Mr.+Go

I'm currently reading:


 * pathos **[pay-thoss] The emotionally moving quality or power of a literary work or of particular passages within it, appealing especially to our feelings of sorrow, pity, and compassionate sympathy. Adjective : pathetic.

"pathos" The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Earl Haig Secondary School. 22 February 2011 

There is a lot of pathos in this book. The reader feels for the bullied disfigured protagonist. As an only child, I'm always curious to know how products of the same gene pool (i.e., siblings) end up. Here, Philip Skyler and his twin brother, Michael, live very different lives. With a (mad?) scientist as a father and a grandfather who spews (one too many) famous aphorisms (quotations), the book seems to have some potential. Set in what seems to be small town Ontario, Scarsbrook raises some intriguing issues that plague the rural setting (that to some might be seen as stifling).




 * poetry ** Literary medium that employs the line as its formal unit, and in which the sound, rhythm and meaning of words are all equally important. Until the modern introduction of the concept of [|free verse], poetry was characteristically written in regular lines with carefully structured [|metres], often with [|rhymes]. See also [|literature];[|prose]

"poetry" World Encyclopedia . Philip's, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Earl Haig Secondary School. 22 February 2011  Loving this book's use of the poetic form to tell the narrative! Author Wendy Phillips gives us access to each of the characters, Kyle, Miguel, Natalie, and Trisha. Miguel is particularly interesting since he comes from a South American village and he escapes the violent rampage of his childhood. One of my favourite poets is Chilean Pablo Neruda who Miguel quotes in one of his pieces. Phillips draws us into the students' (and teachers') lives through poems, emails, and rich imagery that taps into the teenage mind. I'm looking forward to finding out if students think the wording and poetry is credibly created by people in their age group (i.e., do teens actually talk this way - even in poetry?).