User:Ees129/Choose an Article

Article Selection

Please list articles that you're considering for your Wikipedia assignment below. Begin to critique these articles and find relevant sources.

Option 1

Article title: The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963
Article Evaluation (start class): The article provides a fairly detailed look into the plot of the novel and the characters but fails to provide sufficient information for all other sections. It also entirely lacks a reception section that touches on reviews and academic analysis of the novel. The way the information is presented is fairly well-organized, but information about the author could be combined with the background section and placed before the summary of the novel. The article also has very little sources, and most of the information presented in the article is unsupported. The sources for the article need to be expanded. Finally, overall, the article is not very-well written, with many syntax and grammatical errors throughout. The quality of the article could be improved by editing the writing itself.
Sources: Parravano, Martha. “The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963.(Brief Article).” 1 Mar. 1996: 195–. Print.; Barker, Jani. “Racial Identification and Audience in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and the Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963.” Children’s literature in education 41.2 (2010): 118–145. Web.; https://nobodybutcurtis.com/the-watsons-go-to-birmingham-1963; Brown, Jennifer M., and Diane Roback. “Forecasts: Children’s Books.” Publishers Weekly, vol. 244, no. 44, Oct. 1997, p. 79. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid&db=bth&AN=9710314865&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Option 2

Article title: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Article Evaluation (start class): The lead to this article is quite long and includes detailed information that would be more suited for a later section in the article. For example, an entire paragraph of the lead could be its own style/genre section. The lead also includes information that is unsupported and only appears in the lead and not anywhere else in the article. The article also lacks a section on the novel's background (i.e. information about the author and the novel's publication). Further, the reception section touches on the controversy surrounding the novel but does not give just a general overview of critic reviews. The article does also contain a few grammatical errors throughout the writing. It is fairly well-sourced, though.
Sources: Ellis, Brian. "More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark / Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones / Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark." Book Links Oct 2002: 56. ProQuest. Web. 1 Nov. 2020 . "Obituary: Joan Steiner." The Horn Book Magazine 86.6 (2010): 127. ProQuest. Web. 1 Nov. 2020. [NOTE: this citation seems completely unrelated from the title but the title comes from another part of the page that contains a review for the book; this review is what I am actually citing] Blades, John. "WHO IS ALVIN SCHWARTZ AND WHY DO PARENTS WANT TO BAND HIS BOOKS HIS NIGHTMARISH TALES TOP HIT LIST BECAUSE CRITICS SAY THEY'RE TOO GHOULISH FOR KIDS: [NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION]." Chicago Tribune (pre-1997 Fulltext), Sep 20 1993, p. 1. ProQuest. Web. 1 Nov. 2020 .

Option 3

Article title: The Story of Ferdinand
Article Evaluation (start class): The lead of this article is quite short and fails to summarize much of the content within the article. The article is also poorly organized, with the background section coming after the plot, publication, and reception sections. Reorganizing the article to fit Wikipedia's recommended structure would greatly improve the article's quality. The article also lacks a genre/style section and an analysis section. Though, the last paragraph of the reception section gives a brief overview of scholarly analysis. This paragraph could be moved to a new analysis section and expanded upon. Finally, the article has some unsupported information throughout the article, as well as some source links that no longer work. The article needs to be more thoroughly sourced.
Sources: McQueen, S. (2012). The story of "the story of ferdinand": The creation of a cultural icon (Order No. 3576174). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1462606474). Retrieved from http://proxy.library.georgetown.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fdocview%2F1462606474%3Faccountid%3D11091; https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-the-story-of-ferdinand-became-fodder-for-the-culture-wars-of-its-era; https://illustrationchronicles.com/A-Subversive-Bull-Robert-Lawson-and-The-Story-of-Ferdinand; https://www.fandor.com/posts/the-secret-history-of-ferdinand-the-bull?position=8&section=most+recent

Option 4

Article title: A Bad Case of Stripes
Article Evaluation (start class): The article overall is greatly lacking in detail and provides very little information about the novel except for the plot. Its themes section is only a sentence long, and its lead section is quite short, making the whole article feel unbalanced. It provides no background information for the book about the author or the publication. The information that is included is fairly well-sourced, though.
Sources: Kropp, Lisa G. “A Bad Case of Stripes (Book).” School Library Journal, vol. 50, no. 7, July 2004, p. 44. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid&db=aph&AN=13667117&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Noah, Carolyn. "A Bad Case of Stripes." School Library Journal 44.3 (1998): 188. ProQuest. Web. 1 Nov. 2020. Roback, Diane, Jennifer M. Brown, and Cindi Di Marzo. "A Bad Case of Stripes." Publishers Weekly 245.2 (1998): 59-60. ProQuest. Web. 1 Nov. 2020.; https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/authors/david-shannon/

Option 5

Article title: Gulf War oil spill
Article Evaluation: The article provides very little information on the 1991 oil spill. Its only section on the spill's environmental impact is quite detailed, but about half of the information in it could be moved to a new section about the spill itself, and the environmental impacts could be expanded upon. The lead does include a brief overview of the events that led to the oil spill, but the article would benefit from having a section specifically for the background of the spill. A new section could also be added about the clean-up efforts, as seen in other higher rated articles on oil spills.
Sources: Christopher C. Joyner and James T. Kirkhope, The Persian Gulf War Oil Spill: Reassessing the Law of Environmental Protection and the Law of Armed Conflict, 24 Case W. Res. J. Int'l L. 29 (1992); Michel, Jacqueline, et al. "The Gulf War oil spill twelve years later: consequences of eco-terrorism." International Oil Spill Conference. Vol. 2005. No. 1. American Petroleum Institute, 2005.; Issa, Nivine, and Sreya Vempatti. "Oil spills in the Arabian Gulf: A case study and environmental review." Environment and Natural Resources Research 8.2 (2018).