Rules of The Road by Joan Bauer

      Rules of The Road by Joan Bauer

         I recently finished the book "Rules Of The Road" by Joan Bauer. This book is based on the life of Jenna Boller, and insecure teenager living with  a single mother, who experiences issues with her drunken father. Jenna is also the best worker at Gladstone's Shoes, a shoe branch that focuses on quality. In the story, Jenna attains self confidence, thanks to Mrs.Gladstone (founder of Gladstone's shoes).
        Mrs.Gladstone hired Jenna as her chauffeur for the summer, and Jenna took up the job, hoping it would help her pay off for her new car. While on the road, Jenna became very aware of the small details in life. She learned how to trust herself and her judgement, and to be confident and aware  of her gifts.
        I think that this story is inspiring because many people underestimate themselves and their true talent, especially teenagers. We so often find ourselves striving to fit into the conformity of society that we lose ourselves in the process. We feel the need to become someone else  in order to like ourselves. Jenna helps you see that differences are a blessing and make you unique and that it's a good thing to stand out from the crowd. I recommend this book.

The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

The Devil’s Arithmetic

By Jane Yolen

           

l ‘Prophet Elijah’, she travels back in time to 1942 in a Polish village and everybody calls her Chaya. But it is the time of the Holocaust, and only Hannah knows what’s happening. Recently, I read the book The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen. This book is about a modern-day girl, Hannah, who doesn’t like to attend her family Seder celebrations, because she is tired of remembering her past, but of course, this Seder, she is forced to attend. When Hannah is requested to open the apartment door to let in the symbolica

I think that it was a good choice of the author to select her overall setting to be during the Holocaust. I think she did this because the story is about a girl who is tired of remembering her past heritage, which has everything to do with the Holocaust and the fact that six million Jew’s died.

The setting was also important to the theme, which was how heritage is important. I know this because in the end, Hannah was grateful that she was forced to attend her families ‘remembering sessions’ because she was put into a situation where her knowledge was useful. When Hannah was swept back in time, she got to realize that the Holocaust was so much more than what she thought of it. It was worse. This changed the way she saw her past, and she finally understood the importance of remembering her heritage.

The setting also affected the plot. This is true because if the whole story took place in Hannah’s modern day life, she probably wouldn’t have actually realized how bad the Holocaust really was, because she wouldn’t have experienced it. The experience was what really made her understand the importance of heritage. The events and emotions that Hannah went through when she was in 1942 were what really caused her to change.

The setting also just affected Hannah as a character. I think so because of the settings affect on the plot and theme, Hannah’s surroundings caused her to have an emotional change. As I stated before, in the beginning of the story, Hannah didn’t like remembering her past, and the Holocaust. After the setting changed and she was suddenly living her past, she realized the horrible truth of the six million Jews that died long ago. In the end, she grasped the significance of how her heritage past was a huge part of her.

Those are the reasons why I think that the setting affected the overall outcome of the book The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen. 

Tweak by Nic Sheff

This week, I finished the book Tweak by Nic Sheff. This book is an memoir- a true story- about his hard life as a drug addict. Nic Sheff was addicted to the whole lot of drugs:meth, crack, cocaine, marijuana, painkillers, anxiety pills, etc. Throughout the story of his life, I realized that Nic Sheff was not addicted to drugs, but to anything that would take the pain away.

Nic had many problems. As a child he always felt that he was the outsider and he saw thing differently from others. He was not an outcast, but just secretly different. He started using drugs at a very young age. He also became sexually involved at a young age too. He describes getting high as making him feel powerful and helping him not give a crap about his worries or his family or his problems with self hatred.  He always felt like his family was so perfect and had everything together and he was a lost puppy and hated himself for relying on him for everything. Nic hated the way he looked, he hated his addiction, he hated being lost, and basically hated everything about himself. Turning to drugs didn't make him love himself, but it gave him an outlet.

This book made me cry. Honest. Sheff told his story with such a raw reality that it was unlike anything I've ever experienced before. To be in the mind of a man who truly hated himself and everything he was was heartbreaking; a man who struggled to find his identity, a man who struggled with drugs. I would suggest this book to anybody. PLEASE DO READ!

The Divorce Express

            The book “The Divorce Express” is about the effects of divorce on a young adolescent named Phoebe. During the book, Phoebe goes through a significant emotional change. In the beginning, she feels like she is trapped by her parents divorce, and that she has no voice in what happens anymore. Throughout the book, Phoebe goes through important events and experiences that change the way she sees her parents divorce. By the end of the book, she thinks of divorce as a chance to learn new things.

            In the beginning, Phoebe feels trapped, and like she’s stuck in the middle of her parents divorce. She also feels lost and like she has no view in their decisions. I know that Phoebe feels confined by her parents divorce because she says “Rearrange the letters in the word PARENTS and you get the world ENTRAPS.” She says this because she feels like the decisions that her parents make in their divorce come down on her and traps her. I know that Phoebes feels like she has no voicing in her parents’ decisions because she says “I had no say. Their divorce was arranged by the time I got home from camp.”

            The events and experiences that Phoebe goes through throughout the book change the way she sees her parents divorce. One example of this is when her father is dating a lady named Mindy. Phoebe notices that he father hasn’t been this happy in a while, and she suddenly thinks that her parents’ divorce was for the best, to keep her parents happy. I know this because she thinks “I’m glad my father found Mindy. He’s happier now. I wonder if he was this happy with mother. Maybe it’s a good thing they divorced, so they could both be happier.” This line shows that Phoebe is starting to accept to reason for her parents divorce. She realizes the good affect is has on their lives, and how when they’re happy, she is.

            By the end of the story, Phoebe thinks of her parents divorce as a chance for her to learn new things and to find her own place in the world. I know this because she says “I don’t feel entrapped anymore, with no place to go. I have both my parents places, and I’m learning to have my own place in the world.”  This line shows that Phoebe is learning to get a handle on her parents divorce, and that she is finding her own place in the world. She doesn’t feel as hopeless and lost in the beginning of the story, and she isn’t as upset about her parents divorce either.  I also know that Phoebe changes the way she thinks of divorce because she says “I also learned that if you rearrange the letters in the word DIVORCE, you get the word DISCOVER.”  That line shows that Phoebe thinks of divorce as a change to learn new things, whether they may be about your life, or someone else’s.

            Throughout the book, Phoebe’s words and actions show how she goes through a significant emotional change, where she comes to accept the fact of her parents divorce and find her own place in the world, after being lost for so long. 

The Skin Im In by Sharon G Flake

                 The Skin I'm In begins with the main character Maleeka, a seventh-grade African-American girl, meeting her new teacher Miss Saunders for the first time. Both Miss Saunders and Maleeka have a kind of beauty that most people don't recognize; Miss Saunders has a large white "stain" across her face and Maleeka is blacker than black. As the school year goes on, Maleeka comes to realize that her blackness is nothing to be ashamed of; as she says "black is the skin I'm in." Maleeka is faced with a lot of the problems that most adolescents face: she struggles to fit in and as a result forms a sort of alliance with some of the "mean girls" at the school. The leader, Charlese, treats everyone terribly and gets Maleeka into trouble on more than one occasion. Finally, Charlese decides that she and Maleeka, along with two other girls, will get revenge on Miss Saunders by destroying her classroom. Maleeka is the only one who is punished for the offense until she has enough courage to stand up for herself and tell the truth about who all was involved.
              I really got into this book.   I could easily put myself in Maleeka's shoes. Maleeka was such an excellent character; she presents the raw emotions that everyone feels at a point in their life and she has this great epiphany at the end that shows that there is no need to be ashamed of who you are. Caleb even shows that no matter what you look like, as long as you are a good person, there will always be someone who cares about you.
             Maleeka was exceptionally poetic. Her diaries about Akeelma were powerful. It was great how she used her diaries as an outlet for all the emotions she was feeling about Charlese, Caleb, John-John, and her own thoughts about herself. I was very glad to see that she won the competition. I can't imagine another middle schooler having the imagination and the diction to write such beautiful compositions. I felt like her work was better than a lot of adult writers.
             Maleeka also showed how to deal with the death of a parent which is so important. I thought it was moving when she went through the box of things that her mother had kept after her father passed away. That poem was a great statement of the love between a father and daughter and of the pride that Maleeka should have in herself. However, I did feel really bad for Maleeka's mother. She lost her love when her husband died and it took her a long time to heal from it. At least she found an outlet (sewing) to bring her out of her grief and to start her on the path to healing.
             This book is a fantastic book for teaching to love who you are. Every single person, no matter who, has self-doubts from time to time either about the way they dress and how they look, etc. This book taught me a valuable lesson that I hope to hold onto for the rest of my life. 

"Am I Blue" Bruce Coville

 Am I Blue? 

 Bruce Coville

           I recently read the short story Am I Blue by Bruce Coville. This book is about the struggles of Vince, an adolescent boy who is bullied in school because his peers assume that he is homosexual, although Vince is still really unsure himself whether he is or isn’t. In the very beginning, Vince encounters Melvin, who is his fairy godfather. Throughout the story, with the aid of Melvin, Vince gains courage and acceptance of himself and others.  

            In the beginning of the story, Vince is embarrassed to be with Melvin because of how ‘openly’ expressive he is of his homosexuality. He says and I quote, “How much trouble is it going to give me to be seen with this guy? With Butch and his crowd already calling me “faggot” and “fruit”, walking around with a guy who moved the way Melvin did wasn’t going to do anything to improve the situation.” Here, Vince is only worried about how other people’s reactions. He fears what others might do if they think that he is gay. This is causing Vince to judge Melvin and not be accepting of the person Melvin is. Vince also says to Melvin “Do you have to walk like that?” Vince wasn’t accepting of the way Melvin walked because thought it was different and out-of –the norm. By being bullied, I think that Vince has been trained into thinking that gay is wrong.  Vince also feels that he is unsafe in confiding in anybody about his identity problems. Vince is still not aware of whether he is gay or not, but he is too afraid to confess this to anybody. In the story he says, “That thought had crossed my mind more that once as I was trying to figure myself out over the last year- and not only with regard to dating. I would have been happy just to have someone I felt safe talking to about this. “  This shows that Vince is conflicted, and mostly afraid to express himself to anybody.  The bullying that Vince must bare with causes him to be intolerant of Melvin’s personality in the beginning.

            Despite Vince’s bigotry, later on, Melvin helps Vince gain confidence and courage by showing him that there is a world full of people with all different types of sexuality. In the text, Melvin says, “If gay people hadn’t been forced to hide for so long, if we could just openly identify ourselves, there would be plenty of people you knew that you could ask advice. Everybody knows gay people, they just think they don’t.”  He also says “Listen, honey, the world is crawling with faggots. But most of them are hiding because they’re afraid they’ll treated the way you did about an hour ago.”  He is trying to show Vince that people are only kept in the closet because of their fear of what others might do. To further enforce this message, Melvin gives Vince a ‘gaydar’ for a day. This gaydar turns gays different shades of blue depending on the intensity of their homosexuality. Vince is surprised that many of the people around him that he sees everyday blue to some extent. Vince gains valor through this because he realizes that if he were to be gay, he wouldn’t be alone. He learns to accept his surrounding and realizes that too many people have concealed who they truly were and stuck to the conformity of society.

            By the end of the story, Vince is an entirely altered person. He uses one of the three wishes that Melvin offered him and asks that Melvin turns every gay person blue in the whole country as if everybody from coast to coast had a “gaydar”. Vince also wishes that Melvin turn Butch Carrigan (the boy who bullied him in school because he thought he was gay) blue, but it turns out that Butch was already “blue as a summer sky”, so the wish was useless. Vince gains the courage and strength to do these things because he didn’t want anybody to have to keep their true identity hidden because of what other people think like he did.  Vince says “And my third wish, I’ve decided to save it for when I really need it- maybe when I meet to the girl of my dreams. Or Prince Charming. Whichever.”  This shows that Vince has come to accept that he may or may not be gay, and he no longer has a problem with it. He is no longer secret about it and is accepting to the idea at this point.

            With Melvin’s assistance, Vince went from keeping his true identity in the closet and not accepting the person he might be, to embracing it. Vince is an inspiring character because of the incredible change he underwent. His experience taught me a valuable lesson; that nobody should have to conceal who they are because of what other people think, and that everyone should be tolerant of others. 

"The Drummer Boy of Shiloh" by Ray Bradbury

The Drummer Boy of Shiloh

by Ray Bradbury

           

            “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” by Ray Bradbury is a short story about a fourteen-year-old boy named Joby who ventures off into the war as the ‘drummer boy’. In the beginning of the story, Joby is terrified of the war and is not ready to encounter the struggles ahead. But at the end, Joby puts on a brave face and has a newfound confidence that enables him to get up and fight. I think that this story represents facing life with conviction and valor, having confidence and believing in yourself even when you’re stuck in difficult situations.

            In the beginning, Joby deems himself hopeless. He considers himself weak as just the ‘drummer boy’ compared to the soldiers who lug rifles on their shoulders. In the texts, it states “Me, thought the boy, I only got a drum, two sticks to beat it, and no shield.”(pg 50). The text also says “…flag-blown patriotism, and cocksure immortality strengthened by the touchstone of very real gunpowder, ramrod, Minie ball, and flint. But without these last, the boy felt his family move yet farther off in the dark…….leaving him with his drum which was worse than a toy in the game to played tomorrow or someday much too soon”(pg50-51) The second quote convinces me that Joby has given up all shreds of hope. He is ashamed in just having a drum, which he refers to as a ‘toy’ even. He believes that without gun power, he doesn’t stand a chance in the war, and that he may never see his family again. He feels useless and stuck. And he definitely feels in no position to go off to battle.

            But by the end of the story, Joby finds strength. The general assures him that as the “drummer boy” he was the ’heart’ of the army. The general says “These lads, fresh out of the milk shed, don’t know what I know; and I can’t tell them-men actually die in war. So each is his own army. I got to make one army of them. And for that, boy, I need you” (pg 52-53) The texts also states that if Joby beat slowly, “the heart would beat slow in the men” and that if he beat a faster rhythm, “their knees would come up in a long line down over that hill.” With that in mind, Joby realizes that he is crucial to the battle and is equally as important as the soldiers.  In the end, Joby “..settled himself. Then at last, very slowly and firmly he turned the drum so it faced upward to the sky.” I believe this gesture is a symbol Joby’s fresh conviction.

            In conclusion, even though Joby was facing a hard time, he pulled through and was ready to face with situation with courage. By reading “The Drummer Boy of Shiloh” I am inspired to always persevere and always stand up to my problems, whatever they may be.