A Murder Mystery, A Real Life Account, and A Children's Novel

Hello again! It’s good to be back (not that I actually went anywhere).

So for those of you who don’t know, the main purpose of this blog is to post assignments for the Project Planning course I am taking. And one of our first assignments is to pick three works of literature for which we will eventually base our final project on.

Now what we are actually going to have to do with the pieces of literature that we choose is a little hush-hush for now. So I am choosing a little blindly here. Although, if we’re going to be asked to do what I suspect we will, then I know exactly which one I want to chose. 

Anyways, now that I’ve given a little back ground on the assignment, I should probably get started.  I decided to pick three very different books so that way when I find out what it is I am expected to do for the final project I’d have more options. Before I started to pick my books, I made a list of some key differences I wanted to make sure I ended up with between my final three. In the end what I want to do is make sure I have the most amount of options for the project.

Here were the criteria I came up with:

-At least 1 non-fiction or 1 fictional book

-Each book should have a different literary style

-The characters/subject in each book should be as different as possible from the others

-The theme for each book should be as different as possible from the others

-The intended audience for each book should be as different as possible from the others

The three works of literature I have chosen are:

"And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie

"Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners" by Alan Emmis

"The Tales of Olga Da Polga" by Michael Bond

"And Then There Were None" is a murder mystery about 10 strangers who are invited to a party on a private island. Upon arriving at the island they soon discover that none of them has actually met the host of the party they are attending. Shortly after which, each of them is accused of having committed murder and getting away with it. Together they listen in horror as their crimes are listed off one by one via a prerecorded message from their mysterious host. And not long after the guests are mysteriously murdered. With each murder the remaining guest’s hysteria and paranoia increases. 

The book is filled with a sense of suspense and mystery that only Agatha Christie could pull off, and the overwhelming sense of charged emotions is one the main reasons I chose this book.  I also chose it for it’s dynamic characters and because overwhelming number of characters. I feel like there will be a lot to play around with between characters, emotion, and the overall mystery and suspense of the story. All of which are things that could be easily stylized and so on.

"Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners" is the one non-fictional work that I chose. The book is an interesting as well as incredibly entertaining testimonial of writer, Alan Emmis, as he observes the work of a company of crime scene cleaners. Over the course of the book, Alan describes in gruesome detail the scenes left by the deceased and his own mortifying reactions. I chose this book for it’s graphic descriptions that allow the reader to easily visualize the story as they read.

"The Tales of Olga da Polga" is a story that is very close to my heart as I grew up listening to my mother read it to my siblings and I before we went to bed. It tells the story of an imaginative guinea pig, named what else but Olga da Polga, who is somewhat of a drama queen. Olga spends her time fantasizing and telling wild imaginative tales to all the other neighborhood animals. I have particular interest in using this book for the project because each of the stories Olga tells is of a different genre. So if I had to develop a project based around this book I would like to find some way to differentiate the real world that Olga lives in the imaginative worlds that her stories take place in. I would most likely want to do this by using different art styles or even different art mediums. I can already see putting together a storyboard and how I would illustrate the different stories and so on. My only hesitation is that being a children’s book it’s a little cliché 

wanting to illustrate it, but I think that being so familiar and connected with the story could help me stay focused and passionate about the project.

So my choices are a murder mystery full of suspense and thrills, a real life account of gore told in gruesome detail, and a lovable children’s novel. Each one offering a different set of possibilities, all I need to make my choice is to find out what I have to do with the stories.