The Books I Have Taught series is a personal reflection on the books I have taught in my classes. Their experiences often reveal interesting truths, not about the themes necessarily, but more about the outcomes and interactions I had with my students and the various paths it led me down. I hope you enjoy my reflection on the books that I have taught.
There is something that happens to children when they enter high school, let me be clearer, their taste in fiction change. Not for all of them, but many, that I have seen in class, start to develop a strong taste for horror. That is part of the reason that I chose to study the graphic novel adaption of Coraline by Neil Gaiman, the other reason was a particular year eight student of mine made a constant petition for us to watch the movie version of it the year before. I quite enjoyed Coraline, both as a teacher and a reader. From the teaching perspective, it is a rich text and the graphic novel provided many examples of visual techniques that the students could identify and explore. It also is a soft horror story, one that allows the students to explore their desire for the macabre without the need for bloody murder. It is creepy enough without the scarring quality that some horror induces. From a reading perspective, it is perfectly creepy and completely engaging, however, in this reflection I am drawn back to why so many of my young students become enthralled with the horror genre. I suppose it relates to a wanting to leave what they perceive as childish and step into the taboo, or the things that were once forbidden. This notion of stepping into things taboo is not something that I am unfamiliar with. In my earliest of days, I once collaborated with two of my friends from school and tried to make a video game of our own. I was going to write the story, and they were going to do all the programming and designing, not that it became anything, but I did write two scripts. One of the scripts was a horror story, because one of my friends wanted to create a horror game. This is where I learned that horror was not my strength, I am usually not ashamed of my work, as I see all of it, even the low-quality ones, as my own steps across the pond of my own prose, but I am ashamed of what I wrote. It was not just bad, but I made the error of not being horrifying, but disgusting, and I was so ashamed that when the three of us met to go through the script, I could not read it to them, for I was so ashamed, and so wrote an entire other script, a whole new story. That script is still somewhere on my laptop, in a folder somewhere and I am sure if I ever stumble upon it, then I will finally remove it. I am not sure why I would keep it, maybe because I wrote it and I finished it, so it is still my work. Then again, I would never publish it, nor would I want to adapt it. It is a reminder of an experiment, not a failed one, I feel I learnt from it, but perhaps I like the reminder of what I should not do. Much like how Coraline knows of the other side, so do I, except instead of a creepy mother imitating hers, I have an imitation of horror. Though, maybe it is not an imitation, it does bring me horror to think about and it would still fit within the genre, despite how disgusting it is. Perhaps, much like Coraline, it will forever lurk behind a folder that leads to nowhere, or maybe I will throw it down a well. Anyway, I would recommend Coraline, especially so you can show your students the movie as a reward for finishing the unit, which is something you can enjoy as the teacher as well.
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