Skip to main content

April 2015

Jasper Jones (Craig Silvey)

I first came across Jasper Jones as a prescribed text at the school in which I worked.  Half the kids complained about it (but hey, any text prescribed for English is bound to get a few complaints) but those who were brave enough to actually confess they enjoyed it, said it was "pretty good" (from a teenager, this translates to a glowing and hearty recommendation).  If you believe the publishers spin on the cover, it's billed as an Australian "To Kill a Mockingbird", and I guess once you get reading you can see the strong parallels.  Aside from the fact that Atticus Finch is mentioned numerous times.

 Jasper Jones is the outcast of the small (fictional) mining town of Corrigan, the teenage scapegoat who is seen as the source and instigator of anything that remotely resembles "trouble".  He is also the son of a drunk, and half aboriginal, so he is basically a happy blend of many of society's prejudices.  So when Jasper finds himself in the middle of a serious situation of which he played no part, he seeks the help of Charlie; 13 years old and a studious, book-reading, honest and reliable sort (book-reading types are always honest and reliable!!).  Charlie is stunned that the infamous Jasper Jones even knows who he is and eagerly agrees to help, until Jasper reveals the gravity of the problem and Charlie's perspective on life changes forever.

 Set in the 60's against the distant backdrop of the Vietnam War, the parallels with To Kill a Mockingbird are there, but the narrative still stands on it's own.  The outback Australia imagery is also strong, and in some scenes I could clearly picture the opaque brown, slow moving river, long grass and big red gums on the edge of town.  I could feel the oppressive still heat of an inland Australian town.  I could hear the bugs.  Oh yes, the bugs (of which Charlie has a heart-stopping fear).  The banter between Charlie and his best friend, Jeffrey Lu, is also hilarious in parts, with many of the phrases still stuck in my mind (I bid you "a jew"!).  And for some reason the strong image I have of Jeffrey's character is the little sidekick kid from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  Why him?  No idea, the mind works in mysterious ways.

 I can see why Jasper Jones has been chosen as a text to study in Australian schools.  The plot is gripping, the characters are well written and engaging, and the setting is strongly Australian.  Moral messages are also abundant, and provide many opportunities for compare, contrast and discuss essay questions.

 Basically, Jasper Jones can offer the serious reader enough meat to ponder morality and metaphor and the state of society, but it also offers the leisure reader an engaging and entertaining read.  Go forth and read it!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using librarian skills to uncover a network of dodgy shopping sites!

In all my posts over the years I'm not sure if I ever mentioned I am an avid steampunker.  Like many of my quirky fellow librarians, I love a good dress up and recently found myself searching for a great pair of boots to go with the Steampunk Aviator Superhero costume I'm assembling (trust me, it will work!). One evening whilst idly thumbing through Pinterest I found a picture of these undeniably AWESOME combat-boot style boots.  I followed the link to the website ( www.chichola.com ) and although it didn't look dodgy and offered PayPal, I am a cautious online shopper and always check the customer reviews first.  They were 1000% abysmal.  Like the kind of reviews that say SCAM, THEFT and CAN I LEAVE 0 STARS.  So despite loving the shoes, I was definitely not parting with my money on this occasion. Fast forward a couple of months and I see an ad for Victorian-style cosplay boots in my Insta feed.  Did I mention that I am an avid steampunker? ...
24 comments
Read more

Ambidextrous Me

After a minor interruption to service, I'm back and I've installed an upgrade! For those of you out there who may actually read this blog (the one or two of you, hi Mum), life has been more than a little busy of late and has interfered with my ability to read, and to blog.  Basically, I have been experiencing a career crisis.  Actually that's a bit dramatic it wasn't really a crisis (I just like the familiar-sounding alliteration), it was more that I really didn't like my job.  Don't get me wrong, my colleagues were AWESOME and that counts for so much in a workplace, but as a new Librarian, the job itself was probably as unchallenging and backward as it could get.  A career cul-de-sac.  A dead end.  A career coffin.  A place of final rest. So what was the position?  It was at a school.  A lovely school of a certain educational philosophy that was rather anti-technology and fairly set in its ways.  I sort of knew this when I started,...
Post a Comment
Read more

February 2016

SUNSHINE, DECKS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS So, that's another year out of the way! I hope you enjoyed the school holidays.  I certainly did.  For me, it wasn't so much bookish as practical.  I cleared some land, levelled it, landscaped it and made a deck.  Not much time for reading in between all that but it was therapeutic to get out in the sun. Because all this practicality left me little time to actually read, I decided to focus on something a little less wordy, but no less relevant - the graphic novel.  Now, I did read a few but they are a little too adult to be termed YA so I probably won't review them here (one was an excellent memoir of growing up in Yorkshire when the Yorkshire Ripper was on the loose - highly recommended, but not particularly YA friendly). Devouring these graphic novels made me realise that literature comes in so many forms these days.  Traditionalists may find it easy to dismiss the graphic novel, but having read several excell...
Post a Comment
Read more