Critical response paper - Essay Example

Write up on Beth Goobie About the – What she does Beth Goobie is one of Canada’s most famous and prolific Born in 1959 at Guelph, Ontario, into a family of pseudo- Christian cult members, she and her siblings lived a life underscored by incest, ritual abuse, medical experiments, mind manipulation and the paranormal. Despite that she won several academics and citizenship awards and achieved her grade 10 piano performance certificate. After finishing school, Goobie went on to study English Literature.

In 1983 she graduated with concurrent baccalaureates in English literature and religious studies from the University of Winnipeg and Mennonite Brethren Bible College respectively. She later moved to Edmonton to work with abused children and teens in the child welfare system.At the age of 30, she collapsed with chronic fatigue syndrome. Recovering at home, she began her first novel. Therapy is an important part of recovery and for Goobie, a large part of her therapy is writing. As she was suffering from blurred vision she dictated the story a few minutes into a tape recorder.

It was about a girl who decides to stop shaving her legs and enter a beauty pageant. The novel Mission Impossible won an award from the Writer’s Guild of Alberta and was nominated for the Governor General Award for children’s literature.Her IdeasAccording to Goobie there are a lot of negative messages given to children and teenagers in our society. She tries to reverse these as much as possible in her books. Her writing reflects the issues surrounding the anger and powerlessness of those too young to defend themselves.

How well she uses her writing to serve the purposeBeth Goobie has worked for a long time with children who have been physically and sexually abused. Expressing these feelings many of Beth’s novels have aimed to try and save young adults. Both her books, Scars of Light and The Only Good Heart are built on the theme of cults, abuse and emotional torture. Books like these have been therapeutic for her mind and a warning to others. In her words childhood is mostly about programming us to keep us in line so that as adults we stay in line and she tries to encourage kids to see beyond that.

Goobie is well known for her quirky and dark young adult novels. She published several of them beginning in 1994. She wrote the much acclaimed Scars of light in 1994, in which she wrote about her traumatic experiences as a child in. The brutally realistic poems won her the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and were nominated for a Governor General’s Award for poetry.This was followed by 2 more Sticks and stones and Kicked out in 1995. In 1997 she published The Good, the Bad, and the Suicidal and I’m not convinced.

In 1998 she published The Only Good Heart, a collection of short fiction which once again dealt with the themes of cults, what they do to their victims and most importantly how they insinuate themselves into society and The Colours of Carol Molev.1999 saw two more of her works, one a novel, The Girls Who Dream me and the other a novel, The Dream where the Losers Go. Before Wings was published in 2000, which won the Canadian Library Association’s Young Adult Book Award in 2000, and was chosen by the young readers for the Best Books list of the American Library Association.

Her more recent works are The Lottery and the latest in Flux, the story about a 12 year old girl who is able to slip into other parallel levels of existence, including herself.References:1. http://www.quillandquire.com/authors/profile2. http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/canadian_literature/353113. http://www.saskschools.ca/~liptonschool/willow/wings/author.htm