Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl is one of the most underrated books I have read. In comparison to his other books such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I feel like this book doesn’t get as much praise as it deserves. Like his other famous books, Danny, the Champion of the World is very funny and imaginative. The story takes place around 1975 in a United Kingdom filling station (i.e., a gas station), on a country road out among empty fields and woody hills. There is a lot of traffic and the station sees a lot of business. Behind the station is a caravan in which Danny and his father live. You would think that their life was all hard work without any fun, but you would be surprised. Danny is a very clever, loyal and helpful boy. He helps his father, a mechanic, fix other people’s cars in the filling station. Danny’s father is described as “sparky” in the book, because he always comes up with amazingly interesting ideas. Like his grandfather, his father is a master poacher of pheasants and has lots of creative ways to catch them. He also has a deep, dark secret, but I’m not telling you it! Mr. Victor Hazell is an eccentric millionaire and is fairly well known. Every year, he holds a pheasant-shooting party, which allows people from miles around to travel to his estate to shoot pheasants. He is very conceited and loves his fame. His shooting party has drawn lots of wealthy people to shoot pheasants in trees and then keep the birds for themselves. Danny and his father are very poor and haven’t eaten pheasants in a long time, so they want to eat them now. Mr. Hazell is the archenemy of Danny’s father, so the father and son have to come up with a plan to stop Hazell’s big shooting party. What is Danny’s master plan for catching pheasants, and most importantly, will it work? And what makes him the Champion of the World? Find out in Danny, the Champion of the World, a fascinating novel recommended for anyone over the age of eight that will keep you turning the pages. A master storyteller, Dahl never disappoints his readers with his vivid and hilarious detailed descriptions of events. Moreover, his characters are fun, mischievous, and touching. I was especially touched by Danny’s close relationship with his father. The loving bond between them makes Danny, the Champion of the World a memorable book that tickles and warms your heart. Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1975. Buy the book here and help support Stone Soup in the process!
Young Bloggers
Poetry Soup Ep. 7 – “Folk Song” by Tomaž Šalamun
Ep. 7: “Folk Song” by Tomaž Šalamun Transcript: Hello, and welcome to Poetry Soup! I’m your host, Emma Catherine Hoff. Today, I’ll be reading “Folk Song,” a short poem by the great Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun. Tomaž Šalamun was born on July 4, 1941, in Zagreb, Croatia. He was married to the writer and journalist Marusa Krese, and then to the painter Metka Krasovec. He wrote thirty-nine books of poetry during his lifetime, nine of which were translated into English. Two of these books are, “The Collected Poems of Tomaž Šalamun” and “Woods and Chalices.” He won the European Prize for Poetry and the Pushcart Prize, among other awards. He had two children, Ana Šalamun and David Šalamun. Tomaž Šalamun was greatly influenced by the American poets Walt Whitman, Frank O’Hara, and John Ashbery, and their styles come across in his work. Tomaž Šalamun’s poem, “My First Time in New York City,” for instance, reflects the sensibility and cool fascination with New York City as so much of Frank O’Hara’s work, and his poem “History” is similar to Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” in the way that it talks about himself, saying things like, “Tomaž Šalamun is a sphere rushing through the air.” Salamun died on December 27, 2014, in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the age of 73. Most of Šalamun’s poems are short and focus on memory, experience, or poetry itself. The poem I’ll be reading today, “Folk Song,” is only eight lines. Still, there’s a lot to talk about! Many of Tomaž Šalamun’s poems have a sort of stream-of-consciousness feel or they include lots of details about many things that Šalamun sees. However, his shortest poems are often centered around just one topic, packing so much meaning into very few lines. An example of this is “Folk Song.” This poem is part of a book by Tomaž Šalamun called, “The Four Questions of Melancholy,” which was originally published in 1997. The poem was translated by Charles Simic, also an amazing poet, who died recently on January 9th. Now I’m going to read “Folk Song,” a short and beautiful poem. Every true poet is a monster. He destroys people and their speech. His singing elevates a technique that wipes out the earth so we are not eaten by worms. The drunk sells his coat. The thief sells his mother. Only the poet sells his soul to separate it from the body that he loves. In the beginning of this poem, Tomaž Šalamun writes, “Every true poet is a monster.” He goes on to explain this in the next lines. Poets are monsters because they destroy things and put them back together in a way that makes them completely different. They build new worlds after they forget about the one they live in. A poet’s “singing” is their poetry, and it reshapes the earth — however, first our own currentworld must be metaphorically obliterated. However, the poem also shows why the poet does this. As he says, the poet does this “so we are not eaten by worms.” In other words, poetry provides us with something eternal, something that can live on after we die — maybe even provide a way to continue existing after we’ve been buried in the ground. A part of you that is shared with everybody, and until people forget the poem, you are not completely gone. But this is not just the case with the poet themselves. Poetry is for everyone, and everyone is a part of it. This is the reason for the poem being titled, “Folk Song.” A folk song is a traditional song that is often from a particular culture. Tomaž Šalamun refers to poetry as “singing” in his poem already, which makes a connection between the title and the poem. Poetry is passed on and it is known to everyone, like a folk song. And in this sense it helps.us to survive. This poem is, in a way, in two parts. Though the entire poem is one stanza, the last four lines share the riddle quality of the first four, but they also seem more straight-forward. They are clear statements, meant to support the original claim made in the beginning of the poem. Out of all four of the last lines, the last two are the most interesting — “only the poet sells his soul to separate it from the body that he loves.” Again, the poem refers to poetry being something that is separate from the body, something greater than mortality. And so poetry makes us immortal, almost. It allows us to part from our physical self. But still, as much as we want to live forever, in every way possible, to live in art, we also yearn for our body. So, poetry is a problem in prompting the poet to leave their body behind, but it is also a solution, allowing people’s histories and legacies to live on. “Folk Song” is a short and sweet poem by Tomaž Šalamun about what poetry really is. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Poetry Soup, and I’ll see you with the next one!
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Reviewed by Nova, 11
Several people are kept in a cave. They have lived in the cave their entire lives, chained to the ground, watching blurry shadows dance on the stone wall in front of them. They think that this is all there is to the world. But one day, one of the captives breaks free of his bonds and leaves the cave. He is amazed by all he sees outside, but when he returns to tell the other prisoners of his findings, nobody believes him. Instead, they kill him. This story is known as the allegory of the cave. Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, wrote it in reference to his teacher, Socrates, another Greek philosopher. Socrates was sentenced to death and made to drink poison for “corrupting the youth” with his new ideas. But what would have happened if Socrates was not killed but exiled? And what if he returned one day, years and years later, to teach others about the wonders he discovered while banished? And what if Socrates and the other Athenians were not humans but seagulls? Okay, the last question probably sounds extremely weird, but this is basically the plot of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a novella written by Richard Bach and first published more than fifty years ago. At the start of the story, a seagull named Jonathan feels incomplete. Unlike the rest of the flock, he yearns for more than food. He wants to learn more about flight. He keeps experimenting, and one day learns how to fold his wings, using only his wingtips for maximum speed. After he bursts through the flock at terminal velocity, he is called forward and banished for disrupting his community. He lives a quiet, peaceful life on the Far Cliffs for many years, and then he goes to the next stage of his existence, in which he realizes his true purpose: to return to the flock and teach them the wonders of flight. I was apprehensive at first about this novella, because it starts off slowly and the action only gradually builds up. But once I warmed up to the story, I saw that it was written wonderfully, with many sensory details. I could feel Jonathan’s heartbreak, his fear, and also his euphoria whenever he discovered a new flying trick. Readers will also learn a lot about amazing aerial acrobatics and flight mechanics from the author, Richard Bach, a pilot who has written many fiction and nonfiction books about flying. Even though I am not a flight expert, I could still picture Jonathan’s aerial whirls and spins in my mind’s eye. I also enjoyed the black-and-white photographs of seagulls in flight, taken by Russell Munson, which illustrate my copy of the book. I would recommend Jonathan Livingston Seagull to eight-year-olds and up. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Macmillan Publishers, 1970. Buy the book here and help support Stone Soup in the process!
