Irish Parents Review English Curriculum

  David Peace's book, The Damned United   tells the story of Brian Clough's 44 day stint as Manager of Leeds United Football Club, and takes place in 1974 in England. When Don Revie quits Leeds to become the England boss, the outspoken Brian Clough takes charge. Determined to impose his own style upon Revie's tough tackling team, Clough soon alienates his players and the board. His pride, and personal ambition combine to bring about his downfall.   Told from Clough's point of view, the novel is written as his   stream of consciousness   as he tries and fails to impose his will on a team he inherited from his bitter rival,   Don Revie , and whose players are still loyal to their old manager. Interspersed are   flashbacks   to his more successful days as manager of   Derby County . Described by its author as "a fiction based on a fact", [1]   the novel mixes fiction, rumour and speculation with documented facts to depict Clough as a d...

  Winners (wikipedia) The first section of  Lovers , titled "Winners" follows the story of two teenage lovers, Joseph Michael Brennan and Margaret Mary Enright - more commonly known as Joe and Mag respectively - who are due to be married in three weeks. However, Mag is also pregnant, and at the time Lovers was written, pregnancy outside of marriage, was a major issue. Due to Mag falling pregnant with Joe's baby they are both asked to leave their schools out of disgrace for what they have done. In the play we find out that Joe's mother pleaded with the school to let Joe sit his exams, this is a very important theme as Joe - being the man - is expected to find work and provide for his family. The play is set atop the hill with the simple scene of Mag and Joe revising for their exams. However, throughout the play they become distracted and talk about different subjects (much to Joe's annoyance) and through their conversation we hear the backstory of the characters. T...

  Pride depicts a group of lesbian and gay activists who raised money to help families affected by the British miners' strike in 1984, at the outset of what would become the " Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners" campaign. Pride tells an interesting story and shows the history of events in England in the 1980's .The film is comedic in parts due to the unlikely nature of friendships between the conservative mining community in Wales and the young Gay activists from London.  The major theme of the movie is tolerance and acceptance. Verdict: Unfortunately Pride contains A LOT of profanity and blasphemy, scenes of gay clubs and kissing, sex toy etc and unfortunately reinforces anti-marriage rhetoric: "Don't waste your mind being a wife and mother!" (Gay activist to character, Sian) Unfortunately for these reasons irishParents cannot recommend this movie for study at second level.

   Compelling and addictive read in the teen fantasy genre. Based in Ireland around the concept of a group of mysterious knights who defend the world from a pervasive force of darkness. In the words of  M. Groarke, an Amazon book reviewer: "Engaging story, interesting both for its supernatural elements and....the very human emotions and experiences the chracters live through: abandonment, loneliness, fear, jealousy etc. It's also a very carefully crafted piece of writing so there's a lot of joy to be had in the very sentences of it." Verdict: suitable for study at Junior Level My teens LOVE Dave Rudden's fantasy books. They are well-written and don't contain any objectionable material. Lucy T. Co.Kildare

  The show, written and directed by Conor   McPherson , explores the struggles of boardinghouse residents in Depression-era Minnesota.  The story weaves songs  ... to echo and amplify its   themes   of melancholy, yearning, hope and despair. (NY times & Hollywood Reporter) The Sunday Express  awarded the transfer five stars, saying "Bob Dylan's songs are so emotive and intense that they might well have overwhelmed the action. It's greatly to McPherson's credit that  Girl From The North Country  is such a compelling drama in its own right. McPherson has written a subtle and touching play about small town lives in middle America in the 1930s. The Great Depression has entered the very bones of the drifters and fugitives who end up in Nick's boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota Verdict: This is an excellent production but because of  the mature themes it deals with,  and some adult language, IrishParents recommends that it is more su...

 Verdict: not suitable for study in the classroom because  This novel belongs to the vampire horror/thriller genre so we do not recommend it for study in the classroom as some students would not be able to cope with many of the dark and sometimes disturbing scenes and concepts contained in this book. It also contains a good deal of offensive language.   

  This is a Sc-Fi story in which hostile aliens attack the earth and features   a young boy,   Ender   Wiggin, who is sent to a training academy named Battle School, located in orbit above the Earth. T he   adults   are the   enemy   because they are the puppet masters who trick, control and manipulate a group of children who are recruited and trained to fight and kill to help the human race survive. In   Ender's Game , Orson Scott Card clearly shows that he has some strong views regarding ethics in the information age. Primarily, he shows his belief that when a large conflict happens, humanity loses all sight of ethics and tries to be as efficient and deadly as possible.  The central conflict in the story, Ender's Game , is the  war  between the Buggers and the Humans in which each  battle  for survival. Violent brutality (kids killing kids) and bad language are present in the book.  Ender's Game Themes Love, E...

N.B.  Not to be confused with the controversial adult erotica book Fifty Shades of  Grey by E.L James. In her brilliant, yet, haunting  Between Shades of Grey   Ruta Sepetys tells the many true stories (but cleverly merges them into one, for the purpose of this novel) of the countless innocent Lithuanian families who, in 1941, were unjustly ousted from their homes by Stalin's Soviet Army, the NKVP, and forced to journey in cattle cars and barges over 6,500 miles only to be dispassionately dumped off at a remote Siberian outpost, close to the Arctic Circle.Here they were systematically subjected to a cruel and merciless existence, one in which the mere theft of a beet or a potato, could result in instant execution.  Fifteen-yr-old Lina, her young brother, Jonas, and her mother, Elena, all must find ways to survive, both mentally and physically. Their strength and courage shine through in the various interactions they have with other characters in the story, bot...

  SYNOPSIS (taken from stageagent's blogsite) The Ferryman  is set in Northern Ireland in 1981, during the height of the Troubles. Quinn, a former terrorist, has swapped his career with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for a life on the farm in rural Armagh. He now lives with his sickly wife, their children, his sister-in-law and nephew. The IRA murdered Quinn’s brother, Seamus, when he was just twenty years old and his body has only recently been discovered. He was one of the sixteen men and women who were killed and buried in unknown locations during the 1970s, leaving their family unsure as to whether they were alive or dead. Seamus was apparently shot dead following Quinn’s defection from the IRA in 1972, and a threateningly influential IRA member, Muldoon, now comes to pay Quinn a visit. He is keen to ensure that there are no further repercussions to the IRA’s cause, now Seamus’ murder has come to light. Themes: Family, loyalty, identity, the legacy of violence,  divi...

  Tribes  is a family play about the limitations of communication and the desire to belong.  Billy’s family, like every other, is a club, with its own private language, jokes and rules. You can be as rude as you like, as possessive as you like, as critical as you like. Arguments are an expression of love and you’re meant to love each other more than anyone in the world. But Billy, who is deaf, is the only one who actually listens. Raised without the knowledge of sign language, his perspective changes when he meets and falls in love with Sylvia and decides he finally wants to be heard. Raine was inspired to write the play after watching a documentary about a deaf couple who expressed hopes that their child would be born deaf. The kernel of the idea of the family as a ‘tribe’ who passed down values and belief systems from one generation to the other took root. In this play, Billy is caught between two warring ‘tribes’ – his family and his newfound relationship with Sylvia, ...

  By the Bog of Cats by Marina Carr A ‘black comedy’ full of death, ghosts, superstition, murder – I didn’t find this play at all funny but grim,  bleak and strange. I didn’t find the intended humour funny but rather sad and warped. Why would it be  chosen for leaving certificate students to study?  This play is oppressive and pulls you down. It contains  for example, a witch called “Catwoman” who eats mice, a character, Hester, who sees and talks to  ghosts and who murdered her brother and kills both herself and her own daughter and a  foul- mouthed  Mrs Kilbride.  Again, I feel there is a need for more positive literature to be studied. Young people are  reading less and less but if given the chance to study works which are truly humorous and informative,  edifying and exciting -not a play like By the bog of Cats- surely they would be encouraged to read more ??  I do not consider  By the Bog of Cats suitable to be studi...

  Room by Emma Donoghue   Gripping thriller, a moving story of a mother’s bond with her young son and vice versa but also quite  disturbing, as underlying the whole story is a tale of kidnapping and sexual abuse. As a mature adult  reading this book I can process these issues and while I found parts of this book upsetting to read,  I am able to deal  with that. With increasing concerns about mental health in our adolescents and young  people, anxiety and depression, I feel this book is not appropriate for children perhaps as young  as fifteen or sixteen to be studying at school . Do they need to read about the threat of Old Nick coming every  night to abuse five year old Jack’s’ mother, as he lies hidden but listening, in the wardrobe of  their  sound- proofed prison?! I appreciate Room is a very successful, thought provoking book and movie, but I didn’t find it uplifting  or encouraging but rather dispiriting and sad. I woul...

 This is a dark, chilling and disturbing tale of a hypocritical religious  serial killer. Just because it is an old movie and filmed in a cinematic, "artsy" style does NOT justify this film's inclusion on a school curriculum, at junior level. Who wants to leave these disturbing images embedded on a yong person's mind??  This is the kind of movie we, as teachers, would advise parents to protect their young people from watching! Reviewed by IrishParents I am not happy to think of my children watching this movie in school. Irena P, Co. Carlow