Of course, now I have to remember what was on the list.
September: ?????? I can't remember! September is forever ago!
October: Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier and Ghost by Jason Reynolds
November: The Seventh Wish by Kate Messner
December: Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer
January: The Memory of Light by Francisco X. Stork
February: Samurai Rising by Pamela S. Turner
March: The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
April: The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge
May: The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner
It's been a good year. I have to pat us on our collective book club back for getting The Girl Who Drank the Moon on our list long before it won the Newbery.
I also keep thinking about my Serpent King / Oedipus thoughts. Can Dill be Oedipus and Oedipus' children? Because then it works pretty well - Oedipus has that apotheosis at the end of Oedipus at Colonus, which would parallel Dill's leaving Forrestville behind, moving on to a higher plane of existence (so to speak). But generationally speaking, Dill's father would be Oedipus, which also makes sense. Oedipus saves the people of Thebes, Dill's father is a preacher who tries to save his congregation. Fate brings Oedipus down, but it uses sexual taboo (incest) to do so; same with Dill's father (in his case, pedophilia); you could also say that hubris played a big part in taking them both down, obviously.
We're meeting on Wednesday to talk about The Serpent King. As I mentioned, our conversations never go very deep - we tend to stick to classroom applications of the books - but this Oedipus thing may be something I have to bring up.
No comments:
Post a Comment