Senior Library Books
Resource Key
When accessing content use the numbers below to guide you:
LEVEL 1
brief, basic information laid out in an easy-to-read format. May use informal language. (Includes most news articles)
LEVEL 2
provides additional background information and further reading. Introduces some subject-specific language.
LEVEL 3
lengthy, detailed information. Frequently uses technical/subject-specific language. (Includes most analytical articles)
Databases
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Scholarly resources on JSTOR include Archival and Current Journals, Books, and Primary Sources.
- World Book Encyclopedia This link opens in a new window
Online version of the complete reference work along with dictionary, atlas, links, magazines, historical documents, audio, video, images, and 3D photograph
Introduction
Animal Farm [is an] anti-utopian satire by George Orwell, published in 1945. One of Orwell’s finest works, it is a political fable based on the events of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution and the betrayal of the cause by Joseph Stalin. The book concerns a group of barnyard animals who overthrow and chase off their exploitative human masters and set up an egalitarian society of their own. Eventually the animals’ intelligent and power-loving leaders, the pigs, subvert the revolution. Concluding that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” (with its addendum to the animals’ seventh commandment: “All animals are equal”), the pigs form a dictatorship even more oppressive and heartless than that of their former human masters. (Britannica, 2015)
Podcast
- Fenton, B., & Field, T. (2012, September 21). George Orwell [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/george-orwell/id261779765?i= 121674044&mt=2
Whilst at school, a young Alan Johnson was given some money by a teacher and told to go and buy four copies of any book for the school library. He headed down the Kings Road in Chelsea, stopping only for a sly cigarette along the way. Having already read 'Animal Farm', he picked 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' and yearned for the life of lead character Gordon Comstock.
Definitions
- Fablenoun - a short tale to teach a moral lesson, often with animals or inanimate objects as characters.
- Satirenoun - a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.
- Communismnoun - a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.
- Totalitarianismnoun - absolute control by the state or a governing branch of a highly centralised institution.