Cat in the Rain by Jenny Lee

This Illuminated text by far is the best example of using words to represent actions. Like when she said the wife went upstairs, the word “wife” escalated throughout the white background to show her going up the stairs. Or when the hotel-keeper bows at her, the words literally bow at the word “wife” which I thought was really cute. At times, the words seemed to react with the beat of the music like when the rain is falling, the word “rain” fell with the tempo of the piano playing. The music added the effect of a story being told anticipating a cute ending. It also placed the effect on me, where I felt like I was the wife being ignored by her husband, and that I really wanted that cat she seen on the rain.

This illuminated text was so beautiful. The first song reminded me of the movie “Spirited Away” by Hayao Miyazaki. I thought it was the actual song from the movie. The song itself made me more attentive and for some reason made the illuminated text more poignant. I could feel tears coming to my eyes. It was also amazing how the words water, rain, raining, and dripping rotated 90 degrees and were falling downwards off the page like it was real rain. I expected the word “slipping” to fall off the page too but was shocked when it flew across the screen to the right. I thought it was really cool how the words moved to match the actions or position of the character at the moment. Like when it said, “she went up the stairs” the word she was moving up to the right diagonally as if climbing stairs. And also when the words of the position of the cat were green and the words “one of the dripping tables.” formed the shape of a table with the words “cat crouched” in pink below it.
It was also really creative of her to use colors for the gender of the titles of the people: blue for the husband, pink for the wife, orange for the hotel owner, and purple for the maid. And the part where the husband was lying on the bed was really cool. “Pillows” was at a 45 degree angle like it was propped up and “bed.lying” was straight with the word “husband” in blue above it. It was really sad how the husband didn’t really seem to care for the wife and she was so lonely that she wanted a cat. She like the hotel owner more and was in love with him. He was able to satisfy her loneliness and got her the cat she wanted. It was also amazing how after about 3 minutes she replaced he, she, and hotel owner with actual names. Instead of the words “hotel owner” moving as if it were bowing down, the name “il padrone” was used instead. The husband was actually George. The words the wife said transformed into the phrase “I want attention” at 3:45, revealed how lonely she was. The song changed to be more upbeat at 3:07 but the original ballad instrumental was still intertwined with it. The overall effect of this illuminated text was really poignant and creative.

Oh My God. The “Cat in the Rain” is totally amazing! I love every single part of this Illuminated Text: the music, the movements of the words, the colors of the words, etc, etc. The “Cat in the Rain” is such a beautiful story, and it is filled with so much emotion. In the beginning sequences, the words “rain” and “water” are falling and fading vertically to the bottom of the slides, representing rain. Obviously, but it is so clever. There is an American couple trapped in their hotel room in Italy. The woman’s words are colored pink and the man’s words are blue. It seems like the woman is unhappy with her husband. Hence, the color blue represents the sadness she feels towards George. He seems like he does not care about his wife. The music really brings out the mood of this Illuminated Text. The pianissimo tune of the piano makes it feel as if it were actually raining. It is like each note of the piano symbolizes a drop of rain. As the woman pursues the cat, the words mimic her movements. For example, when she goes down the stairs the word “she” descends down the slide. When the hotel-keeper bows to the woman, the words “hotel owner” is position vertically, and the word “hotel” slants downward. The hotel-keeper is colored orange, and I think that represents the excitement the woman gets from him. In the woman’s eyes, the hotel owner is much kinder and livelier than her husband. That is why she falls in love with him. The author also positions the words “green table” over the cat. Thus, making it look as if they cat is taking shelter under the table outside. I find it neat how author forms the words how they are narrated. The “Cat in the Rain” feels like watching an actual movie. Even though there are not any physical actors and actresses. The words and the way they move suffice.

This was a very enjoyable and lengthy illuminated text. The sound of rain in the beginning helped create a mood in the story. The colors helped create a metaphor for the story. Both the rain and the husband were blue. Both the wife and the crouching cat were pink. The wife is overwhelmed with the husband's lack of love similar to how the cat was overwhelmed by the rain. One improvement that could have been made would be to make the table the cat took shelter under the same color as the hotel manager because he helps the wife like the table helps the cat.

The fact that the cat in the end was a real photo is symbolic because it was the first real act of love the wife received. The part where some words fell and the message became rearranged to "I want attention" is clever because it shows the wife's true meaning when she said those words. In conclusion, this was a great illuminated text that helped me analyze the story.

This was amazing. The music completely sets the tone for this piece by giving it a sort of bittersweet mood to the entire presentation. What I liked most was how you used the words to make a visual of what the text was describing. For example which is also my favorite visual is the end sequence when the word cat appears in the raining word to finally finish it off by stating the title of the piece, Cat in the Rain.
The other thing I liked was the use of colored text to represent different people in the story. My favorite part was how you showed that the wife just wanted attention. I’m guessing that her husband never paid her any attention to her looked for it elsewhere. For example she looked for it in the hotel owner, the cat and the maid. Even after she mentions her need for attention the husband sort of implies to her, stop being a child, grab a book and read something. Very well done.

This is the first IT I've watched and I will definitely reference it because of how much detail was packed into it. The way the text is used paints a picture of each scene and the story as a whole. Good job.

Wow......wow......WOW!!! That was the best I've seen so far. The animations of the words making it rain and the words building tables and doorways! AMAZING! the music went perfectly with it. It was very touching and i really enjoyed watching it. I watched it 2 times already and each time i love it even more! It was just really really REALLY good :)

The way that you made the rain fade and look as if it was different distances was pretty neat. What was nice as well was the way the "raindrops" fell from the leaves. In this case the letters fell from the words to the bottom of the page. I also like how you color coded the names. It makes it easier to recognize who is who. The fact that you had the cat the same color as the wife was interesting as well. Having the one thing the wife really wanted the same color as her name was a little eye opening, and gave me a little knowledge about the story even though I have not read it.

I am new to the site and just watched the QuickTime video version of Jenny Lee's illuminated text of "Cat in the Rain." Great stuff, quite inventive. I do a great deal of Read-Aloud, particularly for younger children, but I'm interested in branching out to read-aloud of more interesting, literary texts for older kids. This concept of illuminated texts seems to me to offer great potential in spicing-up Read-Aloud.

First of all, Jenny Lee seems to have been a bit of a prescient pioneer! I have shown this IT to a number of people (teachers, researchers, students, family, friends, etc.) to gauge reactions, and it never fails to make people pause with a very thoughtful expression on their faces (regardless of background). I think that says something. 

The Illuminated Text offers plenty of food for thought about English Language Arts in the 21st century. There's a lot of talk in the research world right now about bridging print and digital literacies, and I think this multimodal composition is a great example of what print-digital integration can look like. Very exciting! Joe was kind enough to let me talk to some of his students this past semester about ITs, and the consensus among students was that word and image combined to create a distinctly different and beneficial textual approach. Very, very cool! I wonder what -- if any -- generalizations about the teaching of literature we can make in 2011? We have graphic novels, performance, multimodal compositions, and online resources to support the text. How has teaching literature changed with various Web 2.0 tools? What are the tensions? It's all fascinating to me. 

I have never seen anything like this before, and found the idea for an illuminated text wonderfully creative. I saw a link to this site from an enotes post on AP Literature Projects. My question would be, how long would it take students to create a powerpoint like this?

I am a high school English teacher that teaches AP to 9th grade general, and what I see is something that all my students can utilize.  Technology is a hot bed in education and incorporating this in to my lessons is a high prioriety.  You have now given me a new idea, and it is a good one.  Thank you and look forward to more.  Must earn 50!

I absolutely LOVED this piece! It really makes the text come to life in a way that movies and just reading can do. Mr. McCarthy showed me this last year in his class and I was blown away. The fact of the matter is that while words are extremely powerful, their power does have a limit, and at the end of the day, a word is just letters written on a page. Actions show more meaning than words. More so than that, the agreement of actions and words have more meaning than  anything else on this earth. You can say or write anything you want, but you are remembered and defined for what you do. That is why I enjoyed this illuminated text so much. I didn't know anything like this even existed until not to long ago. This txt in particular paints a picture that nothing else could show. It shows the image of rain through the words, with the action of rain falling by actually making the rain fall. This was an amazing illuminated text.

I like the way how many lines were made to actually show the literal meaning of it. For example, the words raining were falling like raindrops. Also, the line she stood in the doorway had an effect that put the word she under doorway.

This was so brilliant. The music played set the mood very well and I had goosebumps the whole time I was watching. Great idea using the words instead of unmoving pictures as the SHAPER of my mind. Timing was near perfect for the way emotion arrives to us.

I thought the Illuminated Text was very visual, even though it wasn't many pictures or like a video. Certain colored or capital letters put an emphasis on specific words that were the focus. The word rain was brought to life by motion and color emphasis, which didn't make my focus drift elsewhere. I also understood some sort of sadness because of the lonely cat in the rain, and I hate cats a lot. Overall, it was a success because I thought the main focus was rain, and that was very distict through the visual movement of that word.

 The illuminated text really made the words come to life from the screen. From the shapes that they took for example the cat crouched under the table, to the rain drops coming down the screen in words, it truly gave a new look and idea to imagine and picture the text in your mind. The different color and size of the words also put emphasis onto the certain words, helping you understand what is most important to retain. The music in the background also gave you a sense of the atmosphere that should be taken into account when reading and watching the words change, telling the story.

It is a success because it captures your attention and keeps your mind on what you are witnessing. 

I remember that my American Literature teacher showed this to my class last year and I absolutely fell in love with it. Jenny Lee captured my attention simply with moving words. How amazing is that? My teacher actually had us do this and I used Jenny's as a model for mine. I love how she colors each character's name a different color. The females had more feminine colors like pink and purple with the males had more masculine colors like orange and blue. What was even better was how she used the words to form shapes which made us viewers think of a picture from those shapes. The music also was very soothing and fit the setting and mood of the poem perfectly. I'm really happy that I have experience doing this kind of project. So this time, I'll make sure to do a better job! 

What a fantastic presentation. How long did it take to put this together?

I wasn't sure that I understood what was meant by "illuminated texts" but the video and power point speak for themselves.  It is so much easier to appreciate the text with the visual representation.  Thanks.