infiniteadventure:

lupinatic:

here-is-the-place:

When people say these books are children’s books, as if to demean them, I balk. These books dealt with themes that adults do not fully understand or wish to. It dealt with racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice, and general ignorance. These books taught us that it doesn’t matter how you were raised, but that you get to choose to be kind, loyal, brave, and true. They taught us to be strong under the pressures of this world and to hold fast to what we know to be right. These books taught me so much, they changed me as a person. So just because they’re set against a fantastical backdrop with young protagonists does not mean that their value is any less real.

This.

First book: Starts with the double murder of a pair of twenty-one year olds who were much missed and leaving their baby son a war orphan. A child growing up in abusive conditions that would give Cinderella the horrors. Dealing with peers and teachers who are bullies. The fickleness of fame (from the darling of Gryffindor to the outcast.) The idea that there are things worth fighting and dying for, spoken by the child protagonist. Three children promptly acting on that willingness to sacrifice their lives, and two of them getting injured doing so.

Second book: The equivalent of racism with the pro-pureblood attitude. Plot driven by an eleven year old girl being groomed and then used by a charming, handsome older male. The imbalance of power and resultant abuse inherent in slavery. Fraud perpetuated by stealing something very intimate.

Third book: The equivalent of ableism with a decent, kind and competant adult being considered less than human because he has an illness that adversely affects his behaviour at certain times. A justice system that is the opposite of just. Promises of removing an abused child from the abusive environment can’t always be kept. The innocent suffer while the guilty thrive.

Fouth book: More fickleness of fame. The privileged mistreating and undermining the underprivileged because they can. A master punishing a slave for his own misjudgment, and the slave blaming herself. A sports tournament which involves mortal risk being cheered by spectators. A wonderful young man being murdered simply because he was in the way. A young boy being tortured, humilated and nearly murdered.

Fifth book: PTSD in the teenage protagonist. Severe depression in the protagonist’s godfather, triggered by inherited mental health issues and being forced to stay in a house where abuse occured. A bigoted tyrant who lives to crush everyone under her heel, torturing a teenager for telling the truth in the name of the government (and trying to suck his soul out too). The discovery that your idols can have feet of clay after all. An effort to save the life of someone dear and precious actually costing that very same life. The loss of a father-figure and the resultant guilt.

Sixth book: The idea that a soul can be broken beyond repair. Drugs with the potential for date rape are shown as having achieved exactly that in at least one case, resulting in a pregnancy. Well-meaning chauvinism trying to control the love life of a young woman. Internalised prejuidce resulting in refusing the one you love, not out of lack of love but out of fear of tainting them. The mortality of those that seem powerful and larger than life.

Seventh book: Bad situations can get worse, to the point where even the privileged end up suffering and afraid. More internalised prejudice and fear hysterical terror of tainting those you love. Self-sacrifice and the loss of loved ones, EVERYWHERE. Those who are bitter are often so with a reason. The necessity of defeating your inner demons, even though it’s never as cool as it sounds. Don’t underestimate those that are enslaved. Other people’s culture isn’t always like your own. Things often come full circle (war ending with the death of a dearly-loved pair of new parents and their orphaned baby son living with his dead mother’s blood relative instead of his young godfather). Even if ‘all is well’ the world is still imperfect, because it’s full of us brilliant imperfect humans.

 
So… still think that Harry Potter is a kid’s series with no depth?

Note to self: Print this off, give to English teacher.

(via merewetherdreams)

(via joshfranseaweed)

And in addition to traffic, Tumblr has even boosted The Atlantic’s sales of its print magazine. “We’ve even been hooking younger kids with our Tumblr,” says Jared. “Many teenagers have written to say that they’ve purchased the magazine because they loved the content on our Tumblr so much.

Reading Hurts

Happy Valentine’s Day!

(via A Love Poem For Girls Who Read)

Fan Fiction and Why it Matters

[…] In Wicked I knew that I wanted to make gay affection and even sex a legitimate, if minority, reality in Oz. This impulse was borne less out of a political agenda and more from a literary one: should the magic in my books have any chance of seeming truly, well, fabulous, I thought it would need to be set off against a background of gritty ambiguity in the depiction of human affairs. I was, after all, writing a fantasy for adults. It’s one thing for magic to happen to the grubby princess-in-tatters. It’s quite another for it to happen to us, who, no matter how many vintage clothing shops we may visit privately, will never be princesses. Or princes.

The Phantom Tollbooth” is not just a manifesto for learning; it is a manifesto for the liberal arts, for a liberal education, and even for the liberal-arts college. What Milo discovers is that math and literature, Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, should assume their places not under the pentagon of Purpose and Power but under the presidency of Rhyme and Reason. Learning isn’t a set of things that we know but a world that we enter.

froth:

But you can’t judge a book by its cover, dammit!

In actuality, the grave seriousness of Animorphs is what stands out most in my memories. This isn’t 10,000 pages of kids turning into butterflies. It’s a 10,000 page chronicling of war, and the central themes of the series are appropriately aligned with that subject matter. Once you’ve suspended your disbelief and firmly settled yourself into the bizarre sci-fi nature of the material, what you’ve got is five teenagers who struggle with things like dehumanization, the responsibility or leadership, sanity, insanity and morality. It is told with the horror of actual war, where the battle is not only physical, but mental as well. Is it right to kill unarmed enemies? Is it right to ask a team member and friend to carry out a dangerous mission? Is it right to retreat, to continue, to do anything?

Horrible things happen with surprising frequency in this series. Characters you’ve grown attached to have mental break-downs, crumble under the pressure, cease to be heroes. In fact, a lot of this series serves to debunk childish notions of battle and war as being something magnificent and heroic. The battles that are fought are not great feats or victories, but rather a series of jumbled, confusing actions that leave regret and sickness in the hearts of those who fought. Each decision, whether in the heat of battle or for the greater good, comes later to haunt the character who made it, and they forever feel the weight of their actions and their own short-comings.

via Why Animorphs is possibly the greatest sci-fi story ever told.

Book Wins Award For Making Evolution Accessible To Kids; America Bans Book ›

Archie Comics is Going to Feature A Gay Wedding! | The Mary Sue ›

BBC Books to develop series around TV's Sherlock ›

The last book that grabbed me like this was Wicked. And both that time and now I finally am feeling the THRILL and the OBSESSION of reading that I felt all the time as a kid. When the real world doesn’t matter and you don’t want to talk to anyone or watch anything because you have to get back to your book, dammit, and see what happens next!

(via attoyh)

JK Rowling apparently gave her character an unusual name because she was afraid that children would get teased if they shared a moniker with Hogwarts’ school swot. By this time, however, we’re pretty sure that the name Hermione is a badge of honour rather than a cause of ridicule, because it turns out that the girl in the gang is maybe the most capable of the lot.