It was about this time last year that our very own Bryon Cahill wrote a lovely Happy Birthday article for George Orwell, that great British writer who brought us 1984, Animal Farm, and many, many political essays. If you want to learn about Georgie on his birthday, check out Bryon's article here. If you want some good, sound writing advice, keep reading.

Though I like Orwell, his fiction never really spoke to me in the profound way it has for so many readers. However, about two years ago I suffered a painful spell of writer's block. That's not good news for a student majoring in fiction writing. A great professor of mine gave me an Orwell essay entitled "Why I Write" for inspiration. It really helped. So, I've decided to illegally excerpt it below. I hope you enjoy Orwell's wisdom as much as I did. And, once again, Happy Birthday, Georgie Porgie.

"Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen -- in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all -- and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money .

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

4. Political purpose -- using the word "political" in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude."

The following blog entry was written by Sarah Solomon, an intern here at READ.

When most people hear the word sonnet, they automatically think of William Shakespeare, and for good reason. However, the sonnet was around way before Shakespeare was born, and continued to be modernized after his death.

Shakespeare usually wrote English sonnets, which have 14 lines and a rhyme scheme of:
[ABAB CDCD EFEF GG]
Each letter corresponds to the last word of each line. So the first and third lines will rhyme, the second and fourth lines will rhyme, etc.

This is an Italian sonnet. Though the rhyme scheme of an Italian sonnet is somewhat flexible, the first eight lines are
[ABBA ABBA]

There are other structural elements to sonnets, such as the literal structure of ideas (like an essay) and the rhythm of the words (enunciation). But that would be a whole other story.

Try writing your own sonnet!
It's harder than it looks!

The following blog entry was written by Sarah Solomon, an intern here at READ. 

Cast a cold eye

On life, on death.

Horseman, pass by!

This is the famous epitaph of William Butler Yeats, whose birthday would have been yesterday, June 13.

Poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats was an Anglo-Irishman born in Ireland in 1865. This means that he was in the Protestant ruling class in Ireland, as opposed to the Catholic lower class. In his early years he was very interested in mysticism and occultism, but later on his poetry became more realistic.

Most of his life, Yeats was in love with Maud Gonne, an Irish nationalist who did not return Yeats' feelings. Yeats was so desperate to be with her, he ended up proposing to her five times!

Yeats won the Nobel Prize in December of 1923. He is known as a symbolist poet, because most of his poetry uses symbols in order to create meaning.

He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven

 - William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-By Audrey Gamble, Grade 9

I stare up at the clouds, puffy and white
Startlingly clear and blue sky peeking through
I see figures - a dragon and a knight

Drifting up, a hot air balloon takes flight
All its colors flying so bold and true
I stare up at the clouds, puffy and white

Flawless peace, it's free of hatred and spite
Images that I mistake and construe
I see figures - a dragon and a knight

The sun is so warm, comforting and bright
Drying away all the damp morning dew
I stare up at the clouds, puffy and white

I'm breathless at such a beautiful sight
Crisp fresh air and a warm summer breeze too
I see figures - a dragon and a knight

Such a great day makes me fearful of night
But I feel content as I say adieu
I stare up at the clouds, puffy and white
I see figures - a dragon and a knight

The following blog entry was written by Sarah Solomon, an intern here at READ.

Today is Maurice Sendak's 80th birthday, so let's take some time to admire the illustrious illustrations he has done.

Maurice Sendak was born in Brooklyn on June 10th, 1928. As soon as he saw Fantasia by Walt Disney when he was 12 years old, he knew he wanted to become an illustrator.

He started illustrating other authors' children's books, and learned how to adjust his style of drawing to the other authors' writings. After a while he started writing and illustrating his own books. His two most famous works are Where the Wild Things Are (1963) and In the Night Kitchen (1970), both children's books.

Both of these books have a common theme. The protagonist, a young boy, is bored or fed up with his waking life so he travels to an imaginary place.

In Where the Wild Things Are, Max gets in trouble with his mom and is punished by being sent to his room with no supper. There his bedroom turns into a forest, and he travels to where the wild things are:

In In The Night Kitchen, Mickey dreams that he is baked into a cake by three bakers and then flies a plane made out of bread dough to the top of a giant bottle of milk. Mickey is completely naked for most of the book, and because of that, In the Night Kitchen became the 25th most challenged book between 1990 and 2000 according to the American Library Association's "list of challenged and banned books".

Both of these books have distinct illustrations with ferocious colors and beautiful drawings. Check 'em out!

In The Night Kitchen