A genre that glorifies brutish masculinity and late Victorian imperialism, boys' 'lost world' adventure fiction has traditionally been studied for its politically problematic content. While attuned to these concerns, this Element approaches the genre from a different angle, viewing adventure fiction as not just a catalogue of texts but a corpus of books. Examining early editions of Treasure Island, King Solomon's Mines, and The Lost World, the Element argues that fin-de-siècle adventure fiction sought to resist the nineteenth-century industrialisation of book production from within. As the Element points out, the genre is filled with nostalgic simulations of material anachronisms – 'facsimiles' of fictional pre-modern paper, printing, and handwriting that re-humanise the otherwise alienating landscape of the modern book and modern literary production. The Element ends by exploring a subversive revival of lost world adventure fiction that emerged in response to ebooks at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their adaptations, and also attending to the wide range of his published work. Twenty-first-century readers, television viewers, and moviegoers know Arthur Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the world's most recognizable fictional detective. Holmes's enduring popularity has kept Conan Doyle in the public eye. However, Holmes has taken on a life of his own, generating a steady stream of critical commentary, while Conan Doyle's other works are slighted or ignored. Yet the Holmes stories make up only a small portion of Conan Doyle's published work, which includes mainstream and historical fiction; history; drama; medical, spiritualist, and political tracts; and even essays on photography. When Doyle published - whatever the subject - his contemporaries took note. Yet, outside of the fiction featuring Sherlock Holmes, until recently relatively little has been done to analyze the reception Conan Doyle's work received during his lifetime and since his death. This book examines both academic and popular assessments of Conan Doyle's work, giving pride of place to the Holmes stories and their many adaptations for print, visual, and online media, but attending to his other contributions to turn-of-the-twentieth-century culture as well. The availability of periodicals and newspapers online makes it possible to develop an assessment of Conan Doyle's (and Sherlock Holmes's) reputation among a wider readership and viewership, thus allowing for development of a broader and more accurate portrait of Doyle's place in literary and cultural history.
In Defense of the Empire / ****'s (Star's) ADVENTURE - Book 3 is the third book in the series for readers age 9 to 14 and older. It continues the saga of the hero THAT YOU, THE READER, MUST NAME. For this adventure our young hero will have to travel far from his valley. A seafaring man, Sinksalot, has come to the village near the Palace to see what kind of place it is. Someday he will retire from the sea and is looking for a good place to live in retirement. He has a wonderful dream. He has had this dream for many, many years and yet is still unfulfilled. **** learns of Sinksalot's dream while visiting some friends and gets very excited about it. He meets Sinksalot in the town square and before long a new adventure is in the making. This adventure is like no other **** has experienced. He must endure situations with a huge reptile, the big cats, deep water, powerful explosions and more. Our hero will have to deal with dangers that he cannot possibly imagine. One of these dangers includes a marvelous new boat. A boat like no other that is known. All that, plus adding his part in saving the neighboring Emperor's throne from being taken away by a greedy and evil thinking Baron, makes for a really good adventure. There are many new and colorful characters. Just as in the two previous books in the series, this book has many words that may be new to the younger reader. They are in bold print and are explained in the glossary at the end of the story. Text boxed "life lessons" are written throughout the story too. WHAT WILL YOUR NAME FOR **** BE? Happy hours of enjoyable reading are just ahead.
In 432 BCE they think Themistokles is dead. Suzanne is drawn through thousands of years to help him live. Will his destiny be death or glory at Olympia? Will she regain control of her life in the present, or will her mind be occupied forever by the past? Themistokles, Themis to his friends, is recovering from a head injury and has lost his memory. Everything is bewildering - who is he? Why is his left hand swollen? Where does he live? Everything is intriguing - how is he different from what he was like before? Are his brushes with disaster just coincidence? And why does he have such odd dreams, like a tablet with coloured lights instead of a wax surface? Meanwhile, Suzanne, a teenage English schoolgirl and athlete, is in a coma in 2010 after a street collision in Athens. She is flown home unconscious, but is 'dreaming' Themis' life. Through her, we follow him to Olympia to work with his uncles on the huge gold and ivory statue of Zeus. We attend the 87th Ancient Olympic Games. We learn the solution to the mystery of Themis' father's death and the goddess Athena's dues. This time-slip story gathers pace and intricacy against a background of thorough but unobtrusive research. Timeless themes of sporting ambition, family duty versus self-realisation, and the confirmation of identity, underlie the humour, action and adventure of memorable characters, some of whom really existed in 5th Century BCE Greece. The Boy in Two Heads is Book 1 of The Connection Trilogy which follows the parallel fortunes of Themistokles and Suzanne as they become adults in their respective environments. Will their connection help or hinder them as they struggle to survive the invisible forces that affect their very different lives? Can it be controlled? And will it ever be explained?
How is academia portrayed in children's literature? This Element ambitiously surveys fictional professors in texts marketed towards children. Professors are overwhelmingly white and male, tending to be elderly scientists who fall into three stereotypes: the vehicle to explain scientific facts, the baffled genius, and the evil madman. By the late twentieth century, the stereotype of the male, mad, muddlehead, called Professor SomethingDumb, is formed in humorous yet pejorative fashion. This Element provides a publishing history of the role of academics in children's literature, questioning the book culture which promotes the enforcement of stereotypes regarding intellectual expertise in children's media. The Element is also available, with additional material, as Open Access.
A brilliant but untested young general, Hannibal of Carthage, is about to embark on an audacious war against powerful Rome, the enemy who defeated his father and threatens the future of his city. An orphaned boy, Nahatum, is caught stealing from Hannibal's tent and is about to be executed by the guards. Instead, Hannibal finds himself unexpectedly charmed by the boy and - just as surprisingly -makes Nahatum his servant as he begins a risky, seemingly impossible, plan to invade Italy. Hannibal's learned scribe teaches the clever boy to read and write and so Nahatum comes to know about a world beyond the unrelenting brutality of Hannibal's quest. Becoming literate changes everything for Nahatum. Over time he becomes torn between his loyalty to the man who has saved his life and his desire to escape the seemingly endless war. At the moment of Hannibal's greatest-and bloodiest-victory, Nahatum makes a fateful decision that will shape the rest of his life. Both a military adventure novel and an unusual father- son story, the Wolf Boy brings to life all the drama of the second Punic war between Rome and Carthage, a pivotal moment in the history of the West, as well as the deeply personal stories of two people -a great General and an orphaned boy-- trying to find meaningful, reflective lives while caught up in chaotic times beyond their control. In both his fiction and non-fiction, Sam Osherson has explored the complexities of men's lives-- their love for and fear of women and the feminine, their attraction to war and the thrill of battle, their desire for family, and their yearning for the hero's quest. Of particular interest to Osherson has been the complex relationship between father and son. The story of Hannibal's heroic efforts to redeem his father's legacy and secure the future of his doomed city has fascinated Osherson since high school when he first came across a book in his town library about the Alps, elephants, and an extraordinary army leader rolling the dice in a most unexpected way. He has spent time in Tunisia, site of the ancient city of Carthage, and visited parts of what may have been Hannibal's route crossing the Alps. He has taught at the Harvard Medical School, University of Massachusetts, Harvard University, MIT, as well as the Fielding Graduate University.
his story involves a 12 year old boy who lives in Possidonia, a rural seaside village near Athens in the late 1920s. The boy lives with his grandfather and loves to swim in the sea with dolphins. One day while diving he finds an old box which happens to contain a map. This sets him on a journey, once he's a bit older, to search for an island. There he hopes to find his treasure. His journey becomes quite perilous, taking him to places and seeing sights that he could never have foreseen. Because of this he needs to develop his powers and seek help from others. At times he is unsure if he will ever complete his quest and wonders if it's all worth the effort. However, what waits for him down his chosen path proves to be both wondrous and amazing. Join Dimitri as he seeks his treasure and is forced to mature along the way. The story contains many twists and turns that match his difficult journey. The pace of this novel is heightened by the sense of adventure as you marvel at Dimitri's strength and courage in the face of adversity.
