Tag Archives: Theme of the Week

Books

Theme of the Week: Celebrating Authors of October

October authors

(Top, L-R: Anne Tyler, Desmond Bagley, Ed McBain, Evelyn Waugh and Friedrich Nietzsche. Bottom, L-R: Oscar Wilde, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Michael Morpurgo and Italo Calvino)

This week we celebrate authors of the past and present who had birthdays in the month of October. Check them out below.

Oscar Wilde

(October 16, 1854- November 30, 1900)

Novelist/playwright/poet Oscar Wilde dazzled 19th century society with his legendary wit and unflappable personality. He penned: The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Happy Prince and Other Stories, among other works.

Dorian greyhappyprinceimportance

 

 

 

 

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(October 21, 1772- July 25, 1834)

English Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, penned many famous works, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

the rime

 

 

 

 

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Friedrich Nietzsche

(October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900)

Philosopher/poet/composer Nietzche penned many classics such as Why I Am So Wise.

WhyIAmSoWise

 

 

 

 

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 Italo Calvino

(October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985)

Calvino, an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels, wrote hits like The Queen’s Necklace.

QueensNecklace

 

 

 

 

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Evelyn Waugh

(October 28, 1903 – April 10, 1966)

An English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; and also was a prolific journalist and reviewer, Waugh wrote many popular novels such as A Handful of Dust.

handfulofdust

 

 

 

 

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Anne Tyler

(October 25, 1941 – )

American author, Tyler, has written several novels, four of which have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote The Accidental Tourist and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1985 and the Ambassador Book Award for Fiction in 1986. The novel was adapted into a 1988 award-winning film.

accidental

 

 

 

 

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Michael Morpurgo

(October 5, 1943- )

Morpurgo is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist who is known best for children’s novels. His novel, War Horse, has been adapted as a radio broadcast and as a stage play. It was also adapted as a 2011 British film.

War_Horse

 

 

 

 

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Desmond Bagley

(October 29, 1923 – April 12, 1983)

Bagley was a British journalist and novelist known for a series of best-selling thrillers. One such thriller is The Enemy which was turned into a film in 2001.

theenemy

 

 

 

 

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Ed McBain

(October 15, 1926 – July 6, 2005)

McBain was an American author and screenwriter but was best known for his crime fiction such as King’s Ransom.

kingsransom

 

 

 

 

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Books

Theme of the Week: John Green

johngreen

John Green is an American author of young adult fiction, YouTube video blogger (vlogger) and creator of online educational videos. He is the New York Times bestselling author of An Abundance of Katherines and The Fault in Our Stars. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages.

Listen to John Green give advice on becoming an adult below.

Books, Students, Teachers, Training & Conferences

Interesting Facts about Agatha Christie

Agatha-Christie   Learn some interesting facts about the world’s best-selling mystery writer.

  • Dame Agatha Christie is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World’s Bestselling Author. With between 2 and 4 billion works sold, she is bested only by William Shakespeare and the Bible. Christie is also the most translated novelist in history.
  • Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap has the longest theatrical run, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on November 25, 1952. It continues to this day.
  • At one point in her successful career, Mrs. Christie actually owned eight different houses. Many of these houses were “used” as the houses in several of her novels.
  • Charles Dickens was Agatha’s favorite author.
  • Christie wrote her first detective story after being challenged by one of her older sisters.
  • Six publishers rejected her first manuscript before it was eventually published in 1920. She eventually received £25 for it.
  • During WWII, she worked in a hospital pharmacy. She there began acquiring a knowledge of poisons that would serve her novels well.

Enjoy a video with some interesting facts about her most famous character, Hercule Poirot in the video below.

Books

Theme of the Week: Agatha Christie

agatha-christie

The theme for this week is about Agatha Christie, who was an English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright.

She is the world’s best-selling mystery writer, and often referred to as the “Queen of Crime”, Agatha Christie is considered a master of suspense, plotting, and characterisation. She is also best known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, which revolve around the investigations of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, Mr Satterthwaite, and Tommy and Tuppence.

Most of her books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics, and more than thirty feature films have been based on her work.

Below is a clip from her most famous character, Hercule Poirot.

Books, Students, Teachers, Training & Conferences

Interesting Facts About Roald Dahl

roald dahl2

A world without Roald Dahl would be a world without Oompa Loompas, Snozzcumbers, or Muggle-Wumps. And who would ever want to live in a world like that?

Below are interesting facts about the famous children’s author.

  • Dahl was a fighter pilot with the Royal Air Force during World War II. And it was a plane crash near Alexandria, Egypt that actually inspired him to begin writing.
  • Alongside fellow officers Ian Fleming and David Ogilvy, Dahl provided intelligence to an MI6 organization known as the British Security Coordination.
  • Roald Dahl wrote many of his books in a shed in his garden, sitting upon an old battered armchair. He wrote everyday from 10 am to 12 noon and then from 4 pm to 6pm. No one else was allowed inside.
  • He was friends with the American author, Ernest Hemingway.
  • Roald Dahl wrote seventeen children’s stories, and he also produced many works for adults, as well as children’s poetry and film scripts.
  • He wrote the screenplays for the movies You Only Live Twice (the James Bond film) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
  • He always wrote in pencil on yellow paper.

For more facts about Roald Dahl, watch the video below:

Books

Theme of the Week: Roald Dahl

roald_dahl1

The theme for this week is about Roald Dahl, a British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot, and screenwriter.

He has been referred to as “one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century”. Dahl’s short stories are known for their unexpected endings and his children’s books for their unsentimental, often very dark humor.

Dahl went on to create some of the best-loved children’s stories of the 20th century, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. Many of his titles have become successful, blockbuster movies.

Meanwhile enjoy a scene from Matilda, a movie adapted from his award-winning book of the same name.

Books

Theme of the Week: Celebrating Authors of September

September authors(Top, L-R: Roald Dahl, Truman Capote, Agatha Christie. Bottom, L-R: F. Scott Fitzgerald, H.G. Wells, Ken Kesey)

This week we celebrate authors of the past who had birthdays in the month of September. Check them out below.

Truman Capote

(September 30, 1924- August 25, 1984)

Capote wrote favorites such as:

Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Children on Their Birthdays

breakfast at tiffanyschildren on their birthdays

 

 

 

 

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Agatha Christie

(September 15, 1890- January 12, 1976)

Appointed the title of “Dame” by the Queen of England, she is also the best-selling author of all time with books like:

The Labours of Hercules and Poirot: The Perfect Murders: Omnibus

Labours of herculesPerfect Murders

 

 

 

 

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Roald Dahl

(September 13, 1916- November 23,1990)

Few children’s authors have been as influential and prolific as Roald Dahl. Some of his works include:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well as Matilda

Charlie and the chocolateMatilda

 

 

 

 

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

(September 24, 1896- December 21, 1940)

Fitzgerald captured the Jazz Age in many novels such as:

The Great Gatsby, Babylon Revisited and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories

great gatsbybabylon revistedcurious

 

 

 

 

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Ken Kesey

(September 17, 1935- November 10, 2001)

Kesey gained fame for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-a-novel

 

 

 

 

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H.G. Wells

(September 21, 1866- August 13, 1946)

Regarded as “the father of science fiction”, Wells wrote many novels, including:

The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds

time machineWar of the worlds

 

 

 

 

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Students

Interesting Facts about Charles Dickens

As you know, the theme of this week is Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. Here are several interesting facts about him:

  • His name “Dickens” was a curse, possibly invented by Shakespeare – Instead of saying, “What the devil?” as a profanity, people exclaimed, “What the dickens?” The first usage of that word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor;
  • In 1846 Dickens co-founded Urania Cottage, a home for the redemption of “fallen” women where accepted candidates could learn skills, often domestic, to read and write and re-integrate into society;
  • Dickens was keenly interested in the paranormal, and has even been linked to the famous paranormal investigation group “The Ghost Club” of London;
  • In his study he had a secret door which was designed like a bookcase filled with fake books rumored to include titles like Noah’s Arkitecture and a nine-volume set titled Cat’s Lives;
  • The Oxford English Dictionary credits him with the first use of butter-fingers, crossfire, dustbin, fairy story, slow-coach, and whoosh. He also gets the credit for ‘boredom’ in the Oxford English Dictionary, coined in his novel Bleak House (1852-3), but this has since been traced back even earlier, to 1830;

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Books

Theme of the Week: Jerome K. Jerome

Jerome

Jerome Klapka Jerome, best known as the author of ‘Three Men in a Boat’, one of the great comic masterpieces of the English language, was born in Walsall, Staffordshire, on 2nd May 1859, the youngest of four children.

His father, who had interests in the local coal and iron industries and was a prominent non-conformist preacher, had moved to the town in 1855 and installed the family in a fashionable middle class house in Bradford Street where they lived in comparative comfort until 1861. Following the collapse of the family business, the Jeromes moved first to Stourbridge and thence to Poplar in the East End of London where he was brought up in relative poverty.

Jerome left school at fourteen and worked variously as a clerk, a hack journalist, an actor (‘I have played every part in Hamlet except Ophelia’) and a schoolmaster. His first book ‘On the Stage and Off’ was published in 1885 and this was followed by numerous plays, books and magazine articles.

In 1927, one year after writing his autobiography My Life and Times, he was made a Freeman of the Borough of Walsall. He died the same year and is buried in Ewelme in Oxfordshire.

Though a relaxed, urbane man, Jerome was a relentless explorer of new ideas and experiences. He travelled widely throughout Europe, was a pioneer of skiing in the Alps and visited Russia and America several times. He was a prolific writer whose work has been translated into many foreign languages, but as Jerome himself said: “It is as the author of ‘Three Men in a Boat’ that the public persists in remembering me.”