Illuminated Texts on The House on Mango Street

The music in this presentation echoes much of what happens throughout Sandra Cisneros' novel as well as within this Illuminated Text as well.  The song starts out simple -- a music box -- and then is transformed into a fully orchestrated work.  The House on Mango Street is, in many ways, wonderfully complex while first appearing quite simple.  This presentation uses red balloons, and keeps the lines about writing setting Esperanza free on the screen throughout as the ideas, hopes, and journeys that she must take are explored. 

When students who are artists first encounter the Illuminated Text assignment it is often love at first sight.  This exceptional presentation by Elizabeth Vaca and Monica Villegas is a labor of love.  Just as the artist Jenny Lee forever changed and influenced the concept of Illuminated Texts, so have these two students.  The presentation is on the two different worlds that genders inhabit within Espearanza's world -- and those differences are shown with masterful animation that pushes the boundaries of anything that has been done up to this point.

Another innovative and thoughtful Illuminated Text done in Flash, this time by students Matt Mcgonegle and Luis Barragan, that pushes both the critical thinking and technological envelopes of the medium.  A video of the sky moves by in the background as the words from the novel, specifically those that tie Esperanza to the ground and keep her from flying, appear in a thoughtful, expository, animation.  Anchors fall to the ground, balloons soar to the sky, and the words come together in a great whole than the sum of their parts.

The amazing power of this presentation by Carmen Au and Alison Moy is due, at least in part, to the beauty of it simplicity.  The words -- appear against the white background like the snow mentioned in the title - they come slowly and build.  The artists/authors focus on ideas like "feet" that are mentioned throughout the book for various reasons and then do a wonderful job of showing those ideas in a new and brilliant light.  The fonts often mimic what is being said -- and are simple and straightforward when the force of the ideas is called for.

The first Illuminated Texts for which Flash was the primary medium (as opposed to Power Point), have been a revelation -- and this presentation by Nora Rosengarden and Jeremy Tomuta is no exception.  When the text mentions that Sally has "eyes like Egypt," we see those eye - and the belt buckle of her abusive father.  She married too young and tried to escape into the perfect house that Esperanza is also seeking - and the Illuminated Text shows that house - builds it brick by brick with the text of the novel.

With a book as small as The House on Mango Street - and after having done  years of Illuminated Texts with students, you would think that the presentations would start to repeat themselves.  Far from it.  This Illuminated Text by Gregg Ott and Elizabeth Nolan shows a side to Cisneros' story -- that I had not even thought about.  The child who as she grows older - grows apart from her family.  The little girls who so want to grow up, and grow apart from their childhood.  The prsentations shows a building chorus of words from thought the book that culminates in the building of Esperanza's "house," and the place in the attic that she keeps for the "bums."

When you consider a novel as accomplished as The House on Mango, one of the ideas that the reader takes away from it -- is the remarkable portrait that Cisneros creates of her characters.  This presentation does a wonderful job of taking those characters to a different level.  In fact, there are picture-graphs of eyes made of words and even people made of the words that are used to define them.  There is the animation of that wonderful line from the novel, "I want to be all new and shiny."  This Illuminated Text happens to be precisely that.