Matilda Changes/Differences

No offense meant, but why wouldn't you pick a project on something you've actually seen?

It doesn't seem like potentially subjective or poorly remembered reports from anonymous users of a hobbyist message board would be appropriate (or even acceptable to your professor or teacher) sources to use in an academic context. Ethnography, interview, and public history projects are absolutely legitimate academic research, but they are not conducted with strangers on message boards.

MoDance0934 said: "playbill-love said: "It doesn't seem like potentially subjective or poorly remembered reports from anonymous users of a hobbyist message board would be appropriate (or even acceptable to your professor or teacher) sources to use in an academic context. Ethnography, interview, and public history projects are absolutely legitimate academic research, but they are not conducted with strangers on message boards."

I don't think he/she is going for a full-fledged college level research project...
"

I agree, but even my 9th grade English teacher would not have accepted a research paper written on the basis of "some message board users on the internet told me some stuff about a musical they saw." When I was in crappy public high school (which was not that long ago - I am 21) the entire point of writing research papers was to learn how to find and cite appropriate sources and use their content as evidence for our argument.

Well Matilda's powers come in much later in the show than in the book, I saw the show and got so far in that I thought they weren't going to include them at all. Also, the ending is slightly different. The Russian mob comes after Matilda's dad and that is why they have to move, and while she's saying that she wants to stay, the mob comes in and tries to take her father, but she gives a very big speech on why he's not a bad guy (or something of that sort) and he lets them go. And all throughout the story Matilda goes to the libaray and is telling a librian a story she made up about a trapeze artist and a tightrope walker who fall in love, and in the end it turns out she was telling the story of Ms. Honey's parents without knowing it.

I'd point you towards the documentary Matilda and Me as a potentially useful source. It focuses a lot on Tim Michin's love of Roald Dahl and includes clips from the show. You should also be able to find plot summaries, reviews and articles discussing the changes which will be much more reliable sources. Clearly you aren't expected to have seen the show (a primary source) so you should instead rely on secondary sources.

playbill-love said: "MoDance0934 said: "playbill-love said: "It doesn't seem like potentially subjective or poorly remembered reports from anonymous users of a hobbyist message board would be appropriate (or even acceptable to your professor or teacher) sources to use in an academic context. Ethnography, interview, and public history projects are absolutely legitimate academic research, but they are not conducted with strangers on message boards."

I don't think he/she is going for a full-fledged college level research project...
"

I agree, but even my 9th grade English teacher would not have accepted a research paper written on the basis of "some message board users on the internet told me some stuff about a musical they saw." When I was in crappy public high school (which was not that long ago - I am 21) the entire point of writing research papers was to learn how to find and cite appropriate sources and use their content as evidence for our argument.



Well obviously... I would be concerned. I think it's just used as a starter. Basically the equivalent of going to Wikipedia.

This sounds more like a self-selected topic to me. I can't imagine any teacher assigning this if you hadn't seen the show. Of course the wishy washiness of what class it's for is suspicious, too.


Why does it even matter? They just want to know the differences, it's not really important what class it's for or even if it's for a class at all. They just want to know.