Green Children By Samuel Foust

"Greensleeves" by Alan Spence is a short story describing the life of an elderly lady living alone on the top floor of high rise flats in Glasgow. Spence creates a character readers feel sympathy for through isolation and lonliness, themes that run prominently throughout the story.

Discuss how your investigation of the generic conventions of poetry has influenced your understanding of at least one poem that you have studied in this unit.

The author of Green Gulch conveys that when in a group, one can be overwhelmed by pressure that brings them to savage extremes. After being lost, a young boy joins a group of kids he has never seen before. The group is nice and offers to bring the boy home. They stop at a sanctuary of a pond. There is a turtle in the pond that is violently murdered by the boys after one decides to throw a rock. Then, the group turns on the new boy. They beat him maliciously and leave him stranded on the road to get home. As, the boy look backs he can’t think of what went wrong, “They stood in a little group watching me, nervous now, ashamed a little at the ferocious pack impulse toward the outsider that had swept them.” Obvious from the boys’ reactions, it was the fault of the group impulse. After the murder of turtle, the adrenaline and riot of the group caused them to turn on the next vulnerable target. They were not acting as they should have, and the realize that afterwards. They were nervous. Even though there is not immediately an adult around, they are nervous because society has conditioned them to behave. They are also ashamed. The shame shows that they are nice boys. They feel bad. This shows that the vicious group mind set was so strong that it came over there good personalities and conscious. However, there is only this slight remorse after the fact. This does not make up for the brutal murder and beating that they had dealt. Being in a group turned them into

First and foremost, the children in the novel are presented as more perceptive and more honest than adults. Children in general tend to be portrayed as innocent in literature. Unlike adults, they don’t really know why things seem to be the way they are and don’t know from right or wrong. In this case, the author might have included these children to act like “judges” in the book. He could have also wanted to bring out some aspects of the novel using the kids.

The concept of the innocence of children contains the conventional association of Satire/Irony. According to literature, children are perceived to be innocent until exposed to the harsh realities of the world, where their maturity develops and the loss of innocence is achieved. The children in this story, however, appear as regular children in the beginning, with the normal intentions of playtime and fun. Jackson even describes Bobby Martin, a child of the village, stuffing his pocket full of stones with other boys following his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest ones (875).

The poem “Mothers and Daughters” is written by Pat Mora. Pat Mora is a contemporary award winning writer, who writes for children, youngsters and adults. She was born in El Paso, TX in the year 1942. She attains a title of a Hispanic writer; however, the most of her poems are in English. In her literary work, one can observe the different aspects of the immigrants’ lives such as language issues, family relationships, immigrants’ experiences and cultural differences (1187).

Jonathan Kozol, in the chapter entitled “Other People’s Children, discusses and justifies the kinds of limitations placed on children who must attend poorly funded, educationally inferior school. Kozol argues that children in the inner-city schools are not fit to go to college and that they should be trained in schools for the jobs they will eventually hold, even though these jobs are less prestigious, lowest-level jobs in society. Kozol’s argument is based on the fact that students from the inner-city or rather from the societies that do not have enough job opportunities are not supposed to learn much because their society cannot accommodate most of the courses that are often found in the urban settings. For example, there is a point where Kozol cites one of the businessman’s statement which says, ‘It doesn’t make sense to offer something that most of these urban kids will never use.’ The businessman continues to argue, ‘no one expects these ghetto kids to go to college. Most of them are lucky if they are literate. If we can teach some useful skills, get them to stay in school and graduate, and maybe into jobs, we’re giving them the most that they can hope for’ (Kozol 376). This statement clearly indicate that the society should accept the inequalities and exercise the same inequalities even in education.

The Boys of Summer, a non-fiction book of baseball, written by Roger Kahn. Who tells a wonderful heart aching tale of a simple stick and ball game that helped start the development to push Americans (generally the white population at the time) to change what the country claims to be, a free and fair non-prejudice country that gives “everyone” their own rights/opportunities. Jackie Robinson, America’s first African American to play on a Major Baseball league. He was the first colored-skinned to ever make history not only in the game of baseball. Robinson ignited a spark that sent Americans (mostly the white population) dumbfounded, that a “nigga” a dark colored-skinned individual was more than just a janitor. This book transcends the generation gap as Kahn recaps his boyhood in Brooklyn, his young career as a writer following the Brooklyn Dodgers, and a follow-up of the certain members of the Brooklyn Dodgers during post-playing days. As Kahn nostalgically narrates his story of the transformation of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a dead team who came back to life to make a major impact on the country, to a becoming dead of the last time. Reveals the theme that race play a huge role on American’s reaction to the Brooklyn Dodger, Jackie Robinson, and the aftermath to letting a “Negro” into a white man sport.

In the book entitled, There Are No Children written by Alex Kotlowitz, he writes a story about two boys that are of coming of age in Chicago in the housing projects called Henry Horner Homes over a two year time period. In their housing projects, the family faces many hardships and struggles to survive in life due to the influence of gangs, violence, death and poverty that consumes their housing projects. Living in such a bad neighborhood like Henry Horner homes proves the fact that “there are no children here” in the housing projects because the children have seen so much crime, violence and death occur that they have lost their youth and innocence as children and have been forced to become adults. An example of one character that changed dramatically due to the horrible conditions of in the projects was Lafeyette Rivers, one of the two main characters in the novel. The three most important events that impact Lafeyette’s life for the worst were the death of his best friend Craig, when his mother told him that he would be forced to become a young adult, and finally being convicted of a crime he did not commit in the first place. These three major events in his life greatly impact Lafeyette over the two year time period it causes Lafeyette to lose all hope in life and as well to live in constant fear of death and of his housing projects.

Although Seedfolks is a short children’s novel, it brings us a lot of life lessons. Each character from the book impressed me by its individuality. Thank you for writing such as an interesting book. I had a pleasant experience reading this book, and I will recommend it to my friends. Take care and I hope to hear from you

Extended response to the book Seedfolks The book Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman is about a community in Cleveland coming together through a community garden. The book starts with a little girl from Vietnam named Kim planting a few beans in honor of her dad, but little did she know it would blow up into a huge garden that changed many people's lives. The book goes through a broken community that has many prejudices and stereotypes against each other. This garden helps them all come together and break down the stereotypes.

At the climax of the story, the sun comes out and the children come to life. The setting is now alive and full of vibrance. “[The sun] was the color of flaming bronze, and it was very large. And the sky around it was a blazing blue tile color. And the jungle burned with sunlight as the children, released from their spell, rushed out, yelling into the springtime” (Bradbury 3). The sun is now present through vivid description, and it is no longer a dim hope but an omnipresent flame of freedom and beauty. The children become more wild and joyful now that the sun is present in their waking world:

On of the works of art that I have come across this term is an oil on canvas titled “Young Mother and Two Children” by Mary Cassatt, an American Impressionist painter, measures 92.08 x 73.66 cm. The subject matter of a mother and her two children done in the Impressionist style depicts a lifelike representation with an almost ethereal viewpoint There is also a sense of unity as it is a closed composition, which directs the eye to the piece and although there are three subjects within the painting, it seems as one unified and self contained image.

McGrath states that Fairy tale scholar Jack Davidzepes “substantiates this notion with documents that show evidence that someone came to Hamelin…looking for recruits to colonize areas of Eastern Europe.” But the question is, did the adults leave with them? This theory holds up better than some of the others, but it’s still not confirmed. Unlike the theory that the children were led on an ill-fated “children’s crusade”, the emigration theory has documents to back up the claim. Experts reason that the children referred to in the story could be simply the “town’s children”, or citizens of any age that were born in the town. If this were true, than the adults could have left with the children. But the question is,

The Green Children of Woolpit is a twelfth century mystery that started in Suffolk, England. During this time, this area was the most agriculturally productive in all of rural England. The village of Suffolk had belonged to the powerful Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. In Suffolk, two green-skinned children were found at the mouth of an old wolf pit where the final wolf had been rumored to perish. The two children were found by reapers working at a nearby farm. They spoke in an unfamiliar language and wore strange clothing that was unknown to the people of England. The children were soon accepted into the household Sir Richard de Caine at Wilks. After a while both children became ill and things looked bleak for the both of the strange children. The boy had eventually passed, while the girl soon miraculously recovered. The girl’s skin even turned back to a normal color. After the boy’s passing, the girl took lessons and learned to speak English. She learned to speak