Decision Making

This week I read If I Stay along with my roommate, Megan. We did this as a partner read to get a better perspective on the different aspects of the book. I really liked the book. It followed a girl in her decision to stay on earth or move on to the other side. She was involved in a horrific car accident with her family. Because she was so close with her family who died, this is a difficult decision; however, in her between worlds state she can follow the aftermath of the accident as it unfolds around her, and she begins to be conflicted about her decision. She sees her friends and extended family as they come and visit her in the intensive care unit. The story follows her in this decision-making process.


I really like the book's cover because it shows the multiple aspects of the book as she continues through her decision making process.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ec/If_I_Stay_poster.jpg

Surviving Middle Class America

I read Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (With Kids) in America for my mystery/survival book. This is Michelle Kennedy's story of plummeting into homelessness and her struggle to escape it. After some seemingly rash decisions she made in her younger years, Kennedy ends up married with three children at 24 years old. Struggling to deal with the simplicity of her housewife lifestyle, Kennedy yearns for something more. A series of events leaves her alone with her three children. With only a high school education, Kennedy is forced to figure out a way to provide for her children. The book goes on to explain how she brings herself back up out of the lowest of her lows. Read this book to find out how she makes it with her three small children. 

http://www.vhfa.org/conference08/speakers.php

Poetry Week

This week for poetry I'm reading Serafina's Promise. So far it's really good! It's about a young Haitian girl and her struggles following the earthquake. Serafina has many goals, plans, and dreams for her life ahead but she faces many challenges along the way to making those dreams become a reality. This book really reminded me and showed me additional struggles that people in poverty face every day. Things that seem like simple every day tasks to middle-class people, are a daily fight for people in poverty.


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All That Space Jazz

For my governmental control book, I'm reading Ender's Game. Like much of the other more recently popular Young Adult Literature books, this book has tons of actions and takes place in a futuristic dystopia. Even though the book was written in 1985, the book gained real popularity in the past decade and was even made into a movie. I believe the book's recent popularity is because it fit the flavor that YAL readers and publishers were looking for. It has the necessary elements of space action and a controlling, futuristic government. I have really enjoyed Ender's Game so far and look forward to seeing how this action ends.




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YA Explosion!

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I did a brief search of how popular YA Literature has gotten in recent years just to kind of check out some of the things we've been talking about in class. And it's so true! Young Adult Literature has exploded recently! And not just in the young adult age range. People of many different age groups are buying these books. I thought this picture summarized the data fairly nicely. I wonder if this trend will continue or if it's near its peak. I guess we'll have to wait and see!

International Happy Day

This week we celebrated an international day of happiness. This seemed very fitting for the book I'm reading as my biography, autobiography, and memoir, Growing Up Duggar. I've seen their show a few times and thought it would be an interesting take on their lives growing up in a huge family. This book does tell how they grew up and the values that their parents raised them with, but it also reads sort of like a self-help book. This book explains the challenges they've faced in their lives and how people who are experiencing similar challenges could overcome them. The book is filled with personal stories from the four oldest Duggar girls, Jana, Jill, Jessa, and and Jinger. There are also pictures throughout to help get a sense for their lives before the cameras came. Overall the girls seem very happy and optimistic about different aspects of life. They reach out to others with their optimism and help pull people up with their own stories of triumph and support with Scripture. Because each girl is very religious, it shows through in the book. I actually found it in a "Christian Parenting" section. Overall the book so far seems very positive and uplifting to me.


These are the four oldest Duggar girls who wrote the book. (from left to right) Jill, Jana, Jinger, and Jessa.

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Book Review

This week I decided to write my book review. I wrote it on the book I read for my Product #2 because I liked it so much! I used Goodreads.com to do this and it was really easy. After making a free account, I was able to both rate the book and then write a review. This site would also be a great place to keep a "books to read" list because you can search thousands of books and add them to your list. Here's the link to my review.


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Isn't This Twilight?

In honor of Maggie Stiefvater coming to Bridgewater College, this week I'm reading Shiver. I have really enjoyed this book so far, although I can't seem to get the connection to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Being a typical teenage girl, I did read the Twilight series in middle school. There seems to be a very similar story line going on in Shiver. I have not read the whole book, so if there is a dramatic change or shift later in the book, then maybe I'm jumping the gun; however, so far the books seem to be similar. While Grace doesn't seem as hopeless as Bella, there is still a similar "forbidden fruit" aspect to the books. Both girls have fallen in love with someone that they aren't supposed to. Someone of the supernatural variety. A vampire for Bella and a werewolf for Grace. The two authors have fairly different writing styles though. Meyer only followed Bella in much of the series, eventually shifting to following different characters in the last book of the series. Stiefvater so far has shifted between Grace and Sam, the werewolf. There are many differences between these series; however, so far the similarities seems to be pretty apparent. I enjoyed the Twilight series very much and am really enjoying Shiver so far. I think that if someone liked Meyer, then Stiefvater would be a similar author to explore.




http://novelnovice.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/twilight-shiver.jpg

"Shelfie"

 

These are the books I currently have lined up on my desk. I'm not currently reading any of these books but they're books I'm either going to get to this semester or hope to get to over the summer. While most of them are books I have to read for Young Adult Literature, a few are one my personal reading list. The John Green books Will Grayson, Will Grayson and An Abundance of Katherines would be on that list. I really like John Green so I've been slowly working through his books over breaks when I have time to read for pleasure.

Enrique's Journey

http://blogs.uww.edu/introtolatinamerica/2011/11/07/enrique%E2%80%99s-journey-by-sonia-nazario/



Enrique's Journey certainly wasn't a unique one. He, like many other illegal immigrates, accepted the dangers of riding the trains to a new life. I felt like this picture spoke of his experiences. He was constantly running throughout his life. Running to escape trouble. Running to get his next high. Running to escape deportation.  

Preppers

I actually used to make fun of my dad for watching the show "Doomsday Preppers," but after reading Life As We Knew It, I've started to realize that you never realize what the future holds. While my parents aren't quite as extreme as some of the people on that show, my dad thinks it's important to be independent and have the means to be self-sufficient if necessary. This makes sense too.

The characters of the book were in no way prepared for the horror that followed an asteroid's collision with the moon. Even though astronomers were aware that this collision would take place, they didn't know the exact effect and people everywhere were grossly unprepared.  Miranda's family was among them. They thought they would just watch the asteroid hit the moon and then go on about their lives. This event changed their lives though. Earth's climate shifted, gas prices skyrocketed, supermarkets closed, school was almost impossible, and communication was dysfunctional.

This book almost seems to make preppers look like the smart people. While other people were struggling to keep warm in the now unimaginably cold winter, starving without any food, and unable to find clean water, preppers would have been carrying out the plan that they had been devising for years. They would be the ones with plenty of resources.

While an asteroid hitting the moon and having this effect is probably never going to happen, that's not to say something else might not happen. I think it's good to plan for the future, but not to be so captivated with the unknown that a person forgets to live in the present. For now, I guess today's preppers are sitting with their stockpiles waiting for the end of the world.  

Pictures of Hollis Woods

For my Realistic Fiction choice, I read Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff. This is the story of a twelve year old girl struggling through the foster care system. Abandoned as a infant, Hollis Woods has only ever been able to long for a permanent family of her own. She often feels alone in this world, running from foster homes until she is taken to another one. Hollis does have an amazing gift of drawing though. This gift made me think of the quote from Wonder, "the universe takes care of all its birds." Even though Hollis was dealt this incredibly difficult hand, the universe blessed her with the ability to communicate with people through her art. Hollis is able to get work through her problems with her drawings because she sees the world differently when she draws things. This is how she returned to the foster family she loved so much. She had ran away because she thought she was driving a wedge between the father and son, but after working through her artwork from that summer, she realized that it wasn't true. She thought "...sometimes what you see is so deep in your head you're not even sure of what you're seeing. But when it's down there on paper, and you look at it, really look, you'll see the way things are... That's the world, isn't it? You have to keep looking to find the truth." Hollis was able to find that truth and return to her true family.






http://wowlit.org/blog/2011/06/20/responding-to-literature-as-a-community-transactions-with-pictures-of-hollis-wood/

Response to Megan's "the universe takes care of all its birds" Blog

I will be commenting on Megan LaPrade's blog post http://malyalblog.blogspot.com/. I really liked the personal aspects that were added to the blog. She not only commented on the parts of the book that she particularly enjoyed but also added her own reflection and interpretation of what certain quotes meant to her. Because Justin's quote "the universe takes care of all its birds" especially stood out to Megan, she reflected most on this idea. She pointed out that there are less artful ways that society has portrayed this idea. I think this shows that it resonates not only with Megan, but with many people trying to find their strength. I do appreciate how Megan found a sort of inspiration in Auggie's story of strength and perseverance.

Casting August Pullman as "the sun"

Upon my first few sections in the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio, I was not expecting the sort of ups and downs that I would be taken on throughout the story. While I was a little curious as to what August actually did look like, I'm still not sure if I can actually picture him the way that Via describes him in the "August Through a Peephole" section (Pg. 88-89). Yes, the cover does suggest that his ears and eyes are a little lower than usual, the cover does not prepare you for the scars that she describes. This may seem like something that sort of spoils the "wonder" of Auggie for the reader, but it does provide some insight to what he actually looks like. This helps the reader to sort of better understand different scenes where children run away screaming or people audibly react to his appearance. From the description, Auggie does seem like him might be a bit unexpected to say the least.

To me the book is more about Auggie learning to not let those initial reactions get to him. He's learning to focus on the way the universe is taking care of him because "the universe takes care of all its birds" (Pg. 204). Justin, Via's boyfriend, helped to provide those words of wisdom when he entered the Pullman's life. Justin saw what an amazing support system Auggie had for dealing the hand the genetic universe had given him. Justin was able to see Via who loved Auggie unconditionally, Isabell Pullman who did all she could to make sure Auggie was just where he needed to be, Nate Pullman who helped Auggie realize that he couldn't hide from the world behind an astronaut helmet, and of course Daisy who gave Auggie a glimpse of heaven. Auggie wondered shortly after Daisy died "how it would feel to be in heaven someday and not have my face matter anymore. Just like it never, ever mattered to Daisy" (Pg. 227).

While Via does love Auggie very much, there is a sense of her not wanting to be known as "the girl with the deformed brother." Because almost everything in her life does revolve around Auggie or her mom can't watch a movie with her because she has to go pick up Auggie, I can understand how Via sees her universe this way:
"August is the Sun. Me and Mom and Dad are planets orbiting the Sun. The rest of our family and friends are asteroids and comets floating around the planets orbiting the Sun. The only celestial body that doesn't orbit August the Sun is Daisy the dog, and that's only because to her little doggy eyes, August's face doesn't look very different from any other human's face. To Daisy, all our faces look alike, as flat and pale as the moon" (Pg. 82).
I sort of understand what Via feels like in this sibling type of way. It's not that she doesn't love Auggie, it's sort of that she feels like she's not her own person. I understand that because in high school I was sort of known as "Levi's little sister," I was living in his shadow, and I couldn't wait to get to college where no one knew any of my siblings. Here I am my own person. While I do love my brothers and my sister, it is nice to be known for my own actions and not those of my siblings before me. Although my situation isn't quite as extreme as Via's, I can understand that sometimes she wants to be the sun.