Blog Post #3 (English 1A)

     Some of the real life issues prominent in my story right now are abuse and fear.  The little boy, Homer Wells, was born by parents who didn't want him.  He was sent to an orphanage.  The orphanage kept him for a while, and he was an unusually quiet baby; he hardly ever cried, unlike most other babies in the room with him.  When a family finally had the urge to adopt him, Dr. Larch, the founder of the orphanage, interviewed that family and assumed that they were a great family to keep their little Homer, and he decided to allow them to take him home.
     Now that I've given a little background knowledge, I can answer a simple question:
"What does this work tell us about the nature of right and wrong?"
     By the way the boy, Homer, was treated in his new home (he was abused horribly and starved and not treated in his illnesses / wounds) and by the way of life of the people living in their town (unhappy, angry, miserable and abusive; not caring about other peoples' lives) the author is showing the reader that he believes all people are born evil, and some can be taught to be nice and hide their evilness, but you can't stop it always.  Like Dr. Larch, he was a good man who cared about the kids in the adoption center, but wasn't always the man he is today.  Neither were the nurses there.  I think the author is teaching us here that some people change, and some simply do not.  We have to accept that now, and work around it like Dr. Larch in taking care of society as we best see fit.

Blog Post #2 (English 1A)

     A symbol for the character, Alaska, I'd give would be a lone wolf.  She's always doing her own thing, even though Pudge loves her and she might love him she's still a leader nevertheless in everything she does.  And Pudge will always just be her follower because her leadership fascinates him.  She's also lost: she's a labyrinth always with her ideas and her sadness but also mysterious happiness.  Just like a lone wolf that lives by its own rules and is confusing.  One learns to only care about their own thoughts when forced to.  Like Alaska, like lone wolf.
- Looking for Alaska

Blog Post #1 (English 1A)

"Well he looks  like an angel from the photos," one of the ladies said.
That is the most important line in this chapter of Room by Emma Donoghue because it causes a big twist in plot - the boy the lady is talking about, Jack, has been rescued just recently from captivity at five years old with his ma, and his mother has worked her hardest to make sure that he doesn't get seen by the paparazzi so they cannot cause him to live a life anything but normal.  Now we hear that one of the ladies from Jack's grandmother's book club has seen photos of Jack, and now I see that it will be much harder for Ma to help him grow up and live a happy, average life.

Text-to-text:
I can relate this section in the story to another book I'm reading called Looking for Alaska by John Green.  In Room, they are now finding out that Jack probably will not be able to ever live a normal life.  In Looking for Alaska Miles, or Pudge (his nickname) fell in love with a girl named Alaska who already had a boyfriend, and she acted like she loved him a little too.  But, tragically, she drank too much one night and got into a car wreck that killed her.  And Miles is asking himself over and over if he'll ever live a day where he doesn't think about her; asking himself if he'll ever go back to 'normal' again.
Text-to-world:
I can relate this section in the story to our economical issues in America today.  Taxes are increasing, healthcare is failing, people are losing their jobs (or completely dropping out of the work force in general).  Now, people are asking if the country will ever go back to the way it was.  Just like how in Room Jack will probably never go back to the relaxed and calm life he has been living for the past month since someone knows who he is.  He'll get bombarded with questions about what Room was like every time he walks out his front door.
Text-to-self:
I can relate this section in the story to my feelings when I get a bad grade.  Like, a few months ago I got a C on a math test.  I studied for that test, but still didn't understand the material I suppose.  So I kept asking myself if I'm going to do better on the next test if I study.  Just like how Ma must be feeling now that she knows that people know the identity of her son, that things may never go back to normal like I felt my grades might not.

The best thing about my book is the perspective it's told in.  It's through the eyes of Jack, who's five years old.  His take on the world around him is so fascinating, and it puts you back into that time when you were little and just about everything you saw or played with or put in your mouth was like Heaven.  Also, the only thing he's ever known since he was born until now has been Room and its contents, so Outside is frightening to him.  I would have never imagined it would frighten someone like it does Jack, but I now see that that's only because I'm from here and have lived here my whole life, so I know there's nothing to be afraid of in my daily affairs.  He is still yet to learn those things.

The vocabulary is very low-level because Jack is only five, but he's heard from almost everybody he's talked to in Outside that he's insanely smart for his age still and knows big words that normal kids wouldn't.  That's all thanks to Ma who taught him everything he knows in the solitary confinement of the 11x11 room that was her home for seven years.  Here's something a five-year-old wouldn't normally say:
Deana: Those are pelicans, they'll eat almost anything Jack.
Jack: They're omnivores.

A symbol I'd give Ma is a tree.  This is because in she's a woman, abducted seven years ago, and has lost everything she loves in life and it was all replaced with Room.  Now she has found her way out, and is happy.  This reminds me of a tree, because in the winter it loses all it's leaves, but soon enough it gains buds and then its leaves grow back and it can look beautiful again.
A symbol I'd give Jack is a lost puppy.  This is because he's a little boy, and has suddenly found himself somewhere he's never known or seen or believed was even real.  He's scared.  Like a little puppy that wandered from home, is scared because he doesn't know where he is or where the people he loves are.

Book 1 Project (Best Sellers)

Fan of Room by Emma Donoghue? Us too.

Best Experience Possible

We want to give you the best experience possible while reading this magnificently-written story. To enhance what you learn from and comprehend in the book, we want to tell you about an offer you simply can't refuse!

Truck

For only $9.95 (plus s+h) you can have an exact toy replica of the brown truck Donoghue based the one Old Nick drove off of in Room.

Free Map

Plus, you can have a free map of all the area Jack had been in Outside, starting with a bird's-eye-view map of Room, and you'll discover exactly how the police were able to track down Room even when Jack himself had no clue where it could've been; he'd been inside his whole life.

Free Tickets

And, as an added bonus, we'll give you FREE tickets to go see the Room exhibit in the Cincinnati's Children's Museum, with all the same objects as mentioned in the story inside. You can go and see how you compare to the size of that room, and imagine yourself in Jack's or Ma's shoes. Once-in-a-lifetime experience, folks!

 

This idea comes from the basic idea of Room, and I’ll get the information to create the exhibit from the parts in the book where Jack explains where everything is and what it looks like (he’s very descriptive).  The truck comes from the part in the story where Ma is telling Jack how she got kidnapped by Old Nick in his brown truck, ““This man ran up asking for help, his dog was having a fit and he thought it might be dying.”  “What’s it called?” [Jack] “No, the dog was just a trick to get me into his pickup truck, Old Nick’s truck.”  “What color is it?” [Jack] “The truck?  Brown, he’s still got the same one, he’s always griping about it.”” (page 93) and the map comes from the places in the story where Jack tells about the turns and twists he felt while wrapped in the rug in the back of Old Nick's truck; this tells you where Room is on the map based on direction: like if he says "I was swayed to the right" you would put that down as a left turn, and if it says "I was thrown to the front of the truck" you would put that down as a stop, and so on. 

This will totally get the reader's attention because they can mark out the twists and turns with a pen/pencil on their own map to find out which house with shed contains Room and they can personally be the reason Ma is saved from it!  They will be able to participate in the book, and turn an ordinary house in a neighborhood into the one where Ma is rescued, Room is found, and Old Nick rescued. (SPOILER ALERT)

I am encouraging readers to stay intent on the story, because they have to follow the story to complete the map and save Ma!  It's as if they're just as important to the story as the characters are which I believe will keep them interested and on the edge of their seat.

This is an example of the map used, and they could mark off places the home couldn't be, and so on! :)  It would be tons of fun and exciting to find out which one is his!  We'll have a website to show you whether you're right or wrong, and also an electronic map you can use the same way as a paper one to mark possibilities for Old Nick's house.

Informal Reflection on Book 1 (Best Sellers)

I’m enjoying this book so far (I’m about 2/3 through it) because it’s neat to see what life would be like if you were really born into a situation like that, and I never would have even imagined that Jack wouldn’t want to leave Room, because I never considered the true saying that you can’t miss what you never had.  I thought this related well because Jack doesn’t want to be Outside, all he has ever known is Room.

I really like about this book that it’s told from a five-year-old’s point of view, Jack’s, because it’s very unique and interesting and sometimes I tend to forget what it was like to be five; hearing him talk about everything around him is often funny and intriguing because it makes me want to read on and find out if he’ll every discover what the thing he was confused about really is.  I also really like the fact that they don’t tell it from any other perspectives besides Jack’s because that means I get the chance to sort of infer what Ma is probably thinking by Jack’s descriptions of her and her actions.

Something I dislike about this book is that it’s a bit slow-moving; I understand that it’s the point of the story to really show you how many things you have to come up with to keep yourself occupied in a situation like this but it does drone on a bit once you get to around 200 pages and it’s still talking about every little thing in the same manner as it did in the beginning of the story.  I think it still meets my expectations though, even with this minor setback, because the author worked very hard to make this story sound as realistic as it does.  If I didn’t know this story was fictional, I would believe every word she wrote.  It’s probably exactly how a five-year-old boy thinks and in his smart condition as well.  And the droning on just shows how boring life must have been from Ma’s perspective, even though Jack finds it all entertaining.

What is a book? (Best Sellers)

A book is an interpretation.  I believe books (and the authors of the books) possess the power to interpret or to assume the world as the way they see it from their point of view.  They also have different worlds of opportunities and excitement and energy that we may not have in the lives we were given.  They are the carriers of information to other people who don’t have the same perspective on what life really is for them.  A book is like a teacher.  It needs readers, like a teacher needs students to teach.  Without readers or students to teach, neither a book nor teacher has a purpose.

I disagree with Joe Meno’s idea about how a book is a place where readers have a chance to translate word into image.  I feel that the author did the translating themselves; we are just seeing what they saw in their idea to write the story.  If they are good authors, they will know how best to make us visualize exactly what they wanted us to, and we will not translate at all we will directly interpret what they intended the story to mean.

I agree, however, with Meno’s idea that what a book is or isn’t is one of the most interesting questions in the world.  I think the reason for that is every single book has a different story to tell, told by someone with a different perspective than anyone else.  So we are finally getting a chance to see from the eyes of that exact person in their exact situation; and otherwise that would have never ever possibly happened.  No two people are the same so it is utterly impossible.

A book on Kindle, iPad, or phone is not the same thing as a hardback book to me.  I feel that simply the holding of a book filled with pages and not a white screen with black letters is so much different that I question whether the electronic stories even count.  The traditional idea of a book I think was that your progress could be held in your own two hands; not just looking down at a fluorescent page number on a screen, but you can actually feel the difference of weight on both hands showing the amount of progress you made.  And placing your bookmark inside, seeing the cover of the single book all hours of the day just feels better than a multi-tasking Kindle that dies and doesn’t show you your book until you open it.  There is something magical about physically carrying your real book, so much so that I have honestly never read a book besides the ones made with paper!

Q: Are there any positives you can think of about an e-book?

A: They are typically more lightweight, you can read more at the same time, don’t have to flip the page (such a hassle I know) and don’t have to use a physical bookmark to hold your place.  I personally believe that still the negatives of electronic books outweigh the positives because they still hurt my eyes, they die, and typically people don’t read more than two books at a time which isn’t that much heavier of a load than an electronic device would be.

Q: Do you prefer getting information from online or from books?

A: It definitely takes much longer to find the information you are looking for from books and encyclopedias, etc., but I still like to try and find as much information as I can through books before I resort to using the internet because I find that they give you so much more detail than an online article or news report would, and you can read the entire book based upon the topic you were looking for and feel nice that you know maybe even more than you needed at that very moment; but that extra information can most definitely come in handy later.

Why I read (Best Sellers)

Purchase:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Hunger-Games-Book-1/dp/0439023521/ref=wp_bs_1_B00CKD4IB2_paperback

I read because it just makes me feel better. I enjoy reading books written about people (fictional or not) who are in completely different situations than what I'm in because it makes me be able to better understand other people and their circumstances sometimes. Like if I read a book about someone who's starving, I can better understand what it's like to be that way and if I know anyone who is like that I can give sympathy and help because I know (sort of) what it's like.  I also read because it makes me happy, like I'm in another world.  When I read a book like The Hunger Games, it really takes me to another place in the future where things are totally different which makes things interesting, suspenseful and just altogether really fun.  I enjoy books like that (dystopia) because they are actually slightly possible to occur within our real world, which gives me that sense of excitement like, "What if this actually happens?!" And it for sure makes me want to keep reading.  I am excited to read Room by Emma Donoghue because it seems like a book that will keep me on the edge of my seat, asking myself repeatedly if the boy and his loving mother will ever make it out of room alive.  It's related to that sympathy factor I explained earlier, like if someone experienced a situation as described in Room I would be able to better understand where they were coming from than I would have before I read the book.

Book Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBpnelG0f9A

Purchase:

http://www.amazon.com/Room-Novel-Emma-Donoghue/dp/0316098329