Chicken soup for the soul

(Review by Pablo Barroca)

'Chicken soup for the soul'  by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Patty Hansen is an entertaining and educative short-short stories book for either children and adults. It contains 101 short-short stories that will touch the reader´s heart. Every story is introduced by an epitah according to the topic and then a wonderful story begins. The style of language is the adequate for young children since they do not present obscene words. The illustrations at the beginning of each section are funny and colourful, and they are accompained with a joke at the bottom of the page. 'Chicken soup for the soul' is higly recommendable for all ages because not only will teach the readers a moral with every short-short story but it will also entertain them.

Bukowski - 20 poems

(Review by Agustín López)

A life full of misery, putrefaction and death, and one full of love, sex and partnership seem to have smashed and broke into twenty small pieces inside Charles Bukowski's head in "Bukowski - 20 poems" (Mondadori,1998). The book is a compilation of the most important works of this hidden writer, a man who showed to their few followers how life can be represented either by a memberless torso lying in a bed or by the licking of the sexiest girl's vagina. This autobiographic poems are aggressive, cold and dark and are fairly recommended to those people who look for a different, not so "happy ending" bibliography .

Honey Bees

Jesus Cervantes
(Review by Ivanna Palazzetti)

`Honey Bees´ is a Jesus Cervantes´ work. This wonderful story tells the reader about the process by which bees make honey. `Honey Bees´ would be really useful to teach little children how bees live in community, how each of them has a specific work to do, and how they manage to collect nectar with the objective of making honey. It is worth to mention that this perfectly well done work makes use of appropriate language laid out in short captions and that it has really attractive pictures which can catch children´s attention. I must say I would strongly recommend this story.

O Captain! My Captain!

Walt Whitman
(Review by Cristian Matas)

The poem O Captain! My Captain! written by Walt Whitman in 1865 describes the feelings and emotions connected with the loss of a friend. The poem deals with the death of Whitman’s deep friend, president  Abraham Lincoln, after the civil war in the USA.  The author expresses  his refusal to accept that his friend is not longer alive and, actually, in the second stanza he attemps to believe this is just a nightmare.  It is an interesting story in which the author shows what Lincoln represents in his country because he is“the captain” and “the father” in the story. The readers can learn about love, war, friendship and loss along this very well-written poem and it can be very usefull to teach some important values in life.  

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

(Review by Silvina Rago)

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written by Robert Louis Stevenson. This  story full of mystery and suspense was first published in 1886 and takes place in the city of London, when there were no cars and people wrote letters to communicate to each other. The main characters in the story are Mr Utterson and Dr Henry Jekyll. The latter is a very rich man devoted to study science and practise experiments in his laboratory and whose will is in charge of Mr Utterson who was a lawyer. They were very good friends but their relatioship will take an unexpected turn when Mr Edward Hyde interferes between them. I highly recommend this story, it keeps you uncertain until its end.

And then you die

Iris Johansen

Review by Giselle Albim

And then you die, is a thriller written by a successful American novelist called Iris Johansen. This fascinating story keeps the reader trapped and intrigued from the first till the last page. It is enjoyable reading the love story hidden in a danger and dramatic situation lived by the main characters. Full of twists, this is a worth reading story.

The thriller is about a photojournalist, Bess Grady who travels with her sister to Tenajo, Mexico. Once there, they discover that the town is full of dead people, only a baby remains alive. They are the only witness of a cruel biological attack. But before they could do something, they are carried by a group of soldiers to a hospital. There after being sedated for three days, Bess wakes up and discovers that her sister is dead. Kaldak, an ex agent from the CIA, is the only person who could help her to find Esteban, the assassin of the people in the village, but also of her sister. While they are trying to find out what have happened in Tenajo, without being killed by Esteban, they begin to trust each other. 

I highly recommend this thriller to those who enjoy reading suspense, drama and romance all at the same time

What Makes Good People

Written by Wes Fessler

(review by Guadalupe Bustingorri)

“What Makes Good People” is a short story about values and emotions written by Wes Fessler.  Archie was a clever boy who wants to know if he was a good person and what makes good people. He thinks about the good people he knows and the good values they have. In this story there is a positive message to be learned by children. Characters are very friendly, so that children can get pleasure from them and learn significant lessons of life. I have really enjoyed the story a lot and I think it points out common doubts that children usually have during their lives.  I must say I will strongly recommend it. 

You can read it here.

Skellig

(review by Belén Giamberardini)

This is the story of Michael, a ten-year-old boy, who moves to a new house with his parents. Everything seems to be good but when his baby sister gets ill the whole family gets helpless. Then one day Michael enters the horrible garage of his new house and there he finds  something unexpected. Is the creature in the garage a man, a bird or an angel? Michael and Mina, his new friend, will learn about the power of love and their worlds will change forever. Highly recommended.

Twenty-One Short Stories

Graham Green
(Review by Renée Fredes)

Twenty-One Short Stories, written by Graham Green, is a book for adolescents or adults, that touches different topics, each one turned into a beautiful short story. In this book you can find stories about betrayal and loyalty, faithfulness and deception among other topics. If you have children, a nephew or perhaps a little neighbor, be careful, `The Destructors` can be your own story. `The Hint of an Explanation` is one of the short stories that deals with the Catholic religion. It does not matter whether you are a catholic or not, this story will make you laugh and cry and think. All the short stories have an unexpected final twist. I highly recommend this beautiful book written by an excellent author.        

Women victims of domestic violence

National Women´s Council
(review by Nieto Nancy)

“Women victims of domestic violence” is an article in the online newspaper Minuto Uno that deals with physical, psychological, sexual or economic abuse suffered by argentinean women.
National Women´s Council indicates that one in three women are victims of domestic violence themselves or know someone who is. Law 24.417 on Protection from domestic violence obligates people to report cases of violence.
This important article shows us the victim´s suffering of every day. Taking into account this information we should help victims of domestic violence. It is highly recommended.

Read the article here.

The Tell-Tale Heart

Edgar Allan Poe
( review by Heredia Paula)

The Tell-Tale heart is a dramatic short-story of a mad man´s obsession with the eye of his old partner. The insane narrator tells us in a monologue that he has no reason to hate the man.The pale and blue eye of the old man is what really disturbs the mad man and incites him to act in a fatal way. Poe´s short-story is intriguing and shocking, full of  madness. Don´t miss the end. I recommend it.

The Black Cat

Edgar Allan Poe
(Review by Nuñez Melina)

The Black Cat is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. Murder and death are the main themes that emerge from this dramatic story. A man goes crazy and reacts in a terrible way against his pets and wife.  The author creates suspense and catches the reader’s attention all the time. I recommend this story for all those people who enjoy reading horror and crime stories.

The ice-cream memories of Charlotte Rowe

Teresa Perrin

(review by Natalia Diquech)

The novel I’ve read is called “The ice cream memories of Charlotte Rowe” by Teresa Perrin. It is a thriller which tells the story of a woman who has been cast in the role of a medium from childhood, and studied under a clever fraud. It is an interested novel, and apart from that, it is easy to read and language is not complicate. Although the story is quite long, the advantage is that the chapters are short so you can arrange how many chapters to read peer week.

I highly recommend this novel if you are interested in this kind of topic. 

The Millstone

Margaret Drabble

(Review by Florencia Gonzalez)

Rosamund Stacy is an intellectual young woman graduated from Cambridge University. Her parents have inculcated her with socialist and puritan ideas and values about the importance of independence, sin and sex. The lost of her virginity and her simultaneous unplanned pregnancy lead her to take an important decision: to assume the responsibility and become a mother. Margaret Drabble’s novel is highly recommended. 

Aesop's Fables

Aesop   

Thomson – Heinle / Baronet Books, Ney York - 2000

(Review by Laura Dambolena)

The recollection of fables by Aesop is one of the basic books any person should read because they can learn very useful facts of life and morals that will be unforgettable. Fables are short stories which illustrate a particular moral and teach a lesson to children. These fables are such a well known source in educative literature that most of the morals Aesop’s fables taught in the 5th Century B.C. are still applied for current social life and many of them became current sayings or proverbs. “The Tortoise and the Hare”, “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”, “The Boy who cried Wolf”, “The Lion and the Mouse” and “Father and Son”, are, among others, examples of Aesop’s fables whose morals became proverbs or sayings. In this edition, each page has on the one side the text- fable- and on the other side a black and white drawing that helps children to picture the situation and understand the general idea. Aesop’s Fables are highly recommended because they are adequate to satisfy children’s curiosity and interests and, at the same time, they can keep this book the rest of their lives. 

First Love, Last Rites

Written by Ian McEwan
Vintage Books - 2006
Paperback – 157 pp.
(Review by Angélica Santi)

First Love, Last Rites is Ian McEwan’s first collection of short stories as well as his first published work. Available since 1975, these eight very different and sometimes shocking short stories are connected by the main themes of death, obsession and sex combined with a secondary theme of youth and adolescence, always from a male point of view. The author’s changing style can be considered a powerful device to appeal to a wide audience, although some of the stories are inexcusably disgusting. I recommend it for those who want to explore McEwan’s world from the beginning.  

Forum 2: The appropriate topics for children

As we read at the beginning of the year, Corbally sustains that “children’s literature is didactic (teaches/preaches); even the best of children’s literature is didactic.” This conception became apparent in the last essay analysed in class, too. And, of course, it's also something that came to our minds when discussing taboo in the TV show 'Ren & Stimpy'. So, if we agree products for children are supposed to ‘teach’, what do you think they should teach? Or, the other way round: what do you think they should not teach? What topics are proper or improper when children are the target?

Join the discussion!