We asked several teachers and authors who attended Festival America book festival in Vincennes in September to give us their favourite picks amongst the authors and books they encountered. Gerald Kenny, who teaches at Lycée Saint-Sernin, Toulouse (31), recommends: The Barrowfields by Phillip Lewis Nobody gets the parents they deserve, and Henry Aster is no … Continue reading ““The Barrowfields”, a Haunting Family Tale from North Carolina”
The Utopiales festival in Nantes is dedicated to science-fiction in all its forms. You can sign up your classes for the special schools day. The 19th edition of Utopiales will be taking place from 31 October to 5 November (or Halloween to Guy Fawkes!) Since that is mostly in the school holidays, Monday 5 November … Continue reading “Science-Fiction in Nantes”
The House with a Clock in its Walls is the new film adaptation of a well-loved American children’s book. With witches, warlocks, ghosts and a haunted house, it’s perfectly themed for Halloween. In classic children’s-fiction style, the hero of The House with a Clock in its Walls and the 11 books that followed is an … Continue reading “Haunted House for Halloween”
The House with a Clock in its Walls is a new film adapted from a classic of American children’s literature. This sequence uses one of the film’s trailers to work on Halloween vocabulary and revise clothes vocabulary with A1+ students. Language and structures : a/an plural of nouns pronunciation of the plural “s” ending invariable adjectives … Continue reading “The House with a Clock in its Walls”
The shortlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious prize for fiction, honours three Brits, two Americans and a Canadian. The winner will be announced on 16 October. It will be a hard task for the five judges to choose between six very different books. Last year’s winner Lincoln in Bardo was extremely … Continue reading “The 2018 Man Booker Prize Shortlist”
Bestselling British author Sebastian Faulks will be giving two talks in Paris on 25 and 26 September around his latest novel Paris Echo. Like many of his previous books it is set in France, and draws heavily on the legacy of war. Many of Faulks’ novels are set during World Wars I and II, including … Continue reading “Meet an Author: Sebastian Faulks”
A film about Frankenstein author Mary Shelley is being released on 8 August. This B1-B1+ resource allows pupils to explore an interview with Haifaa-Al-Mansour, its director, about Shelley, filmmaking and being the first female Saudi Arabian director. You may want to introduce the topic of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein first with our Ready to Use … Continue reading “Audio Interview with the Director of Mary Shelley”
In the year in which the bicentenary of the publication of Frankenstein is being celebrated, a new biopic of its author, Mary Shelley, turns the spotlight on the young author who has long been eclipsed by a creation which escaped the pages of her book to enter popular culture. Rather like the eponymous Dr Frankenstein … Continue reading “Making Mary Shelley”
The three Brontë sisters lived short, isolated lives in early nineteenth century England, but they produced some outstanding novels, in particular Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The bicentenaries of their births are being celebrated from 2016 to 2020. To find out more about the Brontës, visit the Brontë Society site, which has information about each … Continue reading “Brontë Family Webpicks”
Jean Rhys (1890-1979) lived and wrote about her extraordinary life in the West Indies, London and Paris before producing her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Jane Eyre, telling the story of Bertha Mason, the Creole wife Mr Rochester married for her fortune, and who in Jane Eyre is portrayed as the madwoman in … Continue reading “Celebrating Author Jean Rhys”
