Revolting Rhymes and Dirty Beasts
by Roald Dahl
Ages 9-12
This book is a gem if you are any kind of Roald Dahl fan.
If you thought you knew the stories of some of the most popular fairy tales, think again. Here are six of the best known tales retold with more than a twist or two, by that master of the comic and the bloodcurdling, Roald Dahl.
Meet Roald Dahl's ghastly menagerie of wonderful comic animals. The collection includes the poor toad that jumps to France, the pig who ponders on the meaning of life, and the anteater who gets the wrong end of the stick.
"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." So reads the tombstone of downtrodden writer Kilgore Trout, but we have no doubt who's really talking: his alter ego Kurt Vonnegut. Health versus sickness, humanity versus inhumanity--both sets of ideas bounce through this challenging and funny book. As with the rest of Vonnegut's pure fantasy, it lacks the shimmering, fact-fueled rage that illuminates Slaughterhouse-Five. At the same time, that makes this book perhaps more enjoyable to read.
Breakfast of Champions is a slippery, lucid, bleakly humorous jaunt through (sick? inhumane?) America circa 1973, with Vonnegut acting as our Virgil-like companion. The book follows its main character, auto-dealing solid-citizen Dwayne Hoover, down into madness, a condition brought on by the work of the aforementioned Kilgore Trout. As Dwayne cracks, then crumbles, Breakfast of Champions coolly shows the effects his dementia has on the web of characters surrounding him. It's not much of a plot, but it's enough for Vonnegut to air unique opinions on America, sex, war, love, and all of his other pet topics--you know, the only ones that really count.
Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut, and is a prime example of Vonnegut's peculiar brand of deadpan satire. Set in the fictional town of Midland City, it is the story of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast". One of these men, Dwayne Hoover, is a normal-looking but deeply deranged Pontiac dealer who becomes obsessed with the writings of the other man, Kilgore Trout, taking them for literal truth. Trout, a largely unknown pulp science fiction writer who has appeared in several other Vonnegut novels, looks like a crazy old man but is in fact relatively sane. As the novel opens, Trout journeys toward Midland City to appear at a convention where, unbeknownst to him, he will meet Dwayne Hoover and unwittingly inspire him to run amok.
"Horrible Histories" by Terry Deary (mp3)
"Horrible Histories" ("Ужасные Истории") - это увлекательные исторические бестселлеры для детей и взрослых известного английского писателя Terry Deary. Они призваны заинтересовать детей изучением истории с помощью освещения таинственных, необычных и захватывающих исторических фактов.
Terry Deary is the world's best selling non-fiction author for children and one of the most popular children's authors in the country. He has written over 140 books, which have been translated into 30 different languages from China to
Brazil. In 2003 all 10 children's non-fiction books in the Bookseller charts were by Deary and in both 2003 and 2004 he was the most borrowed non-fiction author (children
oradult books) in British libraries.
Birmingham Stage Company will use both actors and Bogglevision, (amazing, live 3D special effects) to bring these two separate plays to life on the stage.
In Ruthless Romans you'll find out how the Romans made murder into a sport in the Coliseum with more fouls even than a Premiership football match! See eight evil emperors, lots of killer kings plus masses of gory gladiators and grim ghouls! With incredible Bogglevision effects you'll feel what it was really like to be a Roman soldier in the greatest army ever seen and fight lots of gory battles with hordes of grotty Celts – but watch out for those flaming arrows whizzing straight for you head!
In Awful Egyptians you'll learn the truth of Tutankhamen and his creepy curse and find out the fearsome facts about 'phabulous' pharaohs, mean mummies and gruesome grave robbers. You'll see how the Egyptians really lived 5000 years ago – how dead bodies were turned into mummies, how the huge pyramids were built and why some Egyptian kings had to wear false beards! Dare you enter through the Gates of the Afterlife? Beware the Evil Eye of Horus, which has its eye on you!
Families across the land must not miss out on this awful chance to travel back in time. Treat your whole family to a great show – both funny and historically informative and discover all the really 'yucky' bits of history that teachers and serious books never tell you!
To be enjoyed by everyone from 5 to 105, and don't forget your mummy!
Representing Justice: Stories of Law and Literature TTC
(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Taught by Susan Sage Heinzelman
The University of Texas at Austin
Ph.D., University of Western Ontario
Great literature can be the means of understanding as well as creating our world - by teaching and reinforcing society's laws, articulating its values, and enforcing the social contracts that unite us as a culture. What if literature itself generated our ideas and feelings about justice, marriage and family, property, authority, race, or gender? What if it enflamed our determination to pursue justice - or, conversely, undermined our ability to detect injustice? ___What if law in all its variations - from religious commandments to oral tradition to codified statute - embraced its own narrative assumptions to the point of absorbing purely literary conventions as a means of more forcefully arguing its points in the legal arena? ___And what if this dynamic relationship between written and unwritten laws and literature is constantly evolving? How do law and literature influence or reflect one other? And what lessons might we draw from their symbiotic relationship?
Brea
Representing Justice: Stories of Law and Literature 
