Teenage Bill Of Rights
1. The right to let childhood be forgotten. A teenager likes to be treated as a young adult, not as a child. When teens start high school, there is a gain of responsibility and importance. They do not like to be reminded of their cute, childish ways.
2. The right to have a "say" about their own lives. The wise parent will realize that a good way of helping teenagers grow into successful adulthood is by letting them make their own decisions whenever possible. Decisions affecting teenagers should be made largely by them - certainly with them, and seldom for them.
3. The right to make mistakes, to find out for themselves. Making mistakes is a source of learning and a part of growing up. Teenagers need to be encouraged, even at a risk of making mistakes. Teenagers have the right to make and learn from their mistakes without being ridiculed or blamed.
4. The right to have rules explained, not imposed. Teenagers realize that there are restrictions on their freedom laid down by more experienced people (parents, society). A rule is a restriction and causes rebellion unless it is explained and seems fair to teenagers.
5. The right to have fun and companions. Teenagers want a full life and opportunities for companionship. Wise parents will allow their teenagers to have gatherings in their homes, with both the parents and the teenagers sharing the responsibilities. If parents and society provide good recreation, the social level of teenagers will be higher.
6. The right to question ideas. Teenagers are no longer children and understand more than parents sometimes realize. Ideas and attitudes are not necessarily right just because they have come from adults. Teenagers have a right to question, to get an answer, and to discuss things for enlightenment.
7. The right to be at the romantic age. To most teenagers, love is serious and they resent adult misunderstandings and ridicule. If the parent fails to sense the teenager's feelings, than the son or daughter may feel that the parent is not the one in whom to confide.
8. The right to professional help whenever necessary. Without a good foundation of understanding and love throughout childhood, teenagers can develop serious emotional problems that may disrupt their whole lives. Professional help will be provided before teenagers get into serious trouble.
9. The right to struggle toward an individual philosophy of life. To each generation there is a future and to the individual teenager, how to fit into and how to contribute something to his/her future, according to will and talents is most important. The art of letting children test out their muscles, at the same time being always at hand when needed, is the real key to a secure relationship between parents and their teenage children.
November 23, 2009
November 19, 2009
Thanksgiving History The Teenagers of the Mayflower
Thanksgiving History:
The Teenagers of the Mayflower
On the Mayflower there were about 51 men, 22 boys, 20 women, and 11 girls. Some of the teenagers were:
Mary Chilton
Age: thirteen
Legend has it that she was the first female ashore at Plymouth.
Constance Hopkins
Age: thirteen
Her younger brother, Oceanus, was born while the Mayflower was at sea, so she probably spent a lot of time taking care of her mother's needs.
Giles Hopkins
Age: eleven or twelve
Younger brother to Constance.
Elizabeth Tilley
Age: thirteen
Her parents, John and Joan, died the first winter, and she married John Howland.
Francis Billington
Age: fourteen
Got hold of his father's gun and shot it off inside the Mayflower, sending sparks flying everywhere and starting a fire.
John Billington
Age: sixteen
Ran away into the woods and was captured by the Nauset Indians.
Desire Minter
Age: 15 - 17 (?)
She caught the eye of a young man named John Howland but didn't like America and went back to England within a few years. John Howland married Elizabeth Tilley but named his first daughter Desire.
Priscilla Mullins
Age: 15 - 17 (?)
The eldest girl on the Mayflower. She was the only girl approaching marriageable age on a ship with well over fifty young and single men. She married John Alden, a marriage which inspired the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, The Courtship of Myles Standish.
William Butten
Age: unknown
"In all this voyage there died but one of the passengers, which was William Butten, a youth, servant to Samuel Fuller [the doctor], when they drew near the coast." - passenger's diary
Reading is the next best thing to do
After a fantastic start with THE HUNGER GAMES, can Suzanne Collins keep the excitement going in CATCHING FIRE? Ummm, that would be a yes!
Katniss is having a difficult time adjusting to life in Victory Village. She misses the time when she could spend her days hunting in the woods behind her simple home in the Seam with Gale by her side. Now, with Gale working in the coal mines, her daily routine consists of hunting by herself in order to provide food for Gale’s family and going by the Hob to spread around some of her new wealth to the merchants at the Black Market.
Katniss’ bold move at the end of THE HUNGER GAMES has put her and everyone she loves in a dangerous situation. Witnessing Katniss and Peeta’s defiance has sparked rebellion in some of the districts and the President of Panem is not happy. He makes it clear that it is Katniss’ responsibility to put a stop to the unrest in the districts by proving her defiance was a result of her love for Peeta and not done to overthrow the government.
Katniss must face some of her toughest challenges yet in CATCHING FIRE. Challenges of conscience. Challenges of love. Challenges of survival.
CATCHING FIRE is just as addicting as THE HUNGER GAMES. Suzanne Collins has done a fantastic job of taking us back to the complicated world of Panem. There were definite surprises throughout the story. I didn’t expect Katniss to have to go through the things she did.
You’ll be breathless by the time you get to the end of CATCHING FIRE and cursing that you don’t have the third and final book in this fantastic trilogy.
November 12, 2009
November 03, 2009
Japan to create huge 'manga' library
Japan to create huge 'manga' library
One of the world's largest collections of Japanese manga comics is to be showcased in a new library created in a bid to promote academic study of the subject.
A collection of more than two million comic books will be housed in the new Tokyo International Manga Library which will open in 2015 on the grounds of Meiji University.
Manga has long enjoyed a soaring popularity in Japan among salarymen, teenagers and even politicians – such as former prime minister Taro Aso – alike.
As well an epic collection of manga accessible by researchers from both Japan and overseas, the library will also house animation drawings, video games and other cartoon industry artefacts.
"Manga has been taken lightly in the past and there has been no solid archive for serious study," said Susumi Shibao, a library official at the university.
"We want to help academic studies on manga as part of Japanese culture."
The new library announcement is timely for the manga world. Plans by the former prime minister Mr Aso to create a (11.7 billion yen) museum for Japanese cartoon art and pop culture were ditched shortly after he was ousted from power in August.
Manga is among the most famous of Japan's popular subcultures. Among the biggest manga successes range from the classic 1950s Astro Boy and the smash hit Naruto, which tells the tale of a ninja boy.
YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO EAT
Book Review
The Hunger Games (2008)
Suzanne Collins
YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO EAT Teenagers battle to the death in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games
By Stephen King
As negative Utopias go, Suzanne Collins has created a dilly. The United States is gone. North America has become Panem, a TV-dominated dictatorship run from a city called the Capitol. The rest of Panem is divided into 12 Districts (the former 13th had the bad judgment to revolt and no longer exists). The yearly highlight in this nightmare world is the Hunger Games, a bloodthirsty reality TV show in which 24 teenagers chosen by lottery — two from each District — fight each other in a desolate environment called the ''arena.'' The winner gets a life of ease; the losers get death. The only ''unspoken rule'' is that you can't eat the dead contestants. Let's see the makers of the movie version try to get a PG-13 on this baby.
Our heroine is Katniss Everdeen (lame name, cool kid), a resident of District 12, which used to be Appalachia. She lives in a desperately poor mining community called the Seam, and when her little sister's name is chosen as one of the contestants in the upcoming Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to take her place. A gutsy decision, given the fact that District 12 hasn't produced a Hunger Games winner in 30 years or so, making them the Chicago Cubs of the postapocalypse world. Complicating her already desperate situation is her growing affection for the other District 12 contestant, a clueless baker's son named Peeta Mellark. Further complicating her situation is her sorta-crush on her 18-year-old hunting partner, Gale. Gale isn't clueless; Gale is smoldering. Says so right on page 14.
The love triangle is fairly standard teen-read stuff; what 16-year-old girl wouldn't like to have two interesting guys to choose from? The rest of The Hunger Games, however, is a violent, jarring speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense and may also generate a fair amount of controversy. I couldn't stop reading, and once I got over the main character's name (Gale calls her Catnip — ugh), I got to like her a lot. And although ''young adult novel'' is a dumbbell term I put right up there with ''jumbo shrimp'' and ''airline food'' in the oxymoron sweepstakes, how many novels so categorized feature one character stung to death by monster wasps and another more or less eaten alive by mutant werewolves? I say more or less because Katniss, a bow-and-arrow Annie Oakley, puts the poor kid out of his misery before the werewolves can get to the prime cuts.
Collins is an efficient no-nonsense prose stylist with a pleasantly dry sense of humor. Reading The Hunger Games is as addictive (and as violently simple) as playing one of those shoot-it-if-it-moves videogames in the lobby of the local eightplex; you know it's not real, but you keep plugging in quarters anyway. Balancing off the efficiency are displays of authorial laziness that kids will accept more readily than adults. When Katniss needs burn cream or medicine for Peeta, whom she more or less babysits during the second half of the book, the stuff floats down from the sky on silver parachutes. And although the bloody action in the arena is televised by multiple cameras, Collins never mentions Katniss seeing one. Also, readers of Battle Royale (by Koushun Takami), The Running Man, or The Long Walk (those latter two by some guy named Bachman) will quickly realize they have visited these TV badlands before.
But since this is the first novel of a projected trilogy, it seems to me that the essential question is whether or not readers will care enough to stick around and find out what comes next for Katniss. I know I will. But then, I also have a habit of playing Time Crisis until all my quarters are gone.
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