Last night I finished the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia series, 'The Magician's Nephew'. This, among other things, has got me thinking about book reports, the essays and papers of yore. If only I could write a book report today, for marks, rather than lab reports, papers, exams, and such.
My father was a highschool woodwork teacher (he's retired now) and so during times of job action by teachers (I can remember 2 strikes from my school days, 1 from primary and one from secondary school), while other children treated the strike like a misplaced sort of spring break, in our house, it was time to work. Book reports were the name of the game, and if we couldn't finish a book in time, we wrote them on videos (some of which we watched on the ill fated Beta), or TV shows (My 2 Dads, Just the 10 of us . . . man, I'm really dating myself here!). Our book reports were marked, grammar and punctuation corrected with a red pen, and handed back to us promptly. In the afternoon we were to bake cookies (foods class) and walk with them to the school (gym class) to deliver the fresh baked goods to the teachers on the picket lines.
How I would like to write one of those reports today. I would so kick my grade five ass. I would write about the many biblical references CS Lewis snuck in to 'The Magician's Nephew', how the Lion Aslan's song created 2 of every animal, who rose from the earth. How Digory has to go and get an apple from a very sacred garden, and the evil witch tries to tempt him into eating it. I would write about how, in 'My 2 Dads' it was totally implausible that Nicole could never figure out which one of her deceased mother's ex boyfriends was really her father. I mean, they have paternity tests, hello, even in 1987. And I would write about how having 4 of the coach's hot daughters accidentally enrolled in an all boy's catholic school was probably some writer's wet dream, or how giving the coach from 'Growing Pains' his own spin off sit com was doomed from the get go.
Ah, book reports. But as the Chronicles of Narnia are set to be re-made as movies starting this December with 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (which is book #2 in the series, but probably the most famous), I'd highly recommend giving the series a read. It's like the Harry Potter of yore (Yes! I've managed to use the word 'yore' 2, whoops, now 3 times in this post! Sweet!), and by reading them in order, the magic of the worlds makes sense. Now I know how that famous wardrobe came to be.
My support goes to the teachers :)
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I don't remember the teachers going on strike back in MY days of school.. I just remember skipping out most of grade 5, when my mom started a part-time job every morning, so I'd just go to school in the afternoon.
Got caught the day I tried to pull a full-day, by taking a backpack of stuff up into the tree in the yard of the church across the street from our house... she spotted me when she drove home for lunch, oopsie!
Did you know that Jonathan Livingston Seagull is all biblical too? JLS = Jesus, Lord and Saviour, and the story has all these Jesus-and-disciples-and-Judas-and-resurrection elements to it. I was kinda disappointed when that was pointed out to me, cause i really liked the story up to that point.
And, do you have your Harry Potter book back? Now would be a good time for me to read it :)
X.
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