Reading and enjoying The Canterville Ghost

Some of my 2nd year ESO students (Compulsory Secondary Education) have read and enjoyed Oscar Wilde´s The Canterville Ghost.  They have drawn some comics, an amusing tool to foster their written expression and communicative skills, and searched about the great Irish writer´s work. Good excuse today, Saint Patrick´s Day, to show it to you.

"Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin. After that he wrote lots of plays like The Duchess of Padua, poems like Ravenna and tales like The Canterville Ghost." (Irene Cagigas)

"Nobody wanted to live in that house because they said that it was haunted. But Americans are very practical and the Otis family didn´t believe in ghosts" (Selena Martín)

"The tale teaches you many lessons but it is disappointing too." (Sara Cecín)

"Strange things happen and it´s exciting." (Nahia Martínez)

"It´s fantastic to practice my reading in English." (Paula Arce)

"When you read you feel in another place. With books you can travel around the world. When we read we can´t see the words, we see pictures, we see the story in our head. Books make you think about the world, the humans, the animals and our future. Books are our world, our culture, our past, our present and our future... Don´t stop reading, please!" (Cristina Pérez de las Cuevas)

Saint Patrick's Day

This weblog begins on the 17th of March of 2012. From the Irish capital of Dublin to the US city of Chicago, where the river is dyed green, thousands of people around the world are celebrating Saint Patrick´s Day.

It commemorates the most recognizable of Ireland´s patron saints and the arrival of Christianity in that country centuries ago. It is a day of parades, fireworks shows and marching bands. Participants dress up as leprechauns and green clothes and shamrocks are worn. Saint Patrick was said to have used this three-leaved plant to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish. 

Having started with this entry about Ireland may not be just a coincidence if the aims of the blog are to promote good reading and share a passion for literature. It is remarkable that such a small country has been recognised with the Nobel Prize for Literature on four occasions so far: Yeats, Bernard Shaw, S. Beckett and Seamus Heaney.