So Dear to My Heart: An Animal Lover’s Disney Classic
So Dear to My Heart is a Walt Disney classic that is less well known than it probably should be. Produced in 1948, it combines the best of Disney mediums – animation, and live-action –…
Category: Literary & Media Analysis
It’s a Beautiful Day: The Impact of Mister Rogers on My Life, My Writing, and the World
“There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” When I was five years old, laying…
Growing Up with Disney’s “Robin Hood”
My first encounters with the legends of Robin Hood are, in many ways, the memory of my own maturing, realizing things for the first time which have characterized my understanding of the world around me.…
Tolkien and Shakespeare: Counterparts and Comparisons
Tolkien hated Shakespeare. Pity, as they’re two of my favourite authors. Humphrey Carpenter says that Tolkien felt that Shakespeare – whom he disliked from schooldays – missed a big opportunity in Macbeth when a wood…
Morality vs the Written Word
A while back a question was asked in one of my writing groups and, as it’s not the first time I’ve seen a question of this nature when thumbing through the posts, I decided it…
My Approach to Suzan Lori-Park’s “Venus”
Venus is a drama play written by African American writer Suzan Lori-Parks in 1996. It is based on the true story of Sarah Baartman’s life. Sarah was an African native, belonging to Khoi people, who…
The Virtues of Loyalty and Obedience in Tolkien’s Stories
Loyalty, or in other words, faithfulness is one of the main themes of both Tolkien’s Middle-earth novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Undoubtedly, one of the main constituents of loyalty is solidarity…
The Journey of My Life in Books
I haven’t always been that interested in reading. In fact, up until I was about 16 years old, I was very resistant to reading books (a factor probably resulting from my dyslexia, which I wasn’t…
If You Really Need to Remake: Stories Worthy of the Effort
With all the remakes and reboots we’ve been getting lately of well-known and beloved classics, I figured it was time to look up some lesser-known or not so well done movies that should get remade.…
My Fat Dad: A Memoir of Food, Love and Family
“I was not your typical kid, and my parents were not your typical parents, and the combination of our unique quirks and habits was extremely toxic and unsettling,” writes Dawn Lerman in her wonderful book,…