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BOOK REPORT

FILIPINOS ARE NOT BOOK LOVERS


By Arelene Babst-Vokey

Characters:
Arlene Babst-Vokey - The Author/First persona
Filipino

STORY:
Some years ago, a friend of mine observed that in Japan, the bookshop seemed
to be the most popular feature of practically every street block. While in the
Philippines, instead of bookshop, it was the beauty parlor vying closely with the
sari-sari store.
In commiseration, I made the wistful remark that at the turn of the century in
London, Virginia Woolf was already making good money doing just book reviews
for newspapers and periodicals, and through her highly rarefied novels and
short stories, some of which became bestsellers of her lifetime.
In sad contrast, almost a century after Ms. Woolf was able to support herself
with her writing, Filipino writers would starve if he or she depended solely on
literary writing.
The problem is Filipinos hate solitude. Count the number of Filipinos you know
who enjoy being alone, and being in a book. For them, its absolutely terrifying.
Reading a book requires time and patience; endurance, if need be. It isnt over
in an hour or two like movies or television shows. And Filipinos with our
ningas-cogon tendencies, like our entertainment fast and light, have suitably
short attention span.

Furthermore, books deal with ideas, worked out mainly through characters
and plots. There is always some horrid symbolism lurking somewhere, and the
conflict of one system of thought against another. However for most of us, we
prefer our conflicts played out among personalities rather than in ideasits
much easier that way and more exciting. Ideas can be so dull.

THE LITTLE PRINCE

By Antoine Marie Roger de Saint-Exupery

Characters:
The narrator
The narrator is really the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupry. The reader
hears his voice throughout the book as he relates the story of the Little
Prince and of his own friendship with him. The narrator says plainly that
he is a romantic who does not like adults, whom he finds too practical;
instead, he prefers children, whom he finds natural and delightful. The
narrator writes this story of his encounter with the Little Prince in order
to deal with the sorrow of losing his precious friend.
The Little Prince
The novel is named after the Little Prince, who is a mystical and loveable
person. He is the sole inhabitant of a small planet, which the narrator
refers to as B-612. The Prince leaves his planet to visit other places and
finally lands on Earth. In the Sahara Desert, he meets the narrator and
befriends him. The narrator tells of his encounter with the Prince and
also relates the adventures of the Prince on the other asteroids that the
latter has visited.
The fox
The Little Prince meets the fox in the desert. The fox is a wise creature,
which teaches the Prince about the essence of life. After they become
friends, the fox asks the Little Prince to tame him, which is what the
latter does.

Settings:
The book is not set in a particular period or in one specific place. In the first
chapter the narrator writes about his childhood experiences with drawings and
about his low opinion of adults. In the second chapter the narrator starts
narrating a particular series of incidents. He writes of the time when his plane

crashed in the desert of Sahara six years ago. Most of the narrative after the
second chapter is set in the desert. The other places that function as settings
include the asteroid where the Little Prince has his home and the planets that
the Little Prince visits, including asteroids 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, and 330.
The last planet that he visits is the Earth, where he meets the narrator in the
Sahara Desert. The story is really about the narrators friendship with the
Little Prince and about the Princes own quest, which takes him to seven
planets apart from his own.

STORY:
A fox appears, and the little prince asks the fox to play with him because he is
so unhappy. The fox replies that he cannot play because he is not tamed. After
a while, the little prince asks what the meaning of "tamed" is, and the fox
explains that to tame is to establish ties, meaning that if they are tamed, then
the fox and the boy will need each other and become unique in each other's
eyes, despite all the other boys and foxes in the world. The little prince says
that he believes there is a flower who has tamed him. The fox discusses his
monotonous life of hunting chickens and being hunted by men, and he asks
the little prince to tame him so that his life might have more meaning. The fox
teaches the little prince how to observe the proper rites and tame him, and the
little prince does so. When the little prince is about to leave one day, the fox
says that he will cry, but that being tamed has nonetheless done him good
because the color of the wheat-grain will now always remind him of the little
prince's hair. The fox tells the little prince to go observe the bed of roses again,
and this time the little prince tells the roses that they are not at all like his rose
at home because no one has tamed them, and so they are empty. The little
prince then returns to the fox to say goodbye. As they part, the fox tells him a
secret: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is
invisible to the eye." The little prince realizes that he is responsible for his rose.

STAR QUALITY
By Debra Ollivier

CHARACTERS:

Narrator
The Little Prince

STORY:
More than 50 million copies of The Little Prince have been sold since
its publication in 1943, the year before its authors disappearance; every year
an additional 1 million copies are
bought. The book has been translated into 102 languages and dialects,
including Esperanto, Congolese and Sardinian. Several film versions have
been produced (a Paramount film with Bob Fosse and Gene Wilder, and a
Nickelodeon cartoon series, among others), and the likeness of the little
prince can be found on the new French 50-franc bill, on CD-ROMs and
videos, and on bed linen, watches, address books, figurines, dolls,
wallpaper, postcards, backpacks, notebooks and keychains.
Editors at Gallimard, Frances biggest publisher and home to The Little
Prince, are stumped by the books unflagging success over the decades. We
really cant explain the phenomenon, says Philip Lezaud. Its one of
those mysteries. The book has an aura about it. It is almost inexplicable.
Indeed, how does a seemingly simple tale about an infinitely melancholic
little boy on a tiny asteroid compete in the antic and overcrowded zoo of
childrens marketing?
Grown-ups are perplexing at best, and downright dangerous at
worst. In the celebrated first paragraph of the book, our narrator explains
how, as a young child frustrated by adults consistently misconstruing his
drawing of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant as a picture of a hat, he gave
up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter to pursue the
sensible professions endorsed by adults. In so doing, he surrendered his
own powers of childlike vision. Alas, he says, unable to see through the
walls of boxes like the little prince, the odd yellow-haired child who appears
before him one morning in the Sahara desert, I am a little like the grown-ups.
I have had to grow old.
Cast upon our planet only to find that the Earth is nonsensical and as
curiously bleak as his own desolate asteroid, its no small wonder that the little
prince is sad. In fact, he is filled with unrequited longing and nostalgia. His
melancholy is so expansive that even the narrator is stricken by an undefinable

sense of grief, and it is this very sadness that


challenges the persistent notion that children are, and must be at all
times, happy.
The little prince, in his quest for meaning in a seemingly
meaningless world, offers children something that falls between the artifice of
entertainment and the disappointments of the real world, a tiny foothold on
the slippery shoals of reality. In this he bears the stamp of the country
and time that bore him: Saint-Exupry and Jean-Paul Sartre were
contemporaries, after all, and so was Martin Heidegger, who called The
Little Prince one of the great existential books of the century.

THE VELVETEEN RABBIT


By Margery Williams

CHARACTER:

Velveteen Rabbit
Skin Horse
Nana
Nursery Magic Fairy
Boy

STORY:
A stuffed rabbit sewn from velveteen is given as a Christmas present to a small
boy. The boy plays with his other new presents and forgets the velveteen rabbit
for a time. These presents are modern and mechanical, and snub the oldfashioned velveteen rabbit. The wisest and oldest toy in the nursery, the Skin
Horse, who was owned by the boy's uncle, tells the rabbit about toys magically
becoming Real due to love from children. The rabbit is awed by this idea;
however, his chances of achieving this wish are slight.
One night the boy's Nana gives the rabbit to the boy to sleep with, in place of a
lost toy. The rabbit becomes the boy's favourite toy, enjoying picnics with him in
the spring, and the boy regards the rabbit as 'REAL'. Time passes, and the
rabbit becomes shabbier, but happy. He meets some real rabbits in the
summer, and they learn that he cannot hop as they do, and say that he is not
real.
One day, the boy becomes sick with scarlet fever, and the rabbit sits with him
as he recovers. The doctor orders that the boy should be taken to the seaside,
and that his room should be disinfected, and all his books and toys burnt including the velveteen rabbit. The rabbit is bundled into a sack and left out in
the garden overnight, where he sadly reflects on his life with his boy. The toy
rabbit cries and a real tear drops onto the ground, and a marvellous flower
appears. A fairy steps out of the flower and comforts the velveteen rabbit,
introducing herself as the nursery magic fairy. She says that because he is old
and shabby and Real, she will take him away with her and "turn [him] into
Real" - to everyone.
The fairy takes the rabbit to the forest, where she meets the other rabbits and
gives the velveteen rabbit a kiss. The velveteen rabbit changes into a real rabbit,
and joins the other rabbits in the forest. The next spring, the rabbit returns to
look at the boy, and the boy sees a resemblance to his old velveteen rabbit.

TONIGHT I CAN WRITE

By Pablo Neruda

CHARACTER:
Boy who love a girl

STORY:
A boy who love a girl. He loved her but sometimes she loved him too. He
feel like he lost her. What does it matter that his love could not keep her and
she is not with him. Hes soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. His sight tries
to find her as though to bring her closer, His heart looks for her but she is not
with him. They are no longer the same. He was no longer love her. He
remember her voice, her bright body and her infinite eyes. He doesnt know if
He no longer love her but sometimes he love her. Love is so short; Forgetting is
long.

LEARNING WHAT WAS NEVER TAUGHT (AN EXCERPT)


By Sabine Reichel

CHARACTER:
Adolf Hitler

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