Quirky Book Week: Cherise the Niece

After yesterday's sweet little girl, today you can meet Cherise:

A sweet wee thing.  Well, kinda.  I was going to do a blog entry about books with n@ughty little girls, until I considered what search engines and their bots might do with that particular concept...

On the Amazon.com page for this book, you can take a look inside.  You can also buy a Kindle ebook edition, and download the first chapter free.  The product description on Amazon says:

The bloody footprints leading out of Cherise’s bedroom are the first clue that perhaps the little darling with the bow in her hair is not an angel. As Cherise is shuttled from one aunt’s home to another, her aunts vanish, meeting inventive and hysterical ends. With a killer punch line on its final page, Jim Benton’s Cherise the Niece will leave readers laughing.

I myself feel that it's important to let you know that there is a note at the beginning of the book advising that no aunts were harmed in its making...

Definitely black humour; if you're not in a high school, maybe one to read before adding to the collection. 

But fun?  Heck yes!  It's caused lots of chuckling in our library.

Tomorrow's Quirky Book is one of my favourites.

Cheers

Ruth

Image from www.bookdepository.com

I Exorcise "The Rite" (2011) To NOT Believe Anything In This Horror Movie

The Rite (January 2011) -  Drama | Horror | Thriller   


I love watching scary movies in the dark, alone - with just my dogs, and figured any horror film with Anthony Hopkins in it must be ridiculously incredible and exciting. You share my meaning: Right? I love such films because they make me wonder "what if that was real?" Sadly, this one left no room for such entertaining ponderings, not even when it resurrected the the idea behind "The Exorcist" (scariest movie from the early 1970s) and I thoroughly loved that flick and The Exorcist sequels. 







Admitting that I love evil possession movies and setting that idea aside, after watching "The Rite" - with all its Catholic propaganda and a red-eyed donkey leaving hoof marks on a young boy's back - I simply did not feel moved by any of the demon possession stories presented here. (The Exorcist was so MUCH scarier and dramatically more believable.)


BASIC STORY LINE:
An American seminary student, Michael Kovak (Colin O'Donoghue) grew up inside a funeral home where he watched his dad prepare his own mother for burial. Nearing his seminary graduation, Kovak strongly doubts his religious calling and wants to leave the ministry. So he negotiates with the Church to avoid paying back his student loans. That's how he ends up in Italy where he's supposed to study exorcisms, of all things. 


So when Kovak meets his mentor, the very eccentric Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins), he's skeptical and assumes the priest may be using trickery to "treat" mentally ill patients who Father Trevant claims are possessed. Yet in time, those afflicted actually begin to see slow improvement with the priest's interception, unless of course we begin to count those who were reported dead - as the pregnant 16-year-old who bleeds to death while restrained to a hospital bed. Eventually Trevant himself becomes possessed by Satan and that's when we get to see the Father slap a sweet little girl in the face, followed by his body twisting in all sorts of interesting contortions and disfigurements. 


POSITIVES: 
* I love anything paranormal so I liked this film - even when this movie required that I overlook a very strong dogmatic push for accepting Roman Catholic church power.
* Great make-up and animation of Father Trevant when he's posessed (he looks really truly evil).


NEGATIVES:
* Ignorantly demonizes animals (cats, donkeys, frogs) and conveys those innocent creatures in a most evil light.
* This movie seems to do what my childhood religious cult did and elevates evil as being more powerful than good ... claiming Satan will target anyone who does not believe in him and even Catholic Priests (God's servants) are completely helpless against the likes of him.


CONCLUSION:
This movie is worth seeing but rent it (don't buy the DVD). I'm glad I did not pay to see this on the big screen. While it proved very entertaining and Anthony Hopkins performed extraordinarily well, I did not have as much respect for his depiction of Father Trevant's character as I held for his conveyance of Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs). This movie wasn't even believable in regards to possession phenomena (not even while it claims to be based on a true story). So while I liked the film, I did not love it. In fact, I will be exercising "The Rite" to sell or give my DVD away.


Director: Mikael Håfström
Writers: Michael Petroni (based on a reportedly "true story" by Journalist Matt Baglio) 

Quirky Book Week: Constance and Tiny

Another Quirky Book for your delectation!

Meet Constance, and her adorably sweet cat, Tiny:

Absolute angels, they are.  Take a look inside the book with this preview from the Book Depository website.

There is an utter (and very recognisable) disparity between what Constance says (in the text of the book) and what Constance (and Tiny) do.  Could be exploitable for English.  My name is Constance.  I am locked up in an evil mansion...

But mostly, it's just gorgeous fun.

Picked this up from a sale table, but it's orderable from bookshops in Australia or overseas.  Not expensive.

What are your fave quirky books?  I have three more to share this week - enjoy!  Constance and Tiny have another adventure in Constance and the great escape.

Cheers

Ruth

Here is the reality of teaching

Terrific article in today's Sydney Morning Herald, from Leon Wright who teaches in western Sydney.  My favourite paragraph from "Waves of guff wash over the modern teacher" is this one:

Here is the reality. This morning, tens of thousands of teachers will go to work. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. There are motherly types, coaches, IT experts, role models, adventurers, martinets, inspirers, storytellers, social workers, academics, craftsmen, performers and, of course, a few time servers, incompetents and babes in the woods. Only the gullible and ambitious among them will uncritically embrace the passing fads. The rest will just get on with it.

But it's all worth reading.  Smart observation, this:

Once you have begun teaching, there is no let-up. At staff development days, we watch highly paid experts give presentations on how the judicious use of painted egg cartons and paper clips has transformed education in Barbados. We invariably apply one jaundiced criterion to evaluate this stuff: would it work with my year 9 class on a Friday afternoon?


Read it all:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/waves-of-guff-wash-over-the-weary-teacher-20110619-1g9yu.html
 
Cheers
 
Ruth
 
to whom some, but not all, of the above descriptions apply.
 
Found via the paper paper: the SMH as broadsheet, while I scarfed down a quick sandwich before a lesson with Year 7.  Seize the day (and the lunch!)
 

Quirky Book Week: All My Friends Are Dead

Welcome to Quirky Book Week on Skerricks!

Five books that are just great fun - the kids like 'em, and I like 'em, and they make the library a happy place.

Which you might start to question when you see the first book:

Cheer up.  It's a really really funny book.

You can take a look inside here (Google preview on the Book Depository website).  I rather like the pirate saying all his friends have scurvy....

Just make sure when you read the book that you read all the way to the very very last page.

It's a smallish book, gifty-sized, and not expensive.  It's making lots of friends here.  Another way to make this library a place where there is laughter, and fun to be had, and discoveries to be made.  So it's about library PR, too.

Tune in tomorrow for another Quirky Book!

Cheers

Ruth

Image from www.bookdepository.com

The happy life of teacher librarians: HI MISS!

So last Friday I spent all day at the library in the downstairs seminar room (glass walls, next to the computer area) with a group of teacher librarians for a mini-conference.

We had all brought food for recess and lunch; after recess, there was still quite a spread on the table, cake and biscuits and sandwiches and cheese and... we grazed, and talked of cabbages and kings.  Hosting this meeting, I had made sure we had peppermints on the table, because what is a seminar/conference without peppermints???

In the period before lunch, 10E8 English came to the library with their teacher for their regular fortnightly period.  Being Otherwise Engaged, I didn't spend the time with them as I usually would have done.

The boys (they're all boys in that class) are a bunch of larrikins and characters.  They were naturally curious about these unexpected goings-on right next to the computers they were working on.  And food.... (hmm, maybe a lot of their interest centred on the food...).  Being the opportunistic thinkers that they are, a couple bent their minds to exploiting this situation.

So I'm sitting facing the library, and a couple wave hello.  I smile back, and refocus on the discussion.

A couple of the boys are typing something on the computer.  They turn the screen so I can read it, big smiles on their faces:

HI MISS

I grin acknowledgement, and refocus.

More typing.  The screen is turned back towards me:

WATCHA DOIN?

Couldn't help myself, I laughed aloud.  They grinned back.  I excused myself from the meeting, picking up the bowl of Seminar Peppermints as I went, and went out for a minute or two to let those larrikins know just how obnoxious they are...and to remind them, as I offered them a peppermint (they took two, naturally) that it isn't OK to eat in the library.  They agreed, as they chewed, and I returned to the meeting. (They can do Contradiction just fine).  Thanks, miss!

I haven't had the heart to tell them that the last of the food was hoovered by the public stomachs of the same teacher's Year 7 class at the end of the day.

The happy life of teacher librarians: HI MISS

Cheers

Ruth

Newspaper Map: find, translate, read

How cool is this?

Every balloon is a different newspaper, the languages indicated by colour.  You can use the hand icon to move around the map (so yes, it does have Australia).

Great, you say, but what if I only speak English?

No worries.

Let's try an example There's a little Spanish balloon in the middle of the sea of English in the US.  When you click on it, you can choose the language in which you wish to read that newspaper.  Sure, Google Translate ain't perfect, but it's not bad.

Lots of ways this could be handy!  Let your teachers know... http://newspapermap.com/

Found via Twitter: @newsfromtengrrl who posts lots of useful links.

Cheers

Ruth

Screenshot images from the site.