Burnett Books

Here are the essays in this book, from the table of contents:

* Introduction -- by Angelica Shirley Carpenter
* Not Just for Children: The Life and Legacy of Frances Hodgson Burnett -- by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
* A Biographer Looks Back -- by Ann Thwaite
* Rereading Little Lord Fauntleroy: Deconstructing the Innocent Child -- by Ariko Kawabata
* The Changing Mothering Roles in Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, and The Secret Garden -- by Deborah Druley
* Rats in Black Holes and Corners: An Examination of Frances Hodgson Burnett's Portrayal of the Urban Poor -- by Carole Dunbar
* The Making of a Marchioness -- by Alison Lurie
* Lady of the Manor -- by Angelica Shirley Carpenter
* "A Delicate Invisible Hand": Frances Hodgson Burnett's Contributions to Theatre for Youth -- by Barbara Jo Maier
* The Film Adaptations of Frances Hodgson Burnett's Stories -- by Paul H. Frobose
* Snugness: the Robin in Its Nest -- by Jerry Griswold
* Cultural Work: The Critical and Commercial Reception of The Secret Garden, 1911-2004 -- by Anna Lundin
* Painting the Garden: Noel Streatfeild, the Garden as Restorative, and Pre-1950 Dramatizations of The Secret Garden -- by Sally Sims Stokes
* Dreams, Imaginations, and Shattered Illusions: Overlooked Realism in Carol Wiseman's Film Adaptation of Burnett's A Little Princess -- by Lance Weldy
* Discovering the Fiction of Frances Hodgson Burnett -- by Deborah Bellew
* The Frances Hodgson Burnett Online Discussion Group: A Modern History -- by Diana Birchall
* Keeper of the Keys -- Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina interviews Penny Deupree
* A Filmography of Motion Picture Adaptations of Frances Hodgson Burnett's Stories -- by Paul H. Frobose

I am a student, of sorts, of Native American History. I stumbled upon this book by accident, and was intriged by the story summary. I was not disappointed. The author spun a tale with rich characters, history, drama and a heartwrenching ending that kept me reading till the wee hours. I also thought his Native American characters were respectfully depicted. That is very important to me. I look forward to other books by this author. If this is his usual caliber of writing, I have found a new favorite.

A much needed guide for faculty interested in formally exploring their teaching and their students' learning. The book shares a detailed approach for mapping out a plan for exploring a teaching question in one's classroom. It offers useful advice and strategies for developing an inquiry question, collecting data to support the inquiry, and then documenting the inquiry. In the development of the inquiry model (Chapter 1), the authors highlight the similarity and differences needed for making an inquiry an example of scholarly teaching versus Scholarship of Teaching and Learning work (I love the "travel guide" analogy used by the authors for describing their approach for the chapter). While the recent national emphasis on SOTL has helped re-energize the role of teaching in the academy, those of us who help direct campus efforts need to realize that not all faculty want to become a SOTL researcher. Rather many faculty simply want to become a scholarly teacher (one focused on exploring and improving their teaching and sharing their results, but not necessarily focused on making "teaching" a research area). Chapters 2 through 10 offer excellent examples of inquiry projects completed by faculty from numerous academic areas. The final chapter concludes with useful practical advice and resources for getting started with an inquiry project.

I was real pleased with my purchase. It was very well wrapped and in I was pleased with the price.

Excellant story line that leaves the reader thinking about activities in our daily lives. The story line could happen any where in the US.

I was considering this breed - this book has good info on all the characteristics of the breed.

Learning To Learn: Making Learning Work For All Students by Garry Burnett (Advanced Skills Teacher, Malet Lambert School, Hull, England) is an original and superbly organized resource designed especially for teachers of students age 11-14. Steps and sample exercises for overcoming psychological barriers, for discovering inspiration and emotional intelligence, as well as tips, tricks, and techniques for making better use of one's memory, and a great deal more are presented in a thoroughly "user friendly" format. Photocopiable exercises and a companion audio CD round out this very highly recommended treasure trove of ideas and methods for improving a student's scholarly skills.

Burnett has given us a well-rounded and accurate account of Gauguin's personal, if turbulent, life in "The Life of Paul Gauguin". Gauguin, (1848-1903), was a French-born, post-impressionist painter and he also yielded wood engravings and woodcuts. He was additionally one of the few close associates of Vincent Van Gogh, albeit the two often had an adversarial relationship, mostly due to the strong wills of both men, coupled with Van Gogh's unfortunate intermittent madness.

Some of Gauguin's artworks were primitive but all have a strong impact on those who view them. In this book, there are a dozen or so illustrations, reflective of Gauguin's various "periods," the most notable of which was his Tahitian period.

There, after tangling with Catholic missionary priests (the "real law" on these remote islands) over his propensity to always have a young island girl near at hand, he hung a hand-painted sign over his outside doorway to keep the clergy at arms-length: "...nail up some indecency in plain sight over your door; from that time forward you will be rid of all respectable people, the most unsupportable folk God has created."

The featured paintings (10 total) are rendered in black and white and cropped just a bit, probably a common caveat of the printing industry in 1937 when this book was published, but they are still quite good and help in telling Gauguin's life story. The author, Burnett, was clearly an admirer of Gaugin's works and perhaps of his outlook on life as well. This actuality serves to make the book that much better, due to Burnett's enthusiasm for the topic.

As a scholarly work, there's not much in regard to either footnotes or endnotes. However, in his foreword, Burnett does credit various sources. A nice index is helpful in locating specific topics.

This older biography reads like a good novel and is clearly all about an interesting and talented fellow -- I recommend it to all.

A Little Princess follows the story of Sara Crewe, a young girl whose mother died when she was a baby and who has been sent to bording school. She has the finest clothes and toys and anything she wants but isn't spoiled (the story is a fairy tale, by the way). She imagines herself as a princess and wants to be kind wise and just. She does good deeds as her way of "scattering largess to the population." This results in her being the social butterfly of the bording school and earns her the animosity of its queen bee. All this changes in an instant when her fortune is lost and she becomes a scullery maid in the same boarding school. She works all day, sleeps in an unheated attic, and is underfed. She now imagines herself as a princess in disguise, and continues to try and do good deeds for anyone less fotunate. But now she has another identity too - a soldier, like her father, who must live on rations and bravely face each day.

I didn't find this book to be overly sappy and sentimental, but it got close to the borderline at times. There were plenty of discussions of dolls and lacey dresses and ribbons. I read this as an adult. I guess these are supposed to appeal to little girls who want to have a little princessy playground and so would love to read about ribbons, but I think descriptions of lace would have put me off as a child as well. Like I said, these only get borderline sappy, probably because Sara soon becomes penniless and enters the lower class. As a scullery maid she experiences hunger, phsychological abuse from the bording school mistress, and a grinding work schedule. This is not sugar coated for the children, but it isn't the focus either. The focus is on Sara's internal thoughts, her relationships with her few loyal student friends, and what she thinks of the neighbors and the new people she meets and things she sees. So even though there is all this poverty it is there as a setting and not because the author has an axe to grind. Even the ending is fairy tale, but partly bitter-sweet. Strangely enough, this book came across as realistic.

This is a children's book, but functions as a book for adults as well. For example, the estate agent's diplomacy in getting Sara hired by the bording school after she is found to be penniless has some subtlties that are going to be more real for older readers.

I recommend this book to all. It is a children's book that works for adults too. It skirts the border of sappy, but for me didn't cross over at any point. It was a good story that I read through quickly and did not get bored with or bogged down by.

A Little Princess follows the story of Sara Crewe, a young girl whose mother died when she was a baby and who has been sent to bording school. She has the finest clothes and toys and anything she wants but isn't spoiled (the story is a fairy tale, by the way). She imagines herself as a princess and wants to be kind wise and just. She does good deeds as her way of "scattering largess to the population." This results in her being the social butterfly of the bording school and earns her the animosity of its queen bee. All this changes in an instant when her fortune is lost and she becomes a scullery maid in the same boarding school. She works all day, sleeps in an unheated attic, and is underfed. She now imagines herself as a princess in disguise, and continues to try and do good deeds for anyone less fotunate. But now she has another identity too - a soldier, like her father, who must live on rations and bravely face each day.

I didn't find this book to be overly sappy and sentimental, but it got close to the borderline at times. There were plenty of discussions of dolls and lacey dresses and ribbons. I read this as an adult. I guess these are supposed to appeal to little girls who want to have a little princessy playground and so would love to read about ribbons, but I think descriptions of lace would have put me off as a child as well. Like I said, these only get borderline sappy, probably because Sara soon becomes penniless and enters the lower class. As a scullery maid she experiences hunger, phsychological abuse from the bording school mistress, and a grinding work schedule. This is not sugar coated for the children, but it isn't the focus either. The focus is on Sara's internal thoughts, her relationships with her few loyal student friends, and what she thinks of the neighbors and the new people she meets and things she sees. So even though there is all this poverty it is there as a setting and not because the author has an axe to grind. Even the ending is fairy tale, but partly bitter-sweet. Strangely enough, this book came across as realistic.

This is a children's book, but functions as a book for adults as well. For example, the estate agent's diplomacy in getting Sara hired by the bording school after she is found to be penniless has some subtlties that are going to be more real for older readers.

I recommend this book to all. It is a children's book that works for adults too. It skirts the border of sappy, but for me didn't cross over at any point. It was a good story that I read through quickly and did not get bored with or bogged down by.