A COUNTRY BOY QUITS SCHOOL

(By: Lao Hsiang)

CHINA

SUMMARY

  The story begins by saying that a nine-year-old boy in the country is at least half as helpful as an adult because he can help with multiple chores, so the family didn't want to send him to school.

LEARNING

  Just as it concerns how important education is, this story also addresses how not only books and teachers define education.

SILK

(By: Alessandro Baricco)

ITALY

SUMMARY

  Hervé Joncour travels around the world buying silkworm eggs and eventually travels to Japan. He buys eggs from Hara Kei, a French-speaking nobleman. Joncour falls in love with his mistress. On his second visit to Japan, Joncour learns about the exotic bird aviary that Hara Kei has built; he leaves a glove to find Hara Kei's mistress in a pile of clothes.

LEARNING

  His communications with this woman are totally wordless. In all but two instances, they take place in the presence of a man with whom she shares her life.

MALINCHE

(BY: Laura Esquivel)

MEXICO

SUMMARY

  In Malinche Laura Esquivel reimagines the relationship between the Spaniard Hernán Cortés and the Indian woman Malinalli, his interpreter and mistress during his conquest of the Aztecs. She was also a slave, trying to rebel against the barbarous culture of her masters.

LEARNING

  In this story the saying “Love is the death of duty” is a one mistake Malinalli believed. Mixed feelings but mostly anger came out from my heart after reading to this story, it gave me the basis of a cruel and also a brave and wise characters.

SEVEN AGES OF MAN

(BY: William Shakespeare)

ENGLAND

SUMMARY

  The speech compares the world to the stage and life to the play, and catalogs the seven stages of a man's life, sometimes referred to as the Seven Age of Man: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pants and old age, facing imminent death.

LEARNING

  His description of the seven stages from the birth of man to the death of man only makes it easier to understand how our growth and choices in life affect and are linked to anything and everything we do.

A THOUSAND SPLENDID OF SUNS

(BY: Khaled Hosseini`s)

AFGHANISTAN

SUMMARY

  It is a heart-wrenching tale revolving around the worlds of two Afghan women whose destinies, or rather misfortune, filled with suffering, insufferable pain and misery, brought them under one roof.

LEARNING

  Everyone in this story is a three-dimensional person; none of them is perfect, but each of them can be a beautiful sun shining in the sky.

SHE WALKS IN A BEAUTY LIKE THE NIGHT

(BY: Lord Byron)

ENGLAND

SUMMARY

  This poem is about a woman who is anonymous. She is quite striking, and the speaker compares her to a lot of beautiful, but dark, things like "night" and "starry skies." The second stanza continues to use the contrast between light and dark, day and night, to describe her beauty.

LEARNING

  You can sense his feelings flowing out of the page when you read them. "She walks in Beauty" is pretty happy, focusing on all the things she loves about this woman. "When We Two Parted" has a much more dramatic feel, reflecting the heartbreak felt in the break-up.

THE VALLEY OF AMAZEMENT

(BY: Amy tan)

America/USA

SUMMARY

  These notes have been contributed by members of the Grade Saver community. We are grateful for their contributions and we encourage you to make your own contributions.

LEARNING

  It was a story that inspired me a lot. This story encourages us to be patient, to love and to embrace ourselves as we are. Most people will be embarrassed and afraid of how they look, move, speak, and so on, and are unaware of their "special" features.

CORALINE

(BY: Neil Gaiman)

ENGLAND

SUMMARY

  When exploring her new home, a girl named Coraline discovers a secret door behind which lies an alternate universe that closely mirrors her own, but is better in many ways. She rejoices at her discovery until the Other Mother and the rest of her alternate family try to keep her there forever.

LEARNING

  The independent themes in this story are family, love of what you've got, and bravery. In the novel discovers that her house, though imperfect, was the one she loved and would never leave. She also learns how to be strong and how to lean on herself to fight for those she loves.

TELEPHONE CONVERSATION

(BY: Wole Soyinka)

NIGERIA

SUMMARY

  Summary & Analysis of telephone conversations. "Telephone Conversation" is a 1963 poem by Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka that satisfies racism. The poem describes a phone call between a landlady and a black speaker about renting an apartment.

LEARNING

  We need to communicate in other people in a good way and respect them so that you respect you also.

THE BOY NAMED CROW

(BY: Haruki Murakami)

JAPAN

SUMMARY

  The boy called the Crow. Kafka on the Shore is structured around the alternating stories of Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year-old boy who runs away from home to escape the terrible oedipal prophecy, and Nakata, an aging and illiterate simpleton who has never fully recovered from wartime affliction.

LEARNING

  The child is waiting for him out there. Crow tells us about the problems that people face and the consequences of facing reality. And no matter what happen don’t give up.