TY Extended Essay: Childhood & Parenthood

In another in the series of excellent recent Transition Year Extended Essays, here is Darcy Maule's. She wrote on the theme of childhood and parenthood in three books, and explains in her introduction:

"The three books I chose for my extended essay are We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and In the Blood; A Memoir of My Childhood by Andrew Motion. After completing all three of my books, I was very pleased with what I had chosen. I was fairly certain I wanted to read We Need to Talk about Kevin from the beginning as I had heard of it before and the whole concept of the book sounded so appealing to me for my essay that I had to read it. When I had established that I was reading this book, my theme was clear to me; childhood and parenthood. However it is a broad theme, I wanted to especially focus on the psychological aspect of the theme as it a subject that I have always been so curious about and thought that this essay was the perfect excuse to study this in depth through reading my books.

All three books are told in the first person narrative. We Need to Talk about Kevin is told from the point of view of the mother of a boy called Kevin who is the killer in a high school massacre. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is narrated by a boy called Christopher who has Asperger’s syndrome. The book is written in the most interesting way and includes maths puzzles, diagrams and pictures. In the Blood is an autobiography of the author, Andrew Motion’s childhood.
 
All three of the books are very different, but they are all about the same period; childhood. I thought that because they were so different it would be really interesting to compare them as childhood is such an important time in someone’s life. It shapes you to be the person you will become and it sets a base for your entire life. It truly is the most fascinating period of someone’s life as the amount you learn in your first 10 years or so of your life will be more than you ever will learn."

Read Darcy's full essay here.

Extended Essay: Sutcliff, Steinbeck, Hosseini

For his Transition Year Extended Essay, Andrew Holt wrote about war and conflict in three books: The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck and Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. 

You can read Andrew's excellent essay about these novels with very different backgrounds via Issuu below. Click once for a close view, once more for the closest, and navigate by using the arrows.

Extended Essay: Hemingway, Remarque, Faulks

The second in a series of the best literary Extended Essays written by our Transition Year pupils: Liza Kozhevnikova wrote about war from the point of view of men fighting in it. She looked at Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western World and Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.

She writes: "These three books are linked together by a theme, and they also are all set during the First World. I chose my three books so that they will be set in different places and written in different countries, because it gives me a point of view on the war of men from different countries."

Read Liza's full essay here.

Extended Essay: Salinger, Bryson, Ishiguro

Last term Transition Year pupils completed their major literary Extended Essays. Over the next while some of the best will be appearing here.

First, a fine piece by Harvey McCone. In his introduction, he writes

"I always had a big interest in books when I was younger. In fact I used to read almost a book every week. Many of these books, probably the vast majority, were about children. I was obsessed with books about young boys who were heroes such as The Alex Rider books by Anthony Horowitz and The Young Bond books by Charlie Higson. I wanted to be the characters in these books. I also found it easy to connect with them and to form feelings for them. And I suppose this interest has stayed with me ever since.

As soon as Mr. Girdham described what Never Let Me Go was about to the class, I was instantly hooked. An alternate world where child clones exist is something that I would always want to have read about. I had heard about the book before but I had never known it was about clones! So that was my first choice. Next I had to find a second book. While reading through the list of recommended books, I stumbled across a book that sounded strange. It was The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. When I found it and read the back I was so happy. For some weird reason I am fascinated by everything to do with 50’s America. The cars, the music, the cinemas and theatres, the fast food restaurants and many other aspects of life. So to find a book that was an autobiography of a man’s childhood in 50’s America was also a perfect match.

Then I had to try and find a theme that I could connect these two books with before I chose my third book. This theme was childhood and growing up or coming of age The third book I chose was The Catcher In The Rye. It takes place once again in America in the mid-20th century. It is about a boy who is attending a boarding school. It is interesting because Holden is not a very ‘normal’ boy. His way of thinking is a little different."

Read Harvey's full essay here.