that information and links as the week progresses; this week's announcement page provides prompts and exam questions for the midterm exam available between Monday, July 2 , and Sunday, July 8.  

With respect to the midterm examination, take a look at responses from a previous year's Dystopian Fantastic class. The material differs; however, the method remains the same for both the prompts and the essay question.  In the Assignment Folder, you will also find identical responses to essay questions and prompts from the class--but over material this class does not cover. 

 
You will respond to 5 prompts (You will have a choice--either/or--for each of the five prompts) taken from the texts in paragraph form, at least seven to eight sentences for each.  And for part two, you will write an essay of around 2.5 pages.  

After the videos, which include a discussion of the midterm examination, you will find a list of prompts and exam questions for the Midterm.

 
In the following video,  I talk briefly about the novel for this week:

This video offers helps prepare you for this week's quiz over How I Live Now.

This video offers information about the midterm examination I recorded last spring; remember that you will not write on The Fifth Wave. In addition, I have changed the number of times you can return to Part One of the exam. Instead of having to complete your responses to the prompts in one sitting, you can return as many times as you like while the links remain open.

Remember that you respond in six to eight sentences to one of the choices given in each of the five prompts to which you return. If possible, you must respond to one prompt for at least three of the novels :

Midterm Examination Prompts (Part One) Between the start of the examination and its conclusion on Saturday, you can return to Part One of the examination as many times as you like. Matched: Final Banquet Dylan Thomas Artifacts Red, Blue, Green Pills Myth of Sisyphus Aberration Archivists Outer Provinces Ship Breaker Light Crew Sloth Harvesters Accelerated Age Pole Star Blood Buyers Red Ripper and Blood Rock Augments Orleans Surge Eve Califia Fletcher Marjorie City of Sand Arden Sows Dangers of Boys and Men class How I Live Now Aunt Penn Davina the Diabolical Dr. Jameson Reston Bridge Territorial Army Major McEvoy Jet Gateshead Lane  Midterm Exam Essay (Part Two) Write a 2.5 to 3 page (double spaced) essay on one of the following topics.  Remember that you want to avoid plot summary and put the matter into your own words:  to that end, do not cut and paste from the internet, for doing so will result in a grade of zero. Remember, too, that you want to offer analysis and not general comments or description:  do not retell the story (plot summary). Between Monday, July 2, and midnight Sunday, July 8, you can return to this part of the examination as many times as you like. Look over the exam essay examples provided for you in the Assignment Folder and on the web page. In your essay, remember that you have an argument to make.  Thus you want to make specific references to events in the narratives to support what you have to say.  In other words, provide examples by way of illustration and support for your assertions. Discuss the significance of the ambivalent role technology plays in Matched. In your essay, focus on the ambivalence of technology, especially in terms of how freedom gets curtailed for the comfort of security.  Think in terms of how what looks positive reveals negative circumstances in the novel that also bear upon contemporary society. Focusing on economics, write an essay on Ship Breaker.  Certainly what happens in Nailer’s world finds reflection in our own concerns with huge global corporations, ones that pretty much replace central government in this narrative.  Again, what happens in the novel in terms of how the economy words, you might argue, also find reflection in the contemporary issues, say, about wealth distribution and its consequences. Write an essay about how the invasion or the plague in How I Live Now or Eve; underscore the fragility of civilization and especially the threads that hold society together.  These threads remain pretty much invisible to us until, you might argue, something severs them, as in the sudden plague in Eve and terrorist attacks in How I Live Now. You will find that the vulnerabilities at play in these narratives find reflections in issues that concern us today. Each of the four novels presents an interesting and complex character.  Write an essay on Cassia, Eve, Nailer, or Daisy.  In your essay, reach conclusion about each of the characters and their specific conflicts in terms of the society in which they dwell.  Their conflicts relate directly to their experiences in the world they occupy, whether contemporary England tor the future worlds described in Matched or Ship Breaker. In the case of all four—and you will write your essay on only one of these characters—we can identify with the adolescents because in most respects they resemble familiar circumstances, whether the character rebels against authority or struggles with anorexia. Each of the character contends with conflicts in a world that differs greatly from our daily lives.

We enter week three of the term and in the process read the first book of yet another triology, Eve.

So continue to work hard on the readings and on the discussion threads.

Begin to give some thought to your 3-3.5 page essay--double spaced.  Read on the syllabus and the class introduction the discussion of the essay.  

In addition, look over the video for Book Analysis Reports from the spring semester class for Children's Literature and some of the student essays.  

The essay on Ted Hughes' Iron Giant offers an excellent example.

In addition, consider how people on the discussion thread support assertions with specific references to the text, often in the form of short quotations, and outside sources.

 As usual, I made a video--after a few tries--about Eve, in which I talk about the plot and give pointers for issues of concern on which you will want to concentrate:

 

Before you take this week's quiz, make sure to listen to the following video: 

        






 
I created a brief introductory video last summer for Yancey's novel The Fifth Wave, an  exciting alien-invasion novel you might enjoy; I can offer no great praise for the film:

Welcome to Week Two


As the schedule indicates, this week you will continue with Discussion Threads, take a quiz, and read Ship Breaker.

You might find a summary of the novel of use.


This week, you have two videos, one a general discussion about this week's reading and another keyed to this week's quiz.

Discussion of the Reading for week Two:

Review for Week Two Quiz, Ship Breaker: 

Welcome to Week One of the Class

Look over the course syllabus, an introduction to the class, and the course's tentative schedule.   You are responsible  this summer for the following work:  eight novels, two exams, one critical essay, discussion threads, and weekly quizzes. See the course syllabus, the weekly announcements, and the videos on the blog.

See, too, the blog page about the essay over the Dystopian Fantastic due by the term's conclusion--if you want to revise, however, make sure to get the essay to me before the beginning of Week Six.

The schedule will also offer you some notes about your weekly novel.  And you might find these notes about our novel of interest.

Three videos follow:  The first offers a general introduction to the class; the second provides a half-hour discussion of this week's reading assignment, our first novel.  


The video also offers specific information, so you have a spoiler alert:  I want not so much that you know what happens but that you concentrate on the significance of what happens.

And the third video covers the 25 questions on the quiz that becomes available early Thursday and will remain open this week until Monday at midnight.



I also loaded a new half-hour video introduction to the Dystopian Fantastic; note that the course title has changed from Children's Literature to Young Adult Literature--and I also changed two novels, adding Eve and The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

This video provides a brief discussion of the novel to which I might add some further material: 

The following video offers a half-hour discussion to prepare you for the weekly quiz: