United Kingdom Magzines

CHILDHOOD REGAINED - Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers, out May 10!

Great news -- Childhood Regained - Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers will be released world-wide on May 10 and is now ready for pre-order on Amazon. This is a compelling collection of 20 touching, yet hopeful short stories and a poem, by 19 talented writers, about various children in South Asia laboring long hours in factories, quarries, plantations, mines, and other situations.

All net proceeds go to SOS Children's Villages http://www.soschildrensvillages.ca

If you know of any middle-grade or high school teachers, school librarians, public librarians, or booksellers, please let them know that the book is on NetGalley for them to download and review. Here's the link to Childhood Regained on NetGalley: https://s2.netgalley.com/catalog/book/88226.

Please "Like" our Facebook page for this anthology for charity here: https://www.facebook.com/ChildhoodRegained/. We'll be having a release day party there on May 10, with lots of fun and giveaways!

To read descriptions of the stories and excerpts, please go to the website page for the anthology: http://www.jodierenner.com/books/anthologies/childhood-regained-stories-of-hope-for-asian-child-workers/

All 20 stories and one poem were written specifically for this anthology by writers in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Sweden, Malta, and India, and have not been published anywhere else.

Contributors: D. Ansing, Della Barrett, Hazel Bennett, Edward Branley, Fern G.Z. Carr, Tom Combs, Sanjay Deshmukh, E.M. Eastick, Peter Eichstaedt, Patricia Anne Elford, Lori Duffy Foster, Sarah Hausman, Barbara A. Hawley, Rayne Kaa Hedberg, Steve Hooley, Eileen Hopkins, Kym McNabney, Jodie Renner, Caroline Sciriha

Compiled and edited by Jodie Renner

ALL NET PROCEEDS GO TO

“The central theme of the Childhood Regained anthology concerns one of our world’s darkest yet most deeply hidden problems. These are tales that demand to be widely read, written by authors who deserve the widest possible audience. You can’t read these stories and remain passive about the current state of child labor in Asia, or anywhere, really. Strongly recommended.”
~ Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter.com

“Each well-researched story in Childhood Regained is rooted in the point of view of child workers, starting with the harsh realities of their lives and reaching hope-filled, satisfying conclusions. Yet, the contributing authors from around the world, with their unique writing styles, avoid clichéd, predictable, or overly sweet endings. For young readers, the poignant cover image and evocative sensory details in the writing will draw them into the book. They will be impacted by being exposed to the unfamiliar worlds in these transformative stories. As the characters experience hardship, then rescue, education that brings hope, and childhood joys restored, the reader may gain a new appreciation for all they have and a desire to help make a difference in the world. Highly recommended.”

~ Karen Autio, award-winning author of books for young readers: historical novels Second Watch, Saara’s Passage, and Sabotage; chapter book Kah-Lan the Adventurous Sea Otter; and picture book Growing Up in Wild Horse Canyon www.karenautio.com

Hidden in darkness and unnoticed by the rest of the world, there exists a horrible situation in South Asia - India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Millions of children as young as five, forced to work up to 16 hours a day. Barely enough food. Poor accommodations for sleep and hygiene. Working in dangerous situations – mines, quarries, factories, brickyards, and on the streets.

Governments and charitable organizations are making inroads, but poverty and natural disasters have added to the stresses that increase the number of children involved.

This collection of short stories and a poem seeks to shine light on the darkness, exposing the situation and raising awareness of the plight of these children.

You can help with your purchase of this book, as all the net proceeds will be donated to a highly respected and trusted charity that works with these children, helping them to regain their childhood, attend school, and develop skills that will allow them to live a productive life.

Available in trade paperback ($14.95 US, $18.95 CAD) and ebook ($3.95 US)
274 pages; includes illustrations

ISBN: 978-0993700446
www.CobaltBooks.net, 2016

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor, workshop presenter, judge for fiction contests, and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Captivate Your Readers, Fire up Your Fiction,and Writing a Killer Thriller. She has also published two clickable time-saving e-resources to date: Quick Clicks: Spelling Listand Quick Clicks: Word Usage. Jodie recently organized and edited two anthologies for charity: a BC-wide anthology of stories and poetry for Doctors Without Borders, called Voices from the Valleys, and Childhood Regained – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers,created to help reduce child labor in Asia. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, www.JodieRennerEditing.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Click HERE to sign up for Jodie’s occasional newsletter.

What Ideas Have You Formed About the Character of Goodman brown from the Story ‘Young Goodman Brown’

Unknown 13:02 Novel

As the name suggests Young Goodman Brown is a young mild mannered puritan who sets out of a devil mission in the forest and loses his faith in religion his innate innocence and becomes a grim man joyless, gloomy and sad. Goodman Brown is a good christian who has recently married Faith. He takes pride in his family’s history of piety and their reputation in the community as godly men. His curiosity however leads him to accept an invitation from a mysterious traveler to observe an evil ceremony in middle of the forest one that shocks and disillusions him.

What Ideas Have You Formed About the Character of Goodman brown from the Story ‘Young Goodman Brown’

At the beginning of the story Goodman Brown is headed out on a mysterious and evil journey into a dark forest. He is a family man and he is not shy about it. First he sticks his head back in the door to plant a kiss on his cute little wife and then he heads off muttering about how his forefather would totally never have taken this kind of errand: ‘my father never went into the woods on such an errand nor his father before him’. So we know that brown thinks of himself in comparison to other people specifically the ones he is related to. He doesn’t have a clear identity of his own. In fact young Goodman Brown starts off as if in a blank slate of mind representing every man. But when he meets the mysterious traveler and learns about his family’s history of wickedness he finds that his ancestors were notorious criminal. So he is not as clean as he thought himself to be for the hereditary guilt he shares.

In the forest young Goodman Brown resists villainous temptations. But we are convinced that he fails to resist them consciously or subconsciously. Goodman Brown just watches from a distance and freaks out internally. He is constantly standing in the background as Hawthorne says he ‘deemed it advisable to conceal himself within the verge of the forest’. He is not exactly a man of action.

There is a difference between standing in the background and actually taking a stand against evil. Young Goodman Brown’s actions don’t hurt many people directly. But they don’t exactly leave him on the side of good. In one moment of frenzied despair he gives himself over to ‘the instinct that guides mortal man to evil’ and starts running around like a maniac. When he finally does take a stand to ‘resist the wicked one’ it is too late. He is doomed himself to a lifetime of misery.

Young Goodman Brown doesn’t give in to the dark side of ‘wickedness’. He simply gives in to a different one the dark side of pessimism and misanthropy. He experts that at any moment the fury of the heavens will destroy the evil town of Salem.

Young Goodman Brown the protagonist of the story stands out as a vivid character as he is in the first place a loving husband a social man and a good Christian. But with the progress of the story he loses his innate goodness discovering all pervading evil around him.

Consider "Waiting for Godot" as a Play Belonging to the Theater of the Absurd

Unknown 16:02 Drama

The theater of the absurd is associated with the names of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet and Arthur Adamov. But Beckett’s contribution to this particular genre allows us to refer to him as the grand master or father of the genre. The absurd drama grew out of a sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition in the universe. The absurd dramatists take tings rationally and not romantically. It is a drama without a traditional plot, story or division into acts and senses. It has fewest possible characters. In this type of drama dialogues are very short and crisp. The playwright tries to communicate the meaninglessness of life through dialogues.

"Waiting for Godot" as a Play Belonging to the Theater of the Absurd

"Waiting for Godot": Theater of Absurd

The absurd dramatists are all concerned with the failure of communication in modern society which leaves man alienated. The characters in an absurd drama are insubstantial. They becomes significant for the symbols they represent. Things are not explained they are merely hinted at or suggested. "Waiting for Godot" of Samuel Beckett is an absurd play. This drama depicts an absolute negation of human existence. It lacks action and proper plot and the characters are tied together by a fear of being left entirely alone. We get the impression that man is totally lost in a disintegrating society. We find in this drama two tramps conversing in a repetitive strangely fragmented dialogue that bears an illusory haunting effect while they are waiting for Godot, a vague never defined being who will bring them some communication about what? Salvation ? death ? an impetus for living ? a reason for dying ? no one knows and the safest thing to say is that the two are probably waiting for someone or something which will give them an impetus to continue living or at least something which will give meaning and direction to their lives. As Beckett himself says clearly those who search for meaning will find it no quicker than those who sit and wait. The meaning about life that these tramps hope for is never stated precisely.

The audience leave the theater with the knowledge that these tramps are strangely tied to one another. Even though they quarrel and fight and even though they have exhausted all conversation, they are bound to each other. They second act is repetitive and almost identical the loneliness and weakness in each calls out to the other and they are held by a mystical bond of interdependence. The other two characters Pozzo and Lucky are on a journey offer themselves as contrasts to various activities in the modern world all of which lead to no fruitful end. Therefore each pair is hopelessly alienated from the other.

To sum up "Waiting for Godot" presents a critique of modern society by showing the total collapse of communication of man’s being forced to conform to a world of mediocrity where no action is meaningful.

Comic Treatment of Love and Marriage in “The Importance of Being Earnest”

Unknown 15:44 Drama

There are three pairs of lovers in “The Importance of Being Earnest” the love affair of jack Worthing and Gwendolen Fairfax, that of Alagernon and Cecily Cardew and on alesser level that of Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble. There is no major obstacle in the way of their love and marriage except that both Gwendolen and Cecily have fallen in love with men called Ernest. This gives rise to numerous comic situations in the play with both the girls disputing at one time that it is the same Ernest who has proposed to them. As for Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble they are both celibates who are willing to enter into matrimony at a later stage of their lives.

Comic Treatment of Love and Marriage

Jack the guardian of Cecily in the countryside assumes the name of Earnest a fictitious and reckless younger brother whose wild and wicked ways often take him to London where he gets an opportunity to court Gwendolen , the only daughter Lady Bracknell a member of British aristocracy. Gwendolen has fallen in love with Jack simply because his name is Earnest a name that ‘inspires confidence’ in her. She cannot think of marrying a person with some other name.

In much the same way Cecily has fascination for the name of Ernest even before she has met her guardian. Jack’s fictitious younger brother, Ernest who lives a dissolute life in London is the perpetual cause of anxiety to her dear uncle Jack. She has discussed his wicked ways with her governess, Miss Prism and fallen in loves with him. She has even got engaged to him on her own bought an engagement ring in his name a bangle with a lover’s knot which she promises to wear always and written several letters on his behalf to herself. She has even broken off the engagement once on account of an imaginary lover’s tiff. Algernon asks her whether she could not have loved him, if his name had been different and Cecily replies in the negative. However the tangle is resolved when both the men express their resolve to be christened as Earnest and Gwendolen praise their spirit of sacrifice.

Now the only obstacle on their way is the difficulty in obtaining the approval of lady Bracknell to their respective marriages. She objects to Jack’s marriage to her only daughter Gwendolen on account of his unknown parentage. But when the mystery of Jack’s birth is revealed he is discovered to be Algernon’s elder brother and Lady Bracknell’s nephew. Now there is no obstacle for Jack in the way of his being united with Gwendolen. Cecily, however who is passionately in love with Algernon has to face a cross examination of Lady Bracknell for her marriage to Algernon. Lady Bracnell suddenly finds Cecily charming and pretty when jack tells her that her grandfather has left a fortune for her in the funds.

There is however no such obstacle in the way of the spinster Miss Prism, Cecily’s governess and the Rector Dr. Chasuble. They are both attracted to each other only their social inhibitions present them from tying the knot.

Thus the play ends with the fulfillment of the three love affairs after the temporary obstacles on the way of the lovers whose comic behavior witty talks and trivialities remind one of the Restoration comedy of manners.