Today at the beginning of class you handed in your poster proposal drafts, and then you took a short reading quiz over Coraline. I asked you to spend a bit of time writing about a significant passage from the novel in order to help prepare you for the work you will do for your poster proposal assignment. This activity is identical to what you did for the midterm exam, and it is the same type of work you will do when you complete your poster proposal final draft (due in two weeks on April 5). You can access that handout HERE. While you were writing, I made notes on your poster proposal drafts and then returned them to you. Check marks next to each item indicates that you are on the right track and are ready to progress to the next steps of your poster proposal. If I circled or made an X through anything, that indicates that you are missing information OR that you need to scrap your original question/source/thesis and redo it. If I've written MLA next to a source, you do not have correct MLA format, and you should consult the Purdue OWL (the third link on the course blog under research resources) and page 3 of the Poster Assignment Handout (linked on the left hand side of the blog under course documents). If you did not receive all check marks, I suggest you come see me in office hours in the next few weeks with an updated proposal (feel free to do this if you have any questions at all). If you would like me to vet a source or check your MLA citation, feel free to see me in office hours or shoot me an email. After you finished your writing exercise, we turned to the large group for discussion. Before the break, I gave a short presentation of the Gothic in children's literature. You can access that presentation HERE and on the left hand side of the course blog. In addition to being inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Gaiman has also cited another short story as his inspiration for Coraline; you can find a link to Lucy Clifford's "The New Mother" HERE. HERE is a link to an interesting article about Gaiman's children's writing called "Kid Goth" in The New Yorker. If you want some extra practice writing and a few extra credit points, feel free to leave a post under the Coraline drop box in which you: compare Coraline to Alice and/or Clifford's story OR discuss the function of the gothic in Coraline citing Goodyear's article and/or Coats and Hogle from the presentation. You will have the opportunity to earn up to 15 extra credit points. You CAN post an extra credit post even if you've already completed a discussion leader or response post for Coraline. The deadline to post for extra credit is Friday, April 1 at midnight.
Critical Approaches to Coraline: Keeling and Pollard
After the break, we spent some time talking about Keeling and Pollard's critical essay. I asked you to work with a small group to begin thinking about the critical source. This activity will help you prepare to begin annotating and synthesizing the research in the sources you collected for your poster proposal, as well as to begin thinking about how you might expand your own thesis for your poster proposal to add to the critical conversation about a text. You can access that handout HERE. We then came together as a large group to talk through Keeling and Pollard's essay. I also asked each group to read their unique annotation for the essay.
Key Questions From Class
What role does terror play in children’s literature? What characteristics of the gothic mode are present in Coraline? What is the function of food and orality in the novel?
Homework
- Read Tim Tingle's How I Became a Ghost: A Choctaw Trail of Tears Story
- Explore Debbie Reese's blog: American Indians in Children's Literature. Read THESE five posts on the novel and THESE twenty-one posts about the author.
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