I'm Going to England, Baby!

Dear UGA at Oxford Applicant,

Thank you very much for your application to the Summer 2007 Grady at Oxford Program. We are very pleased to inform you that you have been chosen to participate in the Grady program.

These were the first few lines of the e-mail I received last night letting me know that I've been accepted into the Grady College's summer program at Oxford. I'll admit it--I jumped up and down and called at least 10 people within a 20-minute time frame when I found out. And now I can send in my passport application and reread my copy of Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson in preparation for my trip.

"Perhaps I'm too hard on poor old Oxford. I mean it is basically a wonderful place, with its smokey pubs and bookshops and scholarly air, as long as you fix your gaze on the good things and never go anywhere near Cornmarket or George Street."

Stay away from Cornmarket and George Street--check.

"I like wandering up St. Giles to immerse myself in the busy conviviality of Brown's Restaurant--a wonderful, friendly place where, perhaps uniquely in Britain, you can get an excellent Caesar salad and a bacon cheeseburger without having to sit among pounding music and a lot of ersatz Route 66 signs. Above all, I like to drink in the pubs, where you can sit with a book and not be looked on as a social miscreant; where you can be among laughing, lively young people and lose yourself in reveries of what it was like when you, too, had energy and a flat stomach and thought of sex as something more than a welcome chance to lie down for a while."

Thanks Bill.

The Final Chapter

I can't believe it. It's the beginning of the end of the Harry Potter series as we know it. J.K. Rowling and Scholastic announced yesterday that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released July 21, 2007, just one week after the fifth movie (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) premieres. Wow. I can't believe it. You can already preorder the book at Borders or Barnes and Noble.

I really didn't think it would be released so close to the new movie, or even released this summer. It's bittersweet...I want to know what happens in the final book, but then it will be over. For good.

For more information, you can see the New York Times article
or check out Mugglenet.com.

What's the Story, Wishbone?

"What's the story, Wishbone? Do you think it's worth a look? It kinda seems familiar, like a story from a book..."

It's been argued that child literacy has grown drastically since the release of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, but I wonder if the PBS series Wishbone had any effect on literacy for people in my generation.

For those of you who never watched it or haven't heard of it, the Wishbone series follows Joe Talbot and his Jack Russell Terrier, Wishbone. Joe lives with his mom (his dad passed away when he was six) in Oakdale, Texas, and spends most of his time playing basketball and hanging out with his two best friends, David and Samantha. As the kids deal with situations in their day-to-day lives, Wishbone relates what's going on in their lives to a great literary classic, like Great Expectations, The Odyssey, and Robin Hood. The show switches back and forth between the real action in Oakdale and the action in the book. Wishbone would usually play one of the main characters in the book and don a costume to complete the look.

I remember watching the show every afternoon and wanting to read the books they featured on the show. In fact, I chose to read The Red Badge of Courage for a book report in middle school simply because the book was used in an episode. I'd be willing to bet that other kids felt the same way. Now, I enjoyed reading to begin with (mostly Nancy Drew books at the time) but I think that watching the show fueled the fire, so to speak. And I think they should definitely put it back on tv (and not just so I can watch it again).

There's a Wishbone website and a Wikipedia entry that discuss the show, and now even a facebook group called "No, I haven't read that great literary classic--but I've seen the Wishbone!" I think that's true for a lot of people, including myself. There were lots of books on the show that I've never read (like Ivanhoe and Silas Marner) but whenever I'm about to read one in a class, I try to remember if there was a Wishbone episode that explained it.