Drama's Blog

Quite obviously by the title, the poem is about weight and confidence issues many women have. The poem, “Fat is not a fairy tale” is the perfect poem for people who love fairy tales as well as people who stand for human rights. The poet, Jane Yolen, illustrates being big and round is classified as ugly and bad.  Yolen takes advantage of some literally devices to represent her theme creatively.

Yolen plays with the words and in this case, the names “Cinder elephant, Sleeping tubby, Snow weight”, in the first verse, which shows how different princesses are from reality. With their beautiful faces, skinny and elegant, like a barbie doll, those princesses are perfect,  gorgeous and surreal. In reality they starve themselves to death, force their body into a wasp waisted shape and fling them selves down the stairs.

In the last verse where it says “everything round is good, the sun, wheels, cookies and the princesses” made me think how ironic it is that we presume cookies and wheels are good but the fat princesses are another story. It made me think about our definition of beauty and what we really think it is. How come having skinny people on the edge of death are beautiful yet people who eat 3 meals day and are healthy – fat and ugly?

Yolen makes you think how there is not yet a teller, a listener an even a world out there that would realize how wrong we are. Yet in her last line ” everything round is good ….the princesses” (last verse) that maybe one day it’ll change and maybe one day it’ll be good. Like the sun, wheels and the cookies.

This poem is very tragic.  The fairytale titles are all changed with different words to describe being fat. The Yolen has clearly either personally experienced, or witnessed accounts of people not being accepted because of their weight.

This picture of Snow White, or Snow Weight as Yolen would say, shows how the real Princess could look like if she was in our world.

Jane Yolen used repetition many times in the poem giving it a good flow to it. Yolen used it at the beginning of each stanza (I am thinking of a fairy tale), the constant use of fairy tale titles, and at the end where she started many lines with the phrase “for a”. A comical poem, making people laugh, as well as learning the fact that in the fairytale world, there is not fat princess. If the Princess’ were in our world, they would be skinny looking barbie dolls. Why couldn’t there be a fat fairy tale character? Because being fat is not bad. You can still be as beautiful as a fairy tale princess

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deathtiny42/5051604019/

From the beginning of the year, my English was not the best it could be. Now, when I look back, I have improved very much. Out every thing Miss Clifford taught my class and me, I am more knowledgeable with my communication and creative writing.

The first text we read this year was Two Weeks With the Queen. In this book, I analyzed that many people were homophobic which means to be afraid or hate gays. And it after we finished the book when I understood that homosexuals are not necessarily violent or a horrible person but they can be a normal, kind and caring person. They have a heart and a brain. The just have different opinions.

The second text we studied was Journey to Jo’burg. I think that this project was the most interesting. In this text, we studied Apartheid in South Africa. I had taken in so much from this book. Many chapters left me with tears, happiness and sometimes confusion. I was especially shocked to discover what others can do to one another. Example the chapter, “Time of fire”, it described what the government and police did to normal children around my age, that chapter was actually a true event. We watched a movie about Apartheid and it was called Power of One. I have learnt what racism and hate can cause serious damage to one another. It causes conflict then war, then genocide. A task we had to do in this unit was to write a magazine article. I was glad with the magazine about racism in schools.

The final text we read was the House on Mango Street. I have become more aware about woman’s lack of rights and roles as well as growing up in poverty. A task we had to do on the duration of this unit was the vignette analysis. I have improved on my analysis skills, by reading a vignette and what I could take out of it.

Compared to other years, I think this year English was both challenging but enjoyable. I will miss my english class and teacher. I am honored to have such good friends to work with during class, and especially having Miss Clifford as our English Teacher. I am grateful that I am more knowledgeable and aware of what others can do to each other.

A communicator is a person who understands what the meaning or point is and expresses opinions and information with confidence in various different methods of communication. Communicating in English is very important because its the number 1 language of the world but also in school, YIS, there is a lot of group collaboration work and discussions about texts and stories. I think during the whole year I have always tried to fit in and discuss wither with a group or with the whole class. I try my best and am always aware of being loud and clear so my class can here me. During class discussion, I frequently participate giving my opinions and thoughts. If I don’t understand group work or information, i am not shy and ask for help and discuss and solve the answer. Also, during group work, I contribute a lot trying to express opinions about what could be improved. If I had to choose a ‘Learner Profile’ I would choose to be in the communicators section because of all the things I said above haha!

My favorite bit of my collage, The Secret of the Unicorn, by Alex Irvine, is when Tintin holds up a clue. The picture is very bright. Next to the picture is another one which is very dark and evil looking. Placing these two pictures side by side shows contrast in the characters. I thought that was a interesting part of my collage. I did well by showing the characters, Captain Haddock, Tintin, and other minor characters as well as showing details where they traveled to.

I adressed many parts of my novel in the collage. I talked about my genre which was adventure, mystery and action. I clearly stated the characters, Captain Haddock, Tintin and Snowy as well as some minor characters. I also talked about the setting which I adressed in the 3rd paragraph. I actually did not talk much about the plot. I only said the genre, character, setting but I absolutely forgot about the plot.

If I had to change my collage I would do many things actually. I would want to make my collage more interesting/artistically. I think just pictures is a bit plain and original so maybe drawing something or arranging the pictures so it looks cool. I think I should maybe have drawn the name of the novel instead of just finding it on the internet. Maybe adding footprints or question marks could make the genre of the novel, which is mystery as well as adventure, more noticeable. In my description about my collage I would talk more about the plot which I really forgot about. Over all I am happy with the collage even though it needs a bit of adjusting.