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Unrelated Families
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From: Merri Lindgren <Mlindgren>
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 22:27:03 -0600
Item Type: Appointment Start Date: 11/24/2002 10:00 pm CST (Sunday) Duration: 1 Hour
Thanks to everyone for your postings about the sibling relationships in books that you or your students have particularly connected with.
Earlier this month a few people cited books in which groups of unrelated children essentially function as a family unit, such as THE THIEF LORD
(by Cornelia Funke) and THE PLANET OF JUNIOR BROWN (by Virginia Hamilton). This made me think of novels set in a dystopian future, in which the breakdown of conventional family structure has resulted in groups of children banding together, sometimes supportively, and sometimes not. In Rodman Philbrick's THE LAST BOOK IN THE UNIVERSE, gangs rule by violent force. The first two volumes of the Fire-Us series (Armstrong & Butcher), THE KEEPERS OF THE FLAME and THE KINDLING, focus on children orphaned by a devastating plague that killed almost all of the planet's adults. A group of children who has survived has managed to do so by assuming familial and societal roles: mother, teacher, baby, etc. I find this composition intriguing; are there other stories of children forming their own family groups that you can comment on?
Merri
Merri Lindgren, Librarian mlindgren at education.wisc.edu Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Received on Sun 24 Nov 2002 10:27:03 PM CST
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 22:27:03 -0600
Item Type: Appointment Start Date: 11/24/2002 10:00 pm CST (Sunday) Duration: 1 Hour
Thanks to everyone for your postings about the sibling relationships in books that you or your students have particularly connected with.
Earlier this month a few people cited books in which groups of unrelated children essentially function as a family unit, such as THE THIEF LORD
(by Cornelia Funke) and THE PLANET OF JUNIOR BROWN (by Virginia Hamilton). This made me think of novels set in a dystopian future, in which the breakdown of conventional family structure has resulted in groups of children banding together, sometimes supportively, and sometimes not. In Rodman Philbrick's THE LAST BOOK IN THE UNIVERSE, gangs rule by violent force. The first two volumes of the Fire-Us series (Armstrong & Butcher), THE KEEPERS OF THE FLAME and THE KINDLING, focus on children orphaned by a devastating plague that killed almost all of the planet's adults. A group of children who has survived has managed to do so by assuming familial and societal roles: mother, teacher, baby, etc. I find this composition intriguing; are there other stories of children forming their own family groups that you can comment on?
Merri
Merri Lindgren, Librarian mlindgren at education.wisc.edu Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Received on Sun 24 Nov 2002 10:27:03 PM CST
