Reading Seminar: Fantasy

This week, I invited students from Year 10 and A-Level English classes to attend a reading seminar where we were to discuss the much-maligned genre of Fantasy.

Ella, Maggie, Nekita and Jacob were brilliant at unpicking the successes and failures of the genre; the reason for its snobbish rejection by critics; the reason for the abundance of sequels authors seem to find necessary! We chose our favourite ‘monsters’, rejecting Tolkien’s assertion that fantasy is filled with heroes, but lacking in great villains!

If you’re looking for a summer read, our students recommend: Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, Sanderson’s The Way of Kings and King’s The Dark Tower series!

It was lovely to discuss the novels not studied in our classrooms… 

I hope we have more voices joining us in the new academic year when we will be looking at a series of short extracts from novels that use anthropomorphosis to engage readers in the lives of animals.

Pick up a pre-read from Room 23 in the last week of the school year if you wish to join us for that discussion. I will provide tea and biscuits!

Miss C Spencer