100 Novels All Kids Should Read Before Leaving High School

in Books, Education, K-12, Literature | November 12th, 2015

Last year, a Slate essay called “Against YA” by Ruth Graham irked thousands of readers who took offense at her argument that although grown-ups “brandish their copies of teen novels with pride…. [a]dults should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children.” Whether we label her article an instance of shaming, trolling, or just the expression of a not-especially consequential, “fuddy-duddy opinion,” what it also served to highlight—as so many other thoughtful and not-so-thoughtful online essays have done—is the huge sales numbers of so-called YA, a literary boom that shows no signs of slowing. Young adult fiction, along with children’s books in general, saw double digit growth in 2014, a phenomenon in part driven by those supposedly self-infantilizing adults Graham faults.

The grown-ups reading teen books do so, Graham writes, because “today’s YA, we are constantly reminded, is worldly and adult-worthy.” Maybe, maybe not, but there is another question to ask here as well, wholly apart from whether the age 30–44 cohort who account for 28 percent of YA sales “should” be buying and reading YA books. And that question is: should young adults read Young Adult fiction? And what counts as Young Adult fiction anyway? A 2012 NPR list of the “100 Best-Ever Teen Novels” includes the expected Harry Potter and Hunger Games series (at numbers one and two, respectively), as well as more “literary,” but still obvious, choices like John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and S.E. Hinton’s classic The Outsiders.

It also includes Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Frank Herbert’s Dune, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. It what sense do all of these very different kinds of books—some very complex and challenging, some very much less so—qualify as “teen novels”? Perhaps some of the fuzziness about quality and appropriateness comes from the fact that many “Top-whatever” lists like NPR’s are compiled by readers, of all ages. And enjoyment, not edification, usually tops a general readership’s list of criterion for “top”-ness. However, what would such a list look like if strictly compiled by educators?

You can find out in another top 100 list: the 100 Fiction Books All Children Should Read Before Leaving Secondary School – According to 500 English Teachers (created at the request of Britain’s National Association for the Teaching of English and TES magazine). There’s a good bit of crossover with the reader-chosen NPR list; the Harry Potter books come in at sixth place. Both lists feature classics like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. But the teacher-chosen list also includes more “adult” writers like Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Toni Morrison. One teacher quoted in an Express article describes his own criteria: “It’s always a balancing act in the books that teachers select. Do you go for something that students will enjoy and lap up and read, or do you go for something that will help them cut their teeth?”

There seems to be a good balance of both here. You can see the first ten titles below, with links to free online versions where available. The complete list of 100 books for teenagers is here.

1 Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell (Amazon)

2 To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (free eBook)

3 Animal Farm, by George Orwell (free eBook)

4 Lord Of The Flies, by William Golding (Amazon)

5 Of Mice And Men, by John Steinbeck (Amazon)

6 The Harry Potter series, by J K Rowling (Amazon)

7 A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens (free eBook)

8 The Catcher In The Rye, by J D Salinger (Amazon)

9 Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (free eBook)

10 Pride And Prejudice, by Jane Austen (free eBook)

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

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Gravity Visualized by High School Teacher in an Amazingly Elegant & Simple Way

in K-12, Physics | November 6th, 2015

Just a few miles down the highway from Open Culture’s gleaming headquarters you will find Los Gatos High School, where Dan Burns, an AP Physics Teacher, has figured out a simple but clever way to visualize gravity, as it was explained by Einstein’s 1915 General Theory of Relativity. Get $20 of spandex, some marbles, a couple of weights, and you’re all good to go. Using these readily-available objects, you can demonstrate how matter warps space-time, how objects gravitate towards one another, and why objects orbit in the way they do. My favorite part comes at the 2:15 mark, where Burns demonstrates the answer to a question you’ve maybe pondered before: why do all planets happen to orbit the sun moving in a clockwise (rather than counter-clockwise) fashion? Now you can find out why.

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Hear All of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia Novels as Free Audio Books

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature, Religion | November 2nd, 2015

I have not seen the second two of a promised seven films based on the novels in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series. But I tend to agree with several critics of the first filmed adaptation, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “The PG-rated movie feels safe and constricted,” Peter Travers observed, “in a way the story never does on the page.” Although Lewis “did nothing to hide his devout Christianity” in his allegorical Narnia books for young adults, nor in his grown-up sci-fi fantasy series, The Space Trilogy, Lewis on the page comes across as a rigorous writer first and a Christian apologist second. Except, I’d argue, for his work of explicitly populist, and rather facile, apologetics, Mere Christianity (originally a series of radio lectures), his fiction and popular non-fiction alike present readers—whatever their beliefs—with challenging, inventive, witty, and moving ways to think about the human condition.

Lewis’ immersion in European Medieval and Renaissance literature in his day-job role as an Oxford don—and his ecumenical, almost Jungian, approach to literature generally—gives his fiction a serious archetypal depth that most modern religious novelists lack, making him, along with fellow “Inkling” J.R.R. Tolkien, something of a literary saint in modern Christianity. Though it may offend the orthodox to say so, Lewis’ novels capture a “deep magic” at the heart of all mythological and literary traditions. And they do so in a way that makes exploring heavy, grown-up themes exciting for both children and adults. Though I’ve personally left behind the beliefs that animated my first readings of his books, I can still return to The Chronicles of Narnia and find in them deep magic and mystery.

There’s no denying the enormous influence these books have had on children’s fantasy literature, from Harry Potter to Lewis’ atheist antagonist Philip Pullman. I look forward to sharing his books with my daughter, whatever she ends up making of their religiosity. I’ve still got my tattered paperback copies, and I’ll gladly read them to her before she can tackle them herself, but I’m also grateful for the complete audio recordings of The Chronicles of Narnia, available free online and read by English child psychologist and author Chrissi Hart. In installments of two chapters at a time, Hart reads all seven of the Narnia books, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Battle.

You can hear the first two chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe above, and stream or download the remaining chapters, and the remaining six books, at Ancientfaith.com. Although Hart and the Ancient Faith site who host her readings clearly approach the novels from an explicitly Orthodox perspective, I don’t think readers need to share their beliefs, or Lewis’, to enjoy and appreciate the storytelling magic of The Chronicles of Narnia.

And it should be noted that CS Lewis Pte. Ltd. granted permission to put these recordings online, according to the Ancient Faith web site. The recordings are therefore listed in our collection, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free. Enjoy.

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

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Mr. Rogers Goes to Congress and Saves PBS: Heartwarming Video from 1969

in Education, History, K-12, Politics, Television | October 26th, 2015

What kind of delusional self-aggrandizer, called to testify before a United States Senate Subcommittee, uses it as an opportunity to quote the lyrics of a song he’s written… in their entirety!?

Sounds like the work of a certain rapper/prospective political candidate or perhaps some daffy buffoon as brought to life by Ben Stiller or Will Ferrell.

Only children’s television host Fred Rogers could pull such a stunt and emerge unscathed, nay, even more beloved, as he does above in documentary footage from 1969.

Mister Rogers’ impulse to recite What Do You Do With the Mad That You Feel to then-chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Senator John Pastore, was ultimately an act of service to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its child viewers.

Newly elected President Richard Nixon opposed public television, believing that its liberal bent could only undermine his administration. Determined to strike first, he proposed cuts equal to half its $20 million annual operating budget, a measure that would have seriously hobbled the fledgling institution.

Mr. Rogers appeared before the Committee armed with a “philosophical statement” that he refrained from reading aloud, not wishing to monopolize ten minutes of the Committee’s time. Instead, he sought Pastore’s promise that he would give it a close read later, speaking so slowly and with such little outward guile, that the tough nut Senator was moved to crack, “Would it make you happy if you did read it?”

Rather than taking the bait, Rogers touched on the ways his show’s budget had grown thanks to the public broadcasting model. He also hipped Pastore to the qualitative difference between frenetic kiddie cartoons and the vastly more thoughtful and emotionally healthy content of programming such as his. Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood was a place where such topics as haircuts, sibling relationships, and angry feelings could be discussed in depth.

Rogers’ emotional intelligence seems to hypnotize Pastore, whose challenging front was soon dropped in favor of a more respectful line of questioning. By the end of Rogers’ heartfelt, non-musical rendition of What Do You Do… (it’s much peppier in the original), Pastore has goosebumps, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has its 2 mil’ back in the bag.

What do you do with the mad that you feel

When you feel so mad you could bite?

When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong…

And nothing you do seems very right?

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?

Do you pound some clay or some dough?

Do you round up friends for a game of tag?

Or see how fast you go?

It’s great to be able to stop

When you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong,

And be able to do something else instead

And think this song:

I can stop when I want to

Can stop when I wish.

I can stop, stop, stop any time.

And what a good feeling to feel like this

And know that the feeling is really mine.

Know that there’s something deep inside

That helps us become what we can.

For a girl can be someday a woman

And a boy can be someday a man.

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Ayun Halliday’s new play, Fawnbook, debuts as part of the Bad Theater Festival in NYC tomorrow night. Follow her @AyunHalliday

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

James Baldwin’s One & Only, Delightfully-Illustrated Children’s Book, Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood (1976)

in Art, Books, K-12 | September 23rd, 2015

As a writer, a thinker, and a human being, James Baldwin knew few boundaries. The black, gay, expatriate author of such still-read books as Go Tell it on the Mountain and The Fire Next Time set an example for all who have since sought to break free of the strictures imposed upon them by their society, their history, or even their craft. Baldwin wrote not just novels but essays, plays, poetry, and even a children’s book, which you see a bit of here today.

Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood came out in 1976, a productive year for Baldwin which also saw the publication of The Devil Finds Work, a book of writing on film (yet another form on which he exerted his own kind of socially critical mastery). In Little Man, he writes not about a highly visual medium, but in a highly visual medium: young children delight in lively illustrations, and they must have especially delighted in the ones here (more of which you can see in this gallery), drawn by French artist Yoran Cazac with a kind of mature childishness.

Those same adjectives might apply to Baldwin’s writing here as well, since he aims his story toward children, talking not down at them but straight at them, in their very own language: “TJ bounce his ball as hard as he can, sending it as high in the sky as he can, and rising to catch it.” So goes the introduction to the main character, a four-year-old boy living in Harlem whom Baldwin based on his nephew. “Sometimes he misses and has to roll into the street. A couple of times a car almost run him over. That ain’t nothing.”

TJ and WT, his older pal from the neighborhood, take their scrapes throughout the course of this short book, but they also have a rich experience — and thus provide, for their readers young and old, a rich experience — of the unique time and place in which they find themselves growing up. Their working-class Harlem childhood obviously has its pains, but it has its joys too. “TJ’s Daddy try to act mean, but he ain’t mean,” Baldwin writes. “Sometime take TJ to the movies and he take him to the beach and he took him to the Apollo Theatre, so he could see blind Stevie Wonder. ‘I want you to be proud of your people,’ TJ’s Daddy always say.”

At We Too Were Children, Ariel S. Winter highlights the book’s dedication “to the eminent African-American artist Beauford Delaney. Baldwin met Delaney when he was fourteen, the first self-supporting artist he had ever met, and like Baldwin, Delaney was black and homosexual. Delaney became a mentor to Baldwin, who often spoke of him as a ‘spiritual father,’ ” and “it was Delaney who introduced Baldwin to Yoran Cazac in Paris.” Baldwin became godfather to Cazac’s third child, and Cazac, of course, became the man who gave artistic life to Baldwin’s vision of childhood itself.

You can pick up your own copy of Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood on Amazon.

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Colin Marshall writes elsewhere on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

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Mick Jagger Acts in The Nightingale, a Televised Play from 1983

in K-12, Literature, Music, Television | September 22nd, 2015

Pity the man who has everything. Satisfaction is but fleeting.

One wonders if rock god Mick Jagger might know a thing or two about the condition. He doesn’t seem to know all that much about acting, as evidenced by his turn in The Nightingale episode of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre series.

No matter. His artlessness is part of the charm. As the spoiled emperor of Cathay, he makes no effort to alter his Mockney accent. He also keeps his famous strut under wraps, weighted down by his royal robes (and top knot!).

The 1983 episode cleaves closely to the Hans Christian Andersen original that inspired it. To summarize the plot:

The emperor demands an audience with a nightingale, after hearing tell of its song, but the toadies who comprise his court are too rarified to locate one in the forest.

A lowly kitchen maid (Barbara Hershey, on the brink of stardom) is the only one with the know how to deliver.

But the emperor is fickle — it isn’t long before his head is turned by a jewel encrusted, mechanics facsimile…a common enough rock n’ roll pitfall.

A large part of Faerie Tale Theater’s magic was the juxtaposition of high wattage stars and extremely low production budgets. There’s an element of student film to the proceedings. The videotape on which it was shot flattens rather than flatters. This is not a criticism. It makes me awfully fond of the big shots who agreed to participate.

In addition to Jagger and Hershey, look for Angelica Huston, Edward James Olmos, and Jagger’s then girlfriend, Jerry Hall, in smaller roles. There’s also Bud Cort of Harold and Maude, flapping around the sparsely decorated forest like a visitor from an entirely different story, nay, planet.

A curious enterprise indeed.

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Ayun Halliday will be appearing at the Brooklyn Book Festival in New York City this weekend.. Follow her @AyunHalliday

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

An Animated Introduction to Virginia Woolf

in Animation, Education, K-12, Literature | September 21st, 2015

It’s a pity writer Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) drowned herself before the advent of the Internet.

Industrialization did not faze her.

It’s less clear how the great observer of “the Modern Age” would’ve responded to the proliferation of Mommy bloggers.

Their sheer numbers suggest that perhaps female writers do not need a “room of one’s own” (though presumably all of them would be in favor of such a development.)

Woolf’s name is an enduring one, inspiring both the title of a classic American play and a doggy day care facility. Its owner passed away nearly 75 years ago, yet she remains a perennial on Women’s Studies’ syllabi.

Ergo, it’s possible for the general public to know of her, without knowing much of anything about her and her work. (Find her major works on our lists of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books).

The latest animated installment in The School of Life humanities series seeks to remedy that situation in ten minutes with the video above, which offers insight into her place in both the Western canon and the ever-glamorous Bloomsbury Group, and celebrates her as a keen observer of life’s daily routine. And that by-now-familiar cut-out animation style takes full advantage of the author’s best known head shots.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

- Virginia Woolf

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Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Read by Sir John Gielgud

in Audio Books, K-12, Literature, Poetry, Theatre | September 14th, 2015

I never thought I could love an audio recording of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (technically Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass) more than I love the unabridged version narrated by Christopher Plummer. His wonderfully hammy characterizations and its six hour running time made it the perfect soundtrack for picking nits from the foot long tresses of a first-grader who’d been sent home with lice.

By the time she got the all clear, both of us had large portions of it committed to memory.

Christopher, I treasure the memories of those long hours spent together on cassette, but I’m afraid I’ll be spending the 150th anniversary of Alice with Sir John Gielgud, below.

All in the golden afternoon

Full leisurely we glide;

For both our oars, with little skill,

By little arms are plied,

While little hands make vain pretense

Our wanderings to guide.

He makes Lewis Carroll sound like Shakespeare!

The celebrated dry wit that served him so well throughout his illustrious career keeps this 1989 Alice very easy on the ears. He takes the opposite approach from Plummer, underplaying the character voices. It’s rare to find a gentleman of 85 who can play a 7‑year-old girl so convincingly, and with so little fuss.

In an extremely civilized bit of audio engineering, Gielgud recorded the tracks in the ballroom of Wyastone Leys, the Victorian country estate that is home to the audiobook’s label. Also? The English String Orchestra ushers listeners from scene to scene with excerpts from Mendelssohn’s String Symphonies. Ah…

Gielgud’s reading of Alice has been made available on Spotify. Find it here. Or embedded here. You can also find it on Youtube as well. Completists might also enjoy Gielgud’s turn as the Mock Turtle in Jonathan Miller’s superbly dark, black & white adaptation from 1966, here. (Gielgud makes his entrance at the 13:55 mark.)

To listen to Gielgud on Spotify, you will of course need Spotify’s software and account, both easy to come by: you just download and register.

Other readings of Alice can be found in our collection, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free.

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Ayun Halliday will be appearing at the Brooklyn Book Festival in New York City next weekend.. Follow her @AyunHalliday

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

100 Novels All Kids Should Read Before Leaving High School

Gravity Visualized by High School Teacher in an Amazingly Elegant & Simple Way

Hear All of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia Novels as Free Audio Books

Mr. Rogers Goes to Congress and Saves PBS: Heartwarming Video from 1969

James Baldwin’s One & Only, Delightfully-Illustrated Children’s Book, Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood (1976)

Mick Jagger Acts in The Nightingale, a Televised Play from 1983

An Animated Introduction to Virginia Woolf

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Read by Sir John Gielgud

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