Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Biography

Paula J. Rodriguez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Biography is a book that is meant to be read by secondary students to assist when writing about the author. Gabriel Garcia Marquez hails from Columbia and is “an international best-selling author and a master of “magic realism”.” (2009, Pelayo). Gabriel Garcia Marquez has won the Felix Varela Medal from Cuba, the Novel Prize for Literature, and the Aztec Eagle Medal from Mexico. Included amongst his best works are 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Biography includes an explanation of the format that is followed and how it can be used in conjunction with other titles when writing research papers. This book is part of a biographical series that was published by Greenwood Press and was written with “feedback from librarians and educators. Consideration was given to both curriculum relevance and inherent interest.” (Pelayo, 2009).

The biography was written by Ruben Pelayo, Professor Emeritus of Latin American Literature at Southern Connecticut State University. The format of the biography includes a series forward, acknowledgements, and an introduction that explains the basic format of the book. There is a timeline showing events as they occurred throughout Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s life from his birth through 2007. The chapters are formatted to cover one decade at a time and the author included notes at the end of each chapter showing his sources. There is also a “CODA” (Pelayo, 2009) in each chapter that shows what was happening politically at that point in the author’s life.

There are a few photographs and a bibliography at the end of the book that covers all the sources cited from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s own work within this book. This book is comprehensive but would be a good resource to start with when writing about Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Not only does the bibliography include the sources it also shows which sources were translated from the original. I believe this biography could be used both in literature and history classes to teach about Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the political climate he lived through when writing and publishing his writing.

WORKS CITED

Pelayo Rubén. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Biography. Greenwood Press, 2009.

Thesaurus.com

Paula J. Rodriguez

Thesaurus.com is a website that not only provides synonyms to commonly used words but prompts to improve writing. The writing tool allows the writer to write or paste the document into “word swap” and useful synonyms are provided for words used too often throughout the document. Even though you might be able to simply use the thesaurus included in Microsoft Word there are other uses for Thesaurus.com than simply finding synonyms for a document.

Thesaurus.com includes a word of the day along with writing prompts that assist in the use of the “word of the day”. For example, the word of the day on October 23^rd was erumpent and the theme for the word of the day in the week before Halloween seems to follow the holiday spirit with words such as macabre, ghoulish, and ghost word. One of the writing prompts is to see the definition of the word of the day and use it in a paragraph.

The writing prompts are not confined to the “word of the day” and include prompts on how to improve vocabulary, punctuation, grammar, and improvisation when writing any document. One of the articles that is shown daily is the importance of commas to make a sentence sound right. The writing article to improve writing on October 22^nd focused on empathy and how it influences writing. While the writing article on November 1^st focused on how to kill off a character when writing a story.

Thesaurus.com is published through Dictionary.com and has been available to the public for over 20 years. There is also an app for android and iOS devices for both Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com available for the public. This website connects to Lexico Spanish which is a site that shows a Spanish word of the day as well as tools to practice and study Spanish. This website is much more than just a thesaurus, it’s a tool for writers to improve and grow in their writing and for readers to strengthen vocabulary.

Bookbird: An International Journal of Children’s Literature

Paula J. Rodriguez

           Bookbird is an International journal of children’s literature published beginning in 1963 through John’s Hopkins University Press and the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). The editors are currently Petros Panaou with the University of Georgia and Janelle Mathis with the University of Texas. The editorial board is comprised of professors at multiple international and national universities. Some of the countries represented include the USA, Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, Hungary, Egypt, Iran, and Sweden. This is important as this journal looks at literature in other countries and their impact on the Anglophile as well as catering to those individuals that are interested in children’s books.

           A typical issue includes an editorial, articles that focus on an international perspective of children’s literature, shorter articles for teachers and librarians, reviews and postcards. Academic articles can not be longer than 4,000 words, short articles should not be more than 2500 words, reviews should be less than 1,000 words, and postcards should be less than 300 words. Submissions are reviewed before acceptance and should not be submitted elsewhere during this process. It can take up to a year from submission to publication and the journal is published quarterly. If the article is not in English, it must first be translated by an accredited translator before submission.

           Some articles that were translated before publication that I observed were “Young Adult Literature in Bolivia” (Canedo, 2014) which is an interview with a librarian on how literature has changed in Bolivia. Another example would be “Monkey King’s Journey to the West: Transmission of a Chinese Folktale to Anglophone Children” (Chen, 2009) which shows how the contextual rather than literal translation has changed the meaning of this tale for children. This is one way that the journal stayed the same even with a change in editors in 2009.

           Some of the changes are the artwork between 2009 and the more current issues in 2014 and 2019. In 2009 there is a darker background and theme to the art whereas current issues as well as the issues in 2014 focus on more positive and colorful art. Although there was a change in editors the content remains politically charged for example in 2009 one of the academic articles was “Substance or Illusion?: Young Adult Literature in India” which focused on female genocide within children’s literature Then in 2019 the trend continues as they published “The Dangers of Reading Globally” which basically states that the more informed an individual is the more dangerous they can become within social and political circles.. Another article was “Fairy Tales, Feminism, and Fighting the Patriarchy: An Interview with Elana K. Arnold” (Bittner, 2019) which focused on images in fairy tales and how the symbolism has changed as girls evolve. In 2014 Bookbird shows they are ready to tackle controversial topics when they published “El Fulano and Patty Swan: Rhetorically Queering the Island in the Meaning of Consuelo” (Brewster, 2014) which is a translated article covering new ways of reading old stories and folktales and showing the homosexual topics covered in children’s literature. In a way the journal still continued to cover not only politically charged material but also translated articles and controversial topics even through the change in editors.  The reasoning behind changing editors was simply due to a change in the direction of the journal and the previous editors moving on in their careers.

           I believe that this journal could be helpful to librarians that are looking for international books to recommend either to students for outside reading or expanding their horizons. Teachers would also use this journal to keep abreast of current trends in young adult and children’s literature around the world. English students and professors would be able to see new authors to watch for and how literature is seen from an international perspective. All the articles were found in the Volpe and Angelo database through the ProQuest database and the e journal free access. Journals from 1963 to 2010 can be accessed in their entirety through TNTech Volpe free ejournals. Years 2011 -2019 can be accessed through ProQuest but not in their entirety.

WORKS CITED

Bittner, Rob, and Elana K. Arnold. “Fairy Tales, Feminism, and Fighting the Patriarchy: An Interview with Elana K. Arnold.” Bookbird, vol. 57, no. 2, 2019, pp. 59-65. ProQuest, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.tntech.edu/docview/2221197929?accountid=28833.

Brewster, Hilary. “El Fulano and Patty Swan: Rhetorically Queering the Island in the Meaning of Consuelo.” Bookbird, vol. 52, no. 3, 2014, pp. 65-75. ProQuest, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.tntech.edu/docview/1559874572?accountid=28833.

Canedo, Gaby V. “Young Adult Literature in Bolivia.” Bookbird, vol. 52, no. 3, 2014, pp. 91-93. ProQuest, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.tntech.edu/docview/1559873766?accountid=28833.

Rangachari, Devika. “Substance or Illusion?: Young Adult Literature in India.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, vol. 47, no. 1, Jan. 2009, pp. 18–25., doi:10.1353/bkb.0.0129.

Short, Kathy G. “The Dangers of Reading Globally.” Bookbird, vol. 57, no. 2, 2019, pp. 1-11. ProQuest, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.tntech.edu/docview/2221205091?accountid=28833.

Ying-Yu), Irene Chen (Chen. “Monkey King’s Journey to the West: Transmission of a Chinese Folktale to Anglophone Children.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, vol. 47, no. 1, Jan. 2009, pp. 26–33. ProQuest, doi:10.1353/bkb.0.0116.