Just two episodes to go before our 150th Episode celebration! This time you’ll hear:
– A tribute to James Earl Jones, who had a bigger impact on children’s literacy than you might realize!
– What we are reading now. Chloë is enjoying The Misadventures of Max Crumbly and T.Q. is cracking open a comic book for the first time in years with The Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1: Married with Children.
– How composer Howard Shore adapted the text of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, carefully choosing instruments and crafting a melody to create a musical voice for the Hobbits and The Shire in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy.
There are videos for two show segments:
Activity: Explore Musical Storytelling
This activity could be done in a music class or a literature class. Have students select a piece of music composed for a film which they feel effectively interprets the plot or characters of a piece of literature. Students should research the instrumentation of the piece and form theories about why the composer selected certain instruments to do certain jobs in the song. Encourage students to consider as many elements as possible. Is the song accurate to the setting of the story? Does the rhythm match anything that is happening with the plot or characters? Are there any diagetic elements to the music? Have students share their findings with one another through essays, discussion, or presentations.
I wanted to add to the many voices thanking James Earl Jones for a life well spent bringing wonderful stories to life for so many people. He’s best known for his Shakespeare performances and his film career, but many of you may not have known about the huge impact he had in getting Sesame Street launched back in 1969. He also delivered one of the all-time best performances on Reading Rainbow.
On September 4 I picked up my little one from preschool and told her that it was Peter Rabbit’s birthday. She had a genius response: “we need to make him a cake and have a party.”
This is the first episode in a series about how Howard Shore’s film score for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy drew directly on the text of the book, supporting the story at all times.
There’s also a bit of show business to attend to, including some great conversations I’ve been having with listeners, our upcoming 150th episode, and whether or not listeners prefer a regular release schedule on a certain day or a looser schedule that puts out episodes when they feel relevant.
There’s a video version of the section of the show about Tolkien that you can watch here:
In this episode, I reference some musical experiments that I did based on Tolkien’s lyrics. I carefully reading the text of The Hobbit and tried to come up with musical arrangements that matched the text as closely as possible. You can listen to these experiments and download free sheet music here:
The drama around Snow White, the troubled remake of Disney’s 1937 masterpiece, is unfortunate because it really was unnecessary! Just a little bit of familiarity with the folktale published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 could have spared the filmmakers (and some outspoken actors) a lot of time and trouble. Also in this episode, you get your last chance to ask show hosts anything! We’ll be having a mailbag party for our 150th episode.
There is also a video version of my thoughts on the Snow White drama, which are included in this episode:
I also had the pleasant surprise of seeing the new trailer for War of the Rohirrim, an upcoming film based on the legend outlined in the appendix to The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Here’s my reaction to that:
I predicted that the film adaptation of Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson would focus too much on adults at the expense of telling a story for children. It looks like I was right.
And shockingly . . . I’m about to make the case that Deadpool and Wolverine is more of a film for the children (well, for the inner children of adults) than the adaptation of Harold and the Purple Crayon, because it centers the kinds of themes and adventures that kids actually care about, instead of focusing on a bunch of adult nonsense. I really did not expect to talk about Deadpool on a show about children’s literature, but there it is. I also didn’t expect to veer into the territory of beauty standards and cosmetic procedures, but it came up in a surprising and somewhat uncomfortable way.
Co-hosts T.Q. Townsend and Chloë Townsend (and the rest of the family) saw a very funny musical production of The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck put on by Quantum Theatre at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire. This was NOT a show that was just for kids. Parents were laughing just as much as the children, and the creative use of minimal costumes and props gave the play the familiar feel of the kind of acting that children naturally do.
One thing we forgot to mention in the review is how awesome the programs were! Usually play programs just have the synopsis and cast and such, but this one had a lot of interesting information for the kids to read as well as a bunch of fun activities to keep them occupied while they waited for the show to start. Never thought I’d review a play program, but I am pleased to have that as a first.
What does the world’s biggest pop star have to do with Lord Byron? Quite a lot actually, at least in terms of her poetry. Taylor Swift writes catchy songs about dramatic, volatile relationships — the kind that aren’t a good idea in real life but are awfully fun to sing about. And her song “Blank Space” is a great way to introduce poetic analysis to children.
By starting out with pop songs instead of unfamiliar classics of poetry, kids will be to understand that people in the past felt the same way about trendy poetry as modern kids feel about popular music. Children will also be much more eager to analyze rhyme, meter, and imagery when they are studying the lyrics of a song they already love. Having learned how to do poetic analysis in a fun, familiar setting, students will later be more able and willing to analyze great works of poetry from the past.
Rhyming in “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift
Overall, these lyrics feature very few traditional or perfect rhymes. Meters and sounds only occasionally match up. Thematically, this reflects the story being told in the song: that the man and woman are an imperfect match. They will link up perfectly only for a short time, and then quickly fall out of step with one another.
Perfect Rhymes
There are perfect rhymes sprinkled through the song, such as “friends” and “ends”, “far” and “scar”, and “who is she” and “jealousy”. But these pairings are only occasional and don’t follow a real structure, just like the personal relationships being described.
The first and third lines of the song match in rhythm and rhyme and are organized into three iambs (a poetic unit with two syllables) and a single rhyming syllable at the end. The rhyme only works if it is presented in a standard American dialect. For many other dialects of English “been” and “sin” will not rhyme:
Nice to / meet you, / where you / been?
Magic / madness / heaven / sin
This pattern is repeated a few lines later with a similar pairing, although the syllables don’t match perfectly. The word “new” has only one syllable, where “ain’t it” has two, but the internal words “money” and “funny” rhyme perfectly, as well as the words “tie” and “fly” at the end of the lines:
New / money / suit and / tie
Ain’t it / funny / rumors / fly
The pattern is repeated one more time, again with one syllable mismatch, although the lines are bound together twice; once with the thematic linking of “lips and kisses” as well as the perfect rhyme “skies” and “lies.”
This rhythmic pattern is repeated one more time, but with a slant rhyme.
Slant Rhymes
The percussive pattern from earlier verses is used one last time, but instead of a perfect rhyme it uses a slant rhyme, where the general sound of the rhyming words is similar, but in this case the nasal sound M is followed by the nasal sound N:
Screaming / crying / perfect / storms
Rose / garden / filled with / thorns
Flipping back and forth between N and M sounds happens again in the chorus, along with the use of a long A sound for a bit of assonance. These words don’t rhyme perfectly, but their sounds are similar enough to tie the chorus together:
flames
pain
insane
game
insane
name
These rhymes aren’t perfect but they are good enough, which reflects the song’s theme of an unstable relationship. This is seen in pairings such as “my hand” and “weekend,” which also pairs the opposite words “bad” and “good” to describe the same people:
Grab your passport and my hand
I can make the bad guys good for a weekend
Activity: Analyze the Lyrics of Your Favorite Song
Ask students to select a song lyrics for analysis. Print or write out the lyrics line by line, then use a highlighter to identify rhyming words. Identify different sorts of rhymes as well as the ways opposite ideas are tied together in the the lyrics to heighten the volatile and extreme relationship that forms the subject of the song.
This was supposed to be a short video about a good use of localization in children’s books and then I found out that Where’s Wally has far deeper lore than you would expect. And then my wacky imagination ran with it.
Lots of localization is annoying, because it’s done by publishers who don’t have confidence that children can understand foreign words or cultural references. This can strip away the flavor of a book, but the Where’s Wally series by Martin Handford is a really great example of localization because these books are not about plot so much as making a personal connection with the children who scrutinize the massive pictures full of funny little vignettes.
What’s Wally called where you live? Which one of the books or pictures is your favorite? Also, what do you think of my interpretation of the surprisingly deep lore of these characters?
I saw Hamlet performed by The Lord Chamberlain’s Men at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire on June 22, 2024.
This theater company performs Shakespeare plays the way they were done back in the Bard’s day: no microphones, minimal sets, props, and costumes, and an all male cast. It was a fascinating experience to see Hamlet performed in a way that Shakespeare himself would have recognized, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easily my imagination filled in the blanks. “The play’s the thing,” after all, not elaborate sets or even actors who perfectly look the part.
Learn more about The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the important work they do to present Shakespeare plays in their original style at tlcm.co.uk.
