Book 2: Saving Juliet

So I began my 48 hours with  Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid.  Then I fell asleep.  (see previous post.)

 So.  rebooted this a.m. with: 

Saving Juliet by Suzanne Selfors.  Walker Books, 2008

I have had this on the TBR stack for a long time.

Perfect. 

Delightful.

I would order this tomorrow for my junior high/high school library.  Romeo and Juliet is the play that introduces most students to Wm Shakespeare. As you recall, it ends badly for Romeo and Juliet.

Mimi Wallingford, the latest generation of a great acting dynasty (shades of Drew Barrymore) is performing with teen idol Troy Summer in Romeo and Juliet.  Her over-controlling mother is ruining her life, pilfering her trust fund and thwarting Mimi's plans to ditch the theater and study premed in college.  Troy Summers is a self centered jerk and stage fright is going to ruin her career anyway.  She wishes she could be anywhere else but Manhattan and finds herself in 16th century Verona in the middle of a feud between two families, the Capulets and the Montagues--oh, and some guy named Tybalt is trying to kill her. 

LOVED THIS BOOK!

Time read:  2 hr 30 min. 

Pages:  256

Blogging time: 45 min.

Oh and be sure to check out Kelly Fineman's Brush Up Your Shakespeare Month Challenge

The Hobart Shakespeareans

The Hobart Shakespeareans, 52 minutes, New Video Group, 2006

I said, "The Hobart Shakespeareans are the stuff of legends. Their annual play must be something to behold."

I finished reading Rafe Esquith's Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire last month. While talking about the book over lunch recently, some teaching colleagues told me they had seen this student group at a convention and had t-shirts signed by all the kids. I was so jealous.

The Hobart Shakespeareans was originally a documentary on the PBS POV program.
It is really quite amazing to watch what Rafe Esquith does in his 5th grade classroom with kids from one of the toughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The kids begin their day early (long before the official start of the school day) and attend on a year-round schedule. The classroom motto is "No Shortcuts." Esquith admonishes some kids who have been sharing answers in a straight forward manner.

They work on the play after school.

The interviews with the students themselves are enlightening. One boy recalls his fourth grade teacher's impatience with his inability to understand certain points and contrasts Esquith's willingness to explain and reteach it over and over again. The kids call him "Rafe" not "Mr. Esquith."

Living in a school district where To Kill a Mockingbird, Huck Finn and Shakespeare are not taught until high school, I can hear the question about matching these works with fifth graders but Esquith knows his kids may never make it to high school and he is determined to touch their lives with this literature. Watching tears roll down the cheeks of kids who are moved by the lines of Shakespeare or the predicament of Huck Finn made me a believer.

College pennants from Yale, Harvard, USC, UCLA cover the walls of the classroom as proof of what his former students have achieved and as encouragement for his current students. Esquith's attitude and classroom personae are uplifting but he is realistic. While talking to a group of teachers in Houston, he discusses "No Child Left Behind" and the effort that is required from the kids, themselves, and the fact that some of them are unwilling or unable to give that effort.

Classroom visits from Michael York and Ian McKellen have the students rapt and wide-eyed. I loved hearing York tell the kids that in Shakespeare's time an audience attended a performance to "hear" a play, NOT "see" a play.

If you are connected to schools as a teacher, an administrator, or as a parent, you must see this program.

Just get it.

DVD: Slings and Arrows

Treebeard and I finished watching the first season of Slings and Arrows last night. I didn't know anything about the show but Mental Multi-Vitamin recommended it.

This jaw-dropping series from Canada originally aired in the USA on the Sundance channel. NPR billed it as a refuge for Sopranos-mourners. I never watched the Sopranos but I am drumming my fingers waiting for the next DVD of this series to get here from Netflix.

There are so many surprises and astonishing moments in the first six episodes that I almost hesitate to tell you anything about it because part of the delight of this show for me was having no idea what was coming next.

The basics, to pique your interest, (in case my recommendations and M-MV's are not enough) The New Burbage Festival has seen better days. Its productions of Shakespeare are stale, the director and actors are uninspired. When the company finds itself in need of a new artistic director, a former Burbage player, Geoffrey Tennant, reluctantly takes charge despite his history (he had a breakdown while onstage in the middle of Hamlet, years earlier) with the company.

Economic forces are constantly at odds with art. Actors' lives are messy and dramatic. Young movie stars (think Keanu Reeves/Orlando Bloom) seek growth and legitimacy through Shakespeare. There is language and sex (we watched it while the entling was a-promming) but if you let that put you off, you will miss moments like this:




Blast, it is Sunday. No mail delivery today.
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