Chris Van AllsburgBesprekingen
Auteur van The Polar Express
Besprekingen
The Polar Express door Chris Van Allsburg
"And Mr Einstein, who is the smartest man in the whole history of the world, he has proved -- absolutely proved -- that time is just another dimension, just like space. Time is what happens when you can go up and down, side to side, in and out, and before and after." So, tells Gilbert his incredulous friends Neils, Erwin and Emmy.
Like any good story, ” Another Time, Another Place ” by Cory Doctorow delivers on both, entertainment and depth. Within a setting we can picture vividly, the young protagonist and friends remind us poignantly of our own childhood. Its youthful actors are characteristically curious and inquisitive and such is their interaction with their wondrous world. Their nimble - unbiased by the established - minds make perceptions change with the power of their imagination, to having us worried whether, indeed, we have already succumbed to the most wide-spread of all adult-onset diseases, the calcification of thinking. If you are willing to dig deeper you will find layers of meanings buried within Cory Doctorow’s masterpiece. For when we finally get to the crux of the matter, the fundamental, underlying principle of the universe, we find ourselves not only questioning our own encrusted perceptions of reality but also in awe of a tapestry that only the intertwining strands of physics and analytic philosophy can weave – a cosmology that is more fantastic that any myth or folktale. - If our scientist and philosophers are right that is. Notwithstanding that, ultimately, “Another Time, Another Place”, does perhaps what matters most, it teaches us the value of the philosophic though experiment and admonishes us not to succumb to the one-tracked, monolithic procedural of academia. Scientific breakthroughs are enabled through paradigm shifts, denied without a fundamental change of perception and impossible to attain without a faculty of wonder.
Our hero Gilbert and the character of Emmy show us the contrast between flexibility and rigidness, the wonder of expanding the mind and bowing to the established. Unlike Emmy who represents the conservative, Gilbert is equality endowed with faculty of wonder and flexibility of perception when he makes himself experience time as space. In doing so he overcomes the common and unfortunately false perception that space is different from time and adopts the true physical reality of space-time according to Albert Einstein. This new perception opens a whole new avenue of possibility.
Imagine your mind can perceive the physics of space-time enabling you to travel in time just as we do in space. As your mind accepts and assimilates the similarity of space and time you may travel not only backwards in time but most importantly sideways.
To trigger Einstein's perception of space-time, Gilbert needs both, the faculty of wonder and perhaps a bit more mundane, a hand car and rails to make time analogous to space. To Gilberts delight his thought experiment becomes reality, and he finds that even though there are no pathways allowing continuous movement between the parallel rails of the multiverse - after all this is not Newton's perception of reality anymore but the Bohr-Einsteinian universe and beyond- akin to the teleporting discontinuous quantum-jumping electron he is able to make his own discontinuous jumps from handcar to handcar, from universe to universe. The realm of all the infinite alternative “what-might-have-beens”, in his grasp, the death of his beloved father, the motivating factor to his handcar journey, can be undone.
Last but not least, if the concepts and prospects within Doctorow’s short story appeal to you, you may want to give Jack Finney’s “Time and again” a try. Finney’s novel expands on Doctorow’s short story providing great entertainment scaffolded by Einstein’s concepts of relativity and space-time.
Intentionally dreamy and surreal this book takes you on a ship through the sky that crashes back to shore. Its more like an art book that is narrated than it is a narration that is illustrated.
The story itself is more of an obvious childish fancy within the story with the animals and elements showing up and causing a little light mayhem, but nothing that particularly inconveniences the kids and their game. It's more of the chaos and detritus the parents will discover, if it remains after the game is over.
I'm seriously impressed by how much original material went into the film script and the general tone and scale of the movie in general. It's a completely different animal and both are magical and very much their own things.
The art itself is something else! It's all in a black and white, almost photo realistic style with surrealistic elements that fill each illustration with disconcertingly visceral and bizarre whimsy that will delight children and wonderfully perturb adults. I truly recommend checking this book and/ or the art online because it truly is spectacular!
Contains Guidance On:
Book Summary
Special Features
Find Fritz
Summary of Teaching Ideas
Guiding Questions for a Wreck of the Zephyr Read-Aloud
Strengthening our Descriptions for the Setting by Adding Details About the Weather
Decide for Yourself: Dealing with Ambiguity in Books We Read
Just For Fun
• New York Times Best Illustrated
Children's Book of the Year
• ALA Notable Book for Children
• Booklist Editors' Choice
• IRA Teachers' Choice
"The full-color pastel drawings are the
work of a master: stunning, luminescent,
and conveying a sense of the mystical and
magical." — Publishers Weekly
There is another story -- the story of a boy and his obsessive desire to be the greatest sailor, the story of a storm that carried the boy and his boat to a place where boats glide like gulls high above the water and not upon it.
Chris Van Allsburg tells that story of the boy and his boat, the Zephyr, in words and haunting, full-color pastel paintings. His sailboats sail the night sky with the stars in pictures so vivid that the reader can almost hear the wind in the sails. Here is a work of unusual artistry that will enchant readers of all ages for many years to come.
The illustrations of Chris Van Allsburg are always beautifully rendered in crisp, clear images.
The book begins with two brothers who are nasty to each other, and it ends with the brothers who now choose to relate in a loving manner.
I liked the illustrations, but felt the story line was not as good as other books by this author.
Taking the book back to their home and playing the game truly was an adventure wherein real-life lions, monkeys, a guide, two rhinos, and a large phyton. When a volcano erupted leaving lots of hot steam, the children become anxious. When each dice of two, rolling the number 12 occurred, suddenly everything returned to its natural order.
I've watched the movie, but, until now, never read the book. It is delightful, and like all of Allsubugh's books, the illustrations are stunningly clear and beautiful.
When the word is out from the queen that she is sure there is no taste like those found in the current crystal. Longing to please, the ants go on a quest to find many of these tidbits. In their stubborness and need to consume all they can, the two ants journey to a land where they find unknown objects and could harm them at every turn.
Greed and longing to possess more and more and more, the ants find themselves floating in the sink amid the dishes. Danger awaits them at every step.
Fun, creative and a wonderful lesson in selfishness and over consumption.
Three Stars
And I know there is an allegory in here somewhere. But it's really hard to find.
Yeah I didn't get it.
That's basically the gist. I wish I could say more about it. But honestly, I'm not fan.
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