My Science School

Adapting "Pride and Prejudice" in a manner true to the characters and their interactions is most difficult. Most modern authors almost never get right. "Enthusiasm", however, stands apart. Julie and Ashleigh are best friends. Ashleigh is easily obsessed, with things for a period, of time and during those periods; Julie does what all best friends do—she flows with it. Ashleigh’s latest obsession is Jane Austen. As a true Enthusiast, Ashleigh must now meet Darcy at every cost. So, along with her best friend, she crashes the dance at a Local all-boys school in the hope of meeting Darcy. And, they do. Both girls, who think of themselves as Elizabeth Bennet, fall for the some Darcy.

What could have been a sleep-inducing Love triangle is saved by the author who compels her characters to introspect and discover themselves, each other, their relationship with their parents and their future.

 

Picture Credit : Google

This book is an excellent exploration of the world that Jane Austen, inhabited. Its author Veronica Bennett captures not only the language and manners of the time but also the hardships. it was difficult to be a young, economically weak woman in England in Austen's time. And it was particularly suffocating to be an intellectual who did not enjoy balls, gatherings, dances and marriage. Beginning with, a prologue set in Paris, the book is a fictionalised biography of how Jenny, the central character—intelligent and full of questions - becomes Jane Austen, the author of masterpieces suck as "Emma" and, "Pride and Prejudice". The story focuses on her early life, growing up with her sister Cassandra in a large family in southern England. It explores the experiences that could have formed the plots and characters of her timeless novels.

 

Picture Credit : Google

This is an adaptation of owe of Austen's trickier novels, "Mansfield Park". Fanny Price, the protagonist of the original, is one of Austen's quieter, more docile heroines. In "Seeking Mansfield", author Kate Watson retains this essential quality 'while giving her heroine Finley a streak of quiet strength and a mind of her own. Finley loves her foster brother Oliver Bertram. Content to bask in their 'best friend,' equation, Finley pursues her Love for theatre while caring for her adopted aunt. Everyone is happy in the settled rhythm of life when that rhythm is upset by Hollywood stars Harlan Crawford and his sister Emma who move into the neighbourhood. Suddenly, Finley's world is rocked as Emma and Oliver get into a relationship. If that was not enough, Harlan woos Finley. To claim, what she believes is rightfully hers; Finley must overcome her shy nature. Will she?

 

Picture Credit : Google 

This is a dystopian take on "Persuasion", set in the England of the future. A genetic experiment has gone grossly wrong, decimating human population. Privileged and wealthy Luddites own land and property and routinely persecute the Reduced, or lower class of people, exploiting them as slaves. Elliott, the protagonist, is a Luddite. Her best friend Kai, a reduced Unwilling to accept serving others as his fate, Kai, decides to escape, and asks Elliott to join him. Torn between her feelings for Kai, and the responsibility she feels towards those who work for her father, Elliott refuses to accompany him. Hurt, Kai leaves. He returns four years later as a successful, explorer. During this time, Elliott father’s farm has sunk into ruin. Elliott, has always Loved Kai, is happy to see him. But Kai is only interested in showing off to her how well he has done for himself. Soon, Elliott

stumbles upon a secret Kai is hiding. Again, Elliott has to decide whether to support her friend or to cling to her beliefs.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Nidhi Chanani was born in India and grew up in southern California. “Pashmina” is her attempt to connect with her roots. Priyanka Das, the protagonist, is full of questions. She wants to know why her mother left everything, including her father, in India all those years ago. But Priyanka’s mother is overprotective, and on the subject of India, her lips are forever sealed. So Priyanka is in the dark, until, one day, she stumbles upon a Pashmina scarf in an old suitcase. Wrapping it around herself, she imagines her mother’s birthplace and homeland in a series of vivid, colourful images. When she wins a cartoon contest, Priyanka buys herself a plane ticket to India with the prize money and begins her journey towards self-discovery.

Nidhi Chanani has illustrated the story herself. Though simple, the artwork is effective.

 

Picture Credit : Google

This one breaks the Cinderella mould and has a cross-dressing prince take centre stage. A perfect foil to him is a poor dress designer with uncommon strength of character. The story begins in Paris where Sebastian, the crown prince of Belgium, is trying his best to hide a secret from everyone while his parents are busy looking for a bride for him. What’s his secret? By night, he dresses and behaves as the fashionable and alluring Lady Crystallia! Not because he is uncomfortable as a man but because it releases him from his royal trappings and allows him to experience complete freedom in an alternate identity. In Paris, he discovers Frances whose only passion in life is designing fashionable clothes. He promises her a decent pay and opportunities to create her own designs. Tempted, France accompanies him to Belgium as part of his staff. That’s when she learns about his secret. But she doesn’t care about it as long as she is given the freedom to design clothes. As the friendship between Sebastian and Frances deepens, they have to face tough questions. Can they go on living a lie? Frances decides that she cannot and leaves, Sebastian must choose between getting his best friend back and marrying a princess he does not know. The simple artwork adequately supports a delightful story.

 

Picture Credit : Google

A Pulitzer prize-winning story told in two volume, “Maus” – a tale within a tale – is about a cartoonist’s troubled relationship with his father. The father, Vladek Spiegelman, is a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. As the son begins to tell his father’s story, he realizes that his struggles are nothing compared to the ones his father survived. The children of those who survived one of the goriest events in recent history are affected in their own way.

The artwork speaks more than words can. In clever allegory, Nazis are given the form of cats, the Jews are mice, the Polish, pigs and the Americans, dogs. “Maus” is not a comfortable read. It is a raw and powerful experience, where the author explores the fear of death as well as the euphoria of survival that was the everyday reality for those in Hitler’s camps.

 

Picture Credit : Google

The Graveyard Book is a children's fantasy novel written by Neil Gaiman and published in 2008. The story follows the young life of a boy called Nobody Owens who is orphaned as a toddler when a man kills his entire family. Nobody is adopted by ghosts from the local graveyard who raise him in a world of vampires, werewolves, mummies, and ghouls, and teach him to use a variety of supernatural abilities.

After his family is murdered in their beds, a toddler, pursued by the murderer Jack, wanders into a graveyard. Ghosts and other supernatural residents of the cemetery protect and eventually agree to raise him as their own. They name him Nobody Owens. With a vampire as his guardian, Nobody (Bod, to his friends) lives, loves and learns in the graveyard, which is full of adventure and dangers but the safest place for the 10-year-old. Outside the graveyard, Bod will be a target for Jack, the murderer.

A team of renowned artists lend their signature styles to each vignette in this award-winning two-volume story by Neil Gaiman.

 

Picture Credit : Google