The White Stolen Elephant(long review)

The term 'white elephant' is also used to mean an unwanted gift. Some people think the term comes from Thailand where the white elephant was considered to be sacred. When the King gave someone a gift of a white elephant they had to keep it alive at all costs. Naturally very few people wanted a gift of a white elephant.

 In this story, a white elephant is carried as a gift to the queen. Along the way, the elephant is stolen by someone. To find the thief and the elephant, they use many things, including detectives and newspapers. They spend a lot of money and desperately try to find the elephant, but they can't. Eventually the elephant is found underground, but it is already dead and its body is tattered.I can't give it to him as a gift.It's a very sad story. In the first place, I am against giving animals as gifts.Life is not a gift.

And my friend said ''White elephant means a thing that is useless and no longer needed, although it have may cost a lot of money. I was wondering about why the chief or the detectives won praise. Because the white elephant was dead and it found at basement of detectives. Did they find and hide the white elephant and also kill it?  I searched a lot about this book and read some interpretation, but I couldn't understand this story well. However, I was happy alittle because I could know white elephant means. If I didn't read this book, I couldn't that meaning ever after. ''.(Misaki.K)

～Literature circle～

I read this book in my first Literature circle, and since this was my first Artistic Adventure, I didn't know what to expect at first. But I'm good at drawing, so I thought I would use that to tell the story in a way that was easy to understand. So after reading the whole story, I drew pictures of the main points of the story and explained them in words. However, I ended up with more words than I expected, and I read the words I had written during the presentation. I didn't think that would convey much to the audience. Also, I thought I needed to think about the content of my presentation to fit the limited time per person. I couldn't give a full presentation this time because there was too much content and I couldn't make it in time. So, at the second round, I thought I would give a better presentation with less text.

Money to Burn

This story was long and I worked very hard to read it.

Here's a summary of the whole story.

At around 3pm on a stormy day, a gang of four robbers, three men and a woman, succeeded in robbing a cash truck near Portsmouth. The £500,000 notes they took were to be taken to the Bank of England to be burned. They intend to flee to London, but the weather is getting worse and worse and the roads are flooded, so they can't go on. The police know that they are in a red car, so they change cars and break into a passing farmhouse to try to find somewhere to rest. The two brothers and sisters are there to look after their father, who has gone to the hospital with his mother because he was badly injured under a fallen tree. They've gone to check on their beloved horses, and they manage to avoid a robbery.

It's a long story, but I'm glad to have a good understanding of the content.

There was a crooked man

There was a crooked man

　　And he walked a crooked mile

　　He found a crooked sixpence

　　Upon a crooked stile

　　He bought a crooked cat

　　Which caught a crooked mouse

　　And they all lived together

　　In a crooked little house.

I read the story in a picture book, but I heard the story has been turned into a song as well. This old man is said to be sung with two meanings: ''bent at the waist'' and ''twisted''. I thought it was very interesting that it had many meanings in one short song.

Chicken Licken

The sun fall on me!

Chicken Licken run to the barn. Hen Len! The sun fell on me! Shall we go and tell Cock Lock？ Chicken Licken and Hen Len ran to the farmyard.

This story has sunshine and chicken in it. It's a very easy book with a small word count and a quick read. The pictures are very cute and I enjoyed reading it. I wanted to read it for my children when I get married and raise my children in the future.

The Scarlet Letter

Before the Revolutionary War. The heroine comes across the ocean from England to the United States, a new continent. There she falls in love with the man of her dreams. The heroine was married to a man, but she became pregnant with his child. This leads to her being arrested for adultery. The film depicts a stout woman fighting for serious love. This is the main content of the work. This story has been made into a movie and it is a very famous story. The content was a bit difficult, but I learned a lot from it.

A Christmas Carol (long review)

MARLEY was dead. There is no doubt about that. The clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner signed the register at his funeral. Scrooge signed it. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Did Scrooge know he was dead? Of course he did. Scrooge and he were business partners for years. Scrooge was his only friend and his only mourner.

Scrooge was a cold, greedy, mean, old man! The cold within him froze his old face. It made his eyes red and his thin lips blue. And it spoke out in his unkind voice. A frost covered his head, his eyebrows, and his pointed chin. He iced his office, and he didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Scrooge is a greedy and bad person. He is visited by the ghost of Marley, who died seven years ago, and three spirits.

When the spirits show him his death and what he doesn't want to see, he changes his mind.

This is the general story of the book.

In this story, the main character tries to change his mind and become a good person. I thought that part of the story was very good. I also wanted to look at the bad parts of myself and become a better person.

Also, this story has been made into a movie.

 The movie was played by famous actors. Please give it a watch.

Uncle Scrooge, who appears in the Disney movie Donald, was created from the character in this book.

～Literature circle～

This is the third time I've read this book in the literature circle. I think I was able to make a good presentation in the third time by using the points I learned from the first and second times. I summarized the whole thing in pictures to make the story easier to understand. I also put the necessary amount of text in the necessary places and explained the rest of the story orally. We also researched and presented other things that have been made into movies and even related things like Disney. I think this was the best of the three literature circles we did in all.

ROBIN HOOD

“Keep your chin up, someday there will be happiness again.” 

Robin Hood was a master of the sword and the bow. For the sake of the people suffering from bad government, Robin Hood joined forces with a group of like-minded people and took up a sword. But of course, King John and his men were not sitting idly by. Thus began the battle between King John and Robin Hood, who was defending his people from the viciousness of his rule. I don't usually read a lot of these stories, so this was a new experience for me. I think it was very interesting.

Old Mother Hubbard

Old Mother Hubbard

Went to the cupboard, 

To fetch her poor dog a bone

But when she came there

The cupboard was bare

And so the poor dog had none.

She went to the baker's

To buy him some bread

But when she came back

The poor dog was dead.

It was a cute picture book and very easy to read. The story was about old mother Hubbard going shopping. At first I thought it sounded like a fun story, but then the dog dies and goes to a funeral home, which made me feel somewhat strange. In the end, the dog was playing a prank and the dog wasn't dead. I think it was interesting.

 

 

The happy prince (long review)

High above the city, on a tall columm, stands the statue of the Happy Prince. He is coverd all over with thin leaves of gold, for eyes he has two bright sapphires, and there is a large red ruby on his sword.

The title of this book is The Happy Prince. 

The author is Oscar Wilde. 

An earlier version of this book was published in 1888. The one I read is a newer version of it.

This story is about a prince who is turned into a golden statue, meets a kind-hearted swallow and saves the citizens. The prince is made of expensive gold and has sapphire eyes. He asks a swallow to deliver a piece of himself to the poor. 

Eventually, the prince is stripped of his gold and becomes dirty and is thrown away. But the angels and God saw it all. They sent them to heaven.

My favorite scene in the story is the part where the angel appears. The angel delivers the abandoned prince and the dead swallow to God, saying that they are the most beautiful things in the city. God sees the prince and the swallow's kind deeds. It's sad that they died, but I like this scene best.

I found this book interesting, and it reaffirmed to me that kindness to people is important .

Also, it's not that many words, so anyone can read it easily. For these reasons, I recommend this book, The Happy prince.

～Literature circle～

I was Artistic Adventure. I summarized the content in pictures and explained it orally. This was the second literature circle and I think I could do better than the first one. So this time we tried to increase the rate of verbal explanations by using fewer letters to better convey the content. The other members' explanations were easier to understand in the second session than the first, and I think they were very good. I thought it could have used a little more text, so I thought I would try using a little more text at the third session.