Electrick Children is a film released in 2012, written and directed by Rebecca Thomas. Screened at film festivals including South By Southwest, this film tells the story of fifteen year old Rachel McKnight. Rachel is a member of a fundamentalist Mormon community. Rachel finds herself to be pregnant and believes that she was impregnated by a voice she heard on a cassette tape after listening to it for the first time. Although she firmly believes in this immaculate conception, her family and the rest of the community believes that she was raped by her brother Mr. Will, and so he is exiled from the community. Rachel’s father arranges a marriage for Rachel, but rather than go through with it, she runs away from the community, escaping to Las Vegas.
The book “The Acorn People” was written by Ron Jones and illustrated by Tom Parker. In 1976, a Banton Book Company published this book based off a true story. In “The Acorn People” one hundred and twenty disabled children went to a disability camp called Camp Wiggins. They didn’t let their disabilities take over by accomplishing different activities every day. These camper collected acorns to make acorn necklaces, hiked for six miles to reach the top of Look Out Mountain, learned how to cook, and created and filmed a play. I enjoyed this book and would recommend this book to other people/students to read. I believe this book displays that children with disabilities can accomplish anything they set their minds to. These children are a real inspiration. In reading this book, I realize some times we take things for granted that take less time or energy to complete.
Damien Echols is found guilty and sentenced to death for the crime of killing three eight-year old boys; for eighteen years he spends his life on Death Row before he is released. Before being placed on Death Row at Varner Super Max Security Unit in Grady, Arkansas and Tucker Max Security Unit, Echols also spent time in Crittenden County Jail for misdemeanor charges he received as minor. While on Death Row Damien explains that it was the guards that he had to watch out for and not the other prisoners. The visits from spiritual advisors as well as the media caused Echols to receive hatred from the guards. They destroyed everything in is cell, planted a knife in his bunk, sent to solitary confinement for no reason, beat up by a team of five guards,
My virtual child experience began with the birth of Ivan Trejo. Throughout this journey I learned parents have great influence over their child before it’s brought into the world. For example, the biological parents determine their child’s genes that are passed down to them and the environment that impacts the child. With these factors in mind, it gave me a new perspective to parenting. I have adopted an authoritative parenting strategy to raise Ivan. Authoritative parents are parents who are firm, setting clear and consistent limits, but who try to reason with their child, giving explanation for why they should behave in a particular way. (Feldman, 2014). When raising Ivan, I made my decision based on previous encounters and positive results from authoritative strategies.
“‘Sinister Children’” was the title psychologist Theodore Blau gave to left-handed children in the late seventies, due to their over abundance “among the academically and behaviorally challenged” and their greater vulnerability to obtaining mental diseases later in life (1). This condescending view on the left-handed population has existed for centuries. The word sinister itself comes from the Latin word sinistra, meaning left hand. In the article “Sinister Minds: Are Left-Handed People Smarter?,” written by Maria Konnikova, a psychologist from Columbia University, she explains how these outdated theories about the intellect of the left-handed community are wrong. In fact, the author elaborates how left-handed people may have higher brain abilities compared to the general population due to the
Miss. Evers Boys is a movie based on the real life study called “The Tuskegee Study” that took place in Macon County, Alabama, where 400 black men who had syphilis and 200 black men without this disease participated on this study without knowing the terrible truth behind it. Also the participants were poor and uneducated sharecropper who fell for Miss. Evers persuasions and rewards that doctors were offering to participants. The main results that doctors were trying to obtain from this experiment was to gain information about how African Americans men’s bodies reacted to syphilis. During the 1930’s, society believed that black men were inferior to white men, so diseases were supposed to affect differently black men. This study in particular, the participants were not informed about the capacity that this disease could damage their human system and they were not viewed as a human being and they were used as lab rat. Furthermore, one of the doctors who were involved in this experiment Dr. Raymond Vonderlehr used the term “necropsy” that is an autopsy performed on animals when speaking about the participants of this experiment (Mananda R-G, 2012).
In Poor kids from the FRONTLINE documentary having the children telling their stories and getting to see everything from their view was something I haven’t experienced. When we hear about poverty it's always coming from the perspective of the adults in the situation. After watching and haven heard what the children had to say gives me a bigger picture of the problem of poverty. Starting the film they displayed a fact that 16 million children are affected by poverty and living below the poverty line which is a huge number of children. With so many affects we can see how this can be a big social problem. I think it is important to have a full view of a social problem so that it could be understood in its capacity from every aspect and perspective of what poverty is. One we understand the problem we can start working on the social problem and start bringing in the attention and support to start making policies to help diminish the problem at hands. Once this claim of poverty was made we can start to process it through the social problems process and eventually come out with outcomes.
Our experiences shape us into the humans we are today. While we were all raised with differing beliefs and goals in life, we all share critical developmental periods that need to be met, for us to grow and emerge into successful adults. Without proper parental supervision children will miss the window of opportunity for these critical periods, if these critical periods are not met abnormal behavior known as feral or wild will appear. Feral children have very little known of them, they’re brains are mysteries that researchers are trying to uncover. The public tends to use information that they have seen before to make assumption about uncertain subjects, most of the misconceptions about feral children and their realities stem from two Disney
Imagine that you were a police officer, dedicating your life to make your jurisdiction a better place. Would you allow an FBI agent to barge in and save the day? Or would you continuously fight to be seen as an equal partner in the case? In The Heat Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) attempts to kick Boston police officer Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) off a case that involves taking down the leader of a major drug ring in the Boston area. But, Mullins will not have it, so she fights to keep her spot on the case and teams up with Ashburn. Although an unlikely pair that cannot be any more opposite, the two complement one another extremely well during their efforts to take down Larkin.
In the short story Zero Hour, Ray Bradbury questions the innocence of children by allowing their imagination to control their actions and invade an ideal community. In the beginning of the story, Bradbury sets a peaceful, harmonious tone as a Utopian society by describing the perfect setting, “The children catapulted this way and that across the green lawns, shouting at each other, holding hands, flying in circles...such tremulous joy, such tumbling and hearty screaming. The city hummed. The streets were lined with good green and peaceful trees only” (222). The neighborhood children running around and playing games together symbolize child innocence and imagination because they’re imagining themselves being adults with careers like astronauts and firefighters, acting as if they were in a fantasy. However, this innocence was terminated when all ‘the children in every yard on the street brought out knives and forks and pokers and old stovepipes and can openers’ (233). These tools are not normal items that children all play with on a casual day, signifying a change in their actions.
Toy Story is the groundbreaking 1995 motion picture developed by Disney and Pixar and directed by John Lasseter. The film was so revolutionary not only because it was the first feature length animation to be created completely by CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) but also, also the film was more rounded in all respects. The characters not only looked more sophisticated and three-dimensional but their personalities were also more human and fewer cartoons like. The film uses a constructed text in order to put across a theme of two very different characters learning to work together beyond their rivalries to rise above a common enemy and work towards a common goal. The film uses characters and imagery very cleverly to portray this theme. The music used in the film is also different to other Disney features. Rather than the characters bursting into song themselves as in Aladdin or Hercules, the songs are played and sung by an outside person (Randy Newman) and reflect the mood and emotions of the characters in a particular scene. For example, the title sequence song “Friend in Me”, when Woody and Andy are playing together, and the scene where Andy’s room has been made over to a Buzz Lightyear theme, “Strange Things” where the song reflects Woody’s confusion and fear not only about the change in his surroundings but also the change in his friends and his own character and self-confidence. The attention to the smallest detail for example the reflections in Buzz’s visor give the film even more realism and depth. The use of unusual and imaginative camera angles, made possible by the use of CGI, also adds to the texture and pace of the film.
Contemporary anxieties about childhood have often fuelled the incentive into historical research on the subject, with childhood enjoying a high status in our social, political and cultural debates. This has been reflected in what can be described as a ‘lively field’ of historical investigation , aiming to give us a wider perspective on the changing conceptions of childhood, and an understanding of the experiences of children through time. The publication of Philippe Ariès’ L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien regime in 1960 helped to stimulate an upsurge of interest in the field, with Ariès managing to convince most of his readers that childhood had a history, and that ideas about childhood and the experience of being a child had changed over time and in different cultures.
The film Babies is a film that follows four babies from San Francisco, Tokyo, Mongolia, and Namibia through their first year of life. The film has no talking or narrative. In many scenes, you don’t even see adults. This helps you get to see a baby’s perspective on the world. This movie showed how different cultures are when it comes to raising children.
In life, no action is absent of a reaction. Every effect is linked to a cause, whether seen or unseen and play is no exception. As adults, play is not a foreign concept to us, we just chose not to engage in it and have diminutive space for it reserved in our day-to-day schedules. However, it is essential in the lives of young children. In the moment, the benefits to play are invisible, yet they are there working. Play, like a Newton’s cradle, remains stationary while not in use and the energy remains in a potential state waiting to be activated. Now, imagine the Newton’s cradle as you are pulling back the first ball. The first ball is play in a child’s life, and the other balls are potential benefits.
We live in an ever shifting society. As thus, children’s literature continues to change and evolve. Historically women have suffered from gender inequality. Until 1920 women were not allowed to vote. They did not have much of a voice in our society. In children’s literature of the past women were not given much importance and were not portrayed as heroines in society. Until recently it was next to impossible to find quality books that featured empowered women. Today we have a different story. We have seen a trend in the proliferation of women’s rights and gains. Girls are encouraged to aspire to great things and are not pigeonholed into a few career and life choices. This trend is evident in children’s literature. An example of this can be found in the book Who Says Women Can’t be Doctors? by Tanya Stone. It is the story of Elizabeth Blackwell and her struggle to become the first female doctor in
‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ is a 2006 novel by Irish novelist John Boyne; this is his fourth novel, and the first he has written for children. My classmates and I have read the book and watched the trailer of its newly releasing movie. And I have to say, this novel is really remarkable. The novel truly engages the reader completely into the book and it’s difficult to put down. “Believe me”!!.......the trailer is all the more brilliant, with a high standard quality and exceptionally mind capturing images.