11 Aug Where and how does its invention succeed and fail?

Blog posts must be a minimum of 1200 words and include at least one image, either one you have created or one you have found. Please note: Blog entries are not summaries of the reading and students should not summarize the plot in their entries. Instead, use the Blog Post to pursue a question or idea in relation to the prompt. It is a great thing to do to build on a Discussion comment you’ve made as the springboard for a Blog Post, and I strongly encourage it. While Discussion comments can be more informal and written more quickly, however, I expect Blog Posts to go through at least one draft and to be revised and proofread. This is where we will work on your writing to improve your skills and ability to communicate your ideas to others. Improvement and effort count a lot.

Blog Posts should be Word Documents double spaced in 11- or 12-point font. You should include a title that is different from your text’s title. Also, please put your name at the top of the first page. CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. Create a four-panel comic or design a cover focusing on a significant sequence of images, ideas, or events in either Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea or Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl. You can either draw it by hand or use digital tools. Then, write at least 1200 words about your process of creating the comic in relation to the novel. Why did you choose to focus on what you did? What meanings in the story were you trying to highlight? How did the choices you made about what to represent in the comic connect to those meanings? Analyze specific details or short quotes from the novel in relation to your comic, using examples to flesh out your discussion of what’s important in the novel. Take a photo or a screen shot of the comic or cover and upload the file as an attachment.

1. Create a map of the world of Salt Fish Girl and write at least 1200 words about the choices you made in creating it. In your analysis of your choices, be sure to build on at least 5 sentences or short passages from the novel to explain the key elements of the world and the map. How are the particular spaces and places you depict and the relations among them important in this world? What meanings of the novel does your map bring out or illuminate? Be sure to upload a copy of your map as well as your 1200 or more word Blog Post.

1. In 1200 words or more, rewrite a scene from A Wizard of Earthsea or Salt Fish Girl from the point of view of one of the characters other than Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea or other than Miranda in Salt Fish Girl. You may choose to write in either first person or third person omniscient, but either way try to bring out elements of that character’s significance in the story by building on details and quotes as well as adding new elements that are consistent with that character’s role in the novel. What can we learn about the story and how can you go deeper into it by fleshing out a “minor” character’s point of view as a way of considering a different angle on it?

1. This prompt is inspired by one Le Guin gave her students which I showed you in class recently. Write at least 1200 words about how the “secondary worlds” in A Wizard of Earthsea or Salt Fish Girl offer new insights into, take a radically different perspective on, satirize, criticize, and/or illuminate certain aspects of the real world. Analyze at least 5 sentences or short quotes from the text that help us understand the secondary world you have chosen to write about. Are its primary goals understanding, celebration, satire, other? What are its tactics (aesthetic, ethical, political)? What aspects of the “real world” does it focus on? Where and how does its invention succeed and fail?