Pride and Prejudice

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"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.

Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber

Book Report Ideas for 5th Grade

If you are a teacher looking for fresh ideas to stimulate your 5th graders, the following projects will get you started in the right direction. Using creativity and visualization will help students to retain what they read long after the book report is done. Getting students to interact with the characters in the books they read is a perfect way to make life-long readers out of them.

Create a Scrapbook

Have each student choose a book that interests them. Once they have finished reading, have them pick 5 characters from the book to create a scrapbook. Each of the five pages should be dedicated to one character. Have them use magazines to find pictures that relate to each character's style, personality and role in the book. Additional materials may be used if desired. For instance, if the character is an angel, including feathers would be appropriate.

Glossary and Word Search

Creating a keyword glossary and word search is a simple way to help students better understand the book they have read. Have students choose 20 words that are related to the books characters, plot and to when and where the story takes place. After writing out the definition for these words, students should find a sentence from the book that includes each word and write it down. Have students then create their own word search using the 20 keywords that they chose.

Brown Bag Report

Once students have finished reading a book, provide each of them with a large brown paper bag. They should then find 5 items that are relevant to the story's plot, characters or setting. Have students prepare a book report to present to the class. During their presentation they pull the items out of the bag, one at a time, to use as props. This will give listeners a visual aid to keep them interested while the student giving the report analyzes and explains key information from the book.

Act it Out

This assignment works best if students are placed into small reading groups. Once each group has finished reading their book, have them assign a role from the book to each person in the group. Props, costumes and backgrounds should be used to recreate the setting of the book. The group can then choose two or three scenes from the story to act out in front of their classmates. Allow each group 10 minutes to complete their skits.

Invisible

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Jazmine Crawford doesnt make decisions. She doesnt make choices. She doesnt make friends. Jazmine Crawford only wants one thing: to be invisible. For Jazmine, its a lot easier to take out her hearing aid and drift along pretending that nothings wrong than it is to admit that shes heartbroken about her dad dying. Shes been drifting and ignoring her over-worried mum for four years now.
When bad girl Shalini and her mates adopt Jazmine, she quickly finds herself involved in more than she can handle. Sitting in disgrace in the principals office, Jazmine is offered a choice: help drama teacher Miss Fraser in the upcoming production of The Secret Garden or face a four week suspension.
Its Miss Fraser who clinches the decision. I believe in you Jazmine, she says. I know you can do this. And Jazmine, terrified, disbelieving and elated all at the same time, joins the play.
For a while its all good. Drama star and chocolate lover Liam is friendly and Jazmine realises that making friends, talking to her mother and feeling her emotions isnt as scary as she thought. In a final happy twist of fate, acting diva Angela quits the play and with only a week to go, Miss Fraser asks Jazmine to take on the main role of Mary.
But then Shalini returns from her suspension. Shes out for payback, and she has just the ammunition she needs to force Jazmine to quit the play and go back to her old ways.
Will Jazmine be confident enough to stand up for herself against Shalini? Will Liam still like her if he finds out who she really is? And does she have the strength to face the truth about her fathers suicide?

Middle School: Get Me out of Here! - Free Preview (The First 19 Chapters)

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James Patterson's winning follow-up to the #1 New York Times bestseller Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life--which the LA Times called "a perfectly pitched novel"--is another riotous and heartwarming story about living large.
After sixth grade, the very worst year of his life, Rafe Khatchadorian thinks he has it made in seventh grade. He's been accepted to art school in the big city and imagines a math-and-history-free fun zone.Wrong! It's more competitive than Rafe ever expected, and to score big in class, he needs to find a way to turn his boring life into the inspiration for a work of art. His method? Operation: Get a Life! Anything he's never done before, he's going to do it, from learning to play poker to going to a modern art museum. But when his newest mission uncovers secrets about the family Rafe's never known, he has to decide if he's ready to have his world turned upside down. (Includes over 100 illustrations.)

How to Download Music From a CD to Your iPhone

Songs on your audio CD can be transferred to your iPhone's music library by first importing them into iTunes, followed by syncing your computer with the iPhone. The iTunes media player provides CD importing and can convert the .cda track to an AAC, MP3 or Apple Lossless file based on the import settings in iTunes. By default, the iTunes program converts your music to the AAC iTunes Plus format. Once synced, the newly imported music can be found in the "Recently Added" playlist in the Music application.

Instructions

1

Insert the audio CD into your computer's optical drive, and click the iTunes icon on your Mac's screen dock to run iTunes. For PCs, double-click the iTunes icon on your desktop or click "Start" in the lower-left corner of the screen and click "Program," "iTunes" and "iTunes."

2

Click CD tab in the iTunes sidebar, and click the "Import CD" button in the upper-right corner of the iTunes program window to begin the importing process.

3

Plug the wide, flat end of the USB cable into your iPhone, and plug the other end into your computer's available USB port. Click the iPhone tab in the iTunes sidebar, and click the "Music" tab in the main iTunes window next to the "Summary" tab.

4

Check the box next to "Sync Music" and select either "Entire music library" or "Selected playlists, artists and genres." For the latter option, check the box next to "Recently Added" and click the "Apply" button.

5

Unplug the iPhone from the computer once the synchronization finishes, and push the "Home" button on the iPhone's screen. Tap the "Music" icon on the screen and tap the "Playlists" icon at the bottom of the screen. Tap the "Recently Added" tab to view the imported songs.

How to Teach Adults to Read and Write

The foundation of any education is the ability to read and write. Unfortunately, many adults lack basic skills in these areas. Teaching an adult to read and write can be difficult but highly rewarding; giving someone vital skills is much like giving them a new life. Follow these simple step-by-step instructions to teach an adult to read and write quickly and effectively.

Instructions

Teaching an Adult to Read and Write

1

Ascertain the skill level of the adult you are trying to teach. This can be difficult because many adults are extremely self-conscious about their poor reading or writing skills. Always be encouraging and never judgmental. An adult struggling to read or write probably thinks that he or she is stupid. There is a good chance that the adult already knows how to read much more than a young child does who is just starting.

2

Make sure that your student knows and can write all the letters of the alphabet. The best plan is to teach him to read while teaching him to write. Teach basic words that the student already understands and that are found in common reading materials, such as a newspaper. Sounding out the words is less important than recognizing them.

3

Do not start the process with juvenile reading materials such as a first reader. This will only make the student feel stupid, as if he can only understand a low level of material. Have the student sound out a line from a newspaper and then copy it down in writing. With this combination of reading and writing, the student can master both skills quickly.

4

Teach a reading lesson first and then a writing lesson. For an adult, writing will mostly just be a matter of copying letters and words, the meaning of which is already known. If the student can read the word and understand its meaning he will learn to write it quickly.

5

Encourage the student but never in a patronizing way. When he makes phonetic mistakes, correct him and then quickly move to a new activity. Read out loud with the student so that he learns the natural rhythm of a line. Work with flash cards to increase the speed at which he recognizes words. Work on the level of basic sentences for a couple of months and then move on to more complicated material.

The Unwanted Wife

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All Alessandro de Lucci wants from his wife is a son but after a year and a half of unhappiness and disillusionment, all Theresa de Lucci wants from her ice cold husband is a divorce. Unfortunate timing, since Theresa is about to discover that shes finally pregnant and Alessandro is about to discover that he isnt willing to lose Theresa.