CREATIVE BRIEF
To recap some of our chat and to help you think about the possible
design treatments. I have listed the key concepts for the site. I
will be putting together a big folder of images for you to review
once we settle all contract, etc. The important thing to keep in
mind is that we are trying to get people excited about the novel!
Thus characters! stories! and the fascinating authors! should draw
them in. I think we can use some bookish imagery, but really we
want the novels to come alive. Thus the meat of the stories.....and
their uniquely American flavaaah. Make sense?
I have gathered 50 beautiful black and white images of authors, along with book covers.
Possible Design Concepts:
1) Book characters and author illustrations
2) Book covers (See below list of books)
3) Six themes: The American Dream (Rags to Riches), The Melting Pot
(Immigration), The Color Line (Race), A Crisis of Faith (Religion),
Violence, The Forbidden (Books banned due to sex, etc.)
Websites:
Illustration: (Click on the audio slidehow) Hirschfeld
http://theater.nytimes.com/ref/theater/hirschfeld/index.html?
rf=index.html
Timeline:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/flash_database.html
http://www.hyperhistory.com
Creative Interactives
http://www.pbs.org/sixwives
Site Books:
Timeline
The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
Moby Dick, Herman Melville (1851)
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
The American, Henry James (1877)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (1884)
A Hazard of New Fortunes, William Dean Howells (1890)
Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane (1893)
The Awakening, Kate Chopin (1899)
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser (1900)
The Octopus, Frank Norris (1901)
The Call of the Wild, Jack London (1903)
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair (1906)
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1920) Pulitzer 1921
One of Ours, Willa Cather (1923) Pulitzer 1923
Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis (1925) Nobel 1930 (first American);
Pulitzer 1926
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1929) Nobel 1949;
Pulitzer for A Fable1955
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck (1931) Nobel 1938 (first American
woman to win); Pulitzer 1932
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston (1937)
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939) Nobel 1962; Pulitzer 1940
Native Son, Richard Wright (1940)
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger (1951)
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (1952) Nobel 1954;
Pulitzer 1953
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (1952)
The Adventures of Auggie March, Saul Bellow (1953) Nobel 1976;
Pulitzer
for Humboldt's Gift 1976
Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin (1956)
On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1957)
Rabbit, Run, John Updike (1960) Pulitzer 1982 for Rabbit is Rich
and in
1991 for Rabbit At Rest
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960) Pulitzer 1961
The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty (1972) Pulitzer 1973
The World According to Garp, John Irving (1978)
China Men, Maxine Hong Kingston (1980)
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole (1980) Pulitzer 1981
The Color Purple, Alice Walker (1982) Pulitzer 1983
Ironweed, William Kennedy (1983) Pulitzer 1984
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987) Nobel 1993; Pulitzer 1988
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez (1992) or
Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
Hypertext feature:
1) Theme: The American Dream
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH -- Edith Wharton/ALL THE KINGS MEN -- Robert Penn
Warren
GRAPES OF WRATH -- John Steinbeck
SEIZE THE DAY -- Saul Bellow
2) Theme: Melting Pot to Mosaic
CALL IT SLEEP -- Henry Roth
CHINA MEN -- Maxine Hong Kingston
PONCHO -- Jose Antonio Villarreal
3) Theme: The Problem of the Color Line
HUCK FINN -- An American Voice
INVISIBLE MAN -- Ralph Ellison
LOVE MEDICINE -- Louise Erdrich
4) Theme: Crises of Faith
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN -- James Baldwin
WISE BLOOD -- Flannery O'Connor
MOBY DICK -- Herman Melville
5) Theme: Violence
THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM -- Edgar Allan Poe
THE BEAR -- William Faulkner
THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG -- Norman Mailer
6) Theme: The Forbidden
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD -- A Rediscovered Talent
RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE -- Rita Mae Brown
PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT -- Philip Roth
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