My favorite book, Meg Rutherford’s The Beautiful Island (1969), has been filmed as a video. Can you sight-read it as the text pops up?
Language points:
- isle – island
- memorials – memory – memorable, memorize / remember
- towers, cathedrals, palaces, church
- lone – lonely – alone
- crippled – cripple – crippling
- enchantment – enchanting – enchantingly / chant
- courage – courageous – courageously
- contentment – content – contentedly
- excitement – excited – excitedly
- windswept gorges – the wind swept across the gorges
- sun-beaten deserts – the sun beat down on the desert
- the sun-weary = those who are weary of the sun
- passives:
to mislay, to be mislaid
to strew, to become strewn - to linger and rest
- alliteration:
drifted down
wind whipped the waves
cool caverns
the sea became strewn - alas! (literary exclamation)
at last (more literary than ‘finally’) - some crossed by tunnel and some crossed by balloon (ellipsis)
- rhythmic meter = anapaest: till they came one by one
- Beautiful Island (capitalization of proper nouns)
- word partnership: bowers for lovers – lovers’ bower
- shade vs. shadow
