Reader's Journal #5 Slob by Ellen Potter

Dear Mrs. Zrihen,
I have nearly finished the book Slob by Ellen Potter. Here was a passage I really enjoyed on page 92:


“Nine minutes of standing outside in the frigid cold in my gym shorts, two and a half minutes of walking to the lunch closet. At the twelfth minute, I discovered that my entire lunch sack was gone.
“In its place was a note. It said:
“NEXT TIME I LEAVE THE CLASS, COUNT TO 20, THEN FOLLOW ME.”


I enjoyed this passage because without this passage, there wouldn’t be any suspense and mysteriousness. This passage is significant because it raises the stakes in the story. We don’t know who wrote the note or why. We think it’s Mason who wrote it and that Owen is about to catch him. Another passage that I liked was this on page 124:


“I knew it was silly. I’d been right behind Mason so I knew that he didn’t have time to rifle through my lunch, but I wanted to check anyway. I unrolled the tote bag and opened it up.
“That’s right. You guessed it.
“My frickin’ Oreo cookies were gone.
“So it wasn’t Mason after all.”


I liked this passage because it put a twist in the story. Up until now in the story we thought it was Mason who had been stealing the cookies and now we know he isn’t. That leaves Owen back to square one because now he doesn’t know who is stealing his cookies.
One before reading strategy I used was understanding the last part that I read so that I would have a better understanding about what the next part would be about. The other strategy I used was to skim and scan for figurative language. The two during reading strategies were to understand what I was reading and to understand the suspense and hard words. The after reading strategies I used were to review what I’ve read to check for understanding and to remember what I’ve read.
The genre of this book is realistic fiction. The genre characteristics, characterizations, motive, protagonist, antagonist, foil, conflict, point of view, author’s purpose and perspective I have done in my last Reader’s Journal. The setting for the story has not changed. The exposition was covered in my last Reader’s Journal. In the rising action, what happens is Owen finds that his whole lunch is taken and finds the note. So he follows Mason when he leaves the room but doesn’t count to twenty. He sees Mason running away from him so Owen starts chasing Mason. While he’s chasing Mason, Owen bumps into his friend Izzy. Eventually, Izzy and Owen get caught and are sent back to their classrooms. Owen decides to look in his lunch to see if the Oreo cookies are still there, but they were gone. So he realized that Mason wasn’t the thief. When Owen gets home, he works on Nemesis and figures out that what he needs is a retro TV magazine to get it to work right. He asks Jeremy (his sister) if her friend can let Owen borrow her retro TV magazines. She and Owen finally make a deal that he will give her his boy clothes and he gets to use the magazines for two weeks. Then they see that Nemesis starts working. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.
The tone of the story is very kind of comic. The mood is happy. I haven’t gotten to the moral of the story yet.
I would rate this book five stars out of five because it is funny and has a lot of suspense, and I love funny stories.
Sincerely,


Your Student,


Michael Heskiel

Reader's Journal # 4 Slob by Ellen Potter

Dear Mrs. Zrihen,

          This book I started reading is Slob by Ellen Potter.  This is a really good book about a fat kid who loves Oreo cookies.  Here is a passage from the book that I enjoyed reading:

          It felt like Mason Ragg was leaving me a message.  Something like:  I can get in and out of your lunch so easily that I even have time to seal up your eco-container.  And PS, and eco-container is very hard to seal.  You are powerless against me.

            I picked this passage because it shows the part where Mason Ragg wasn’t going to give up stealing the Oreo cookies; if it was him, because we don’t know if he did.  Without this passage the book wouldn’t have the same feeling of the kid stealing the Oreo cookies.

          The two before reading strategies I used were to read the cover to try to get an idea what the book is about, then I read the synopsis on the back of the book.   The two during reading strategies I used were to read and understand all of the vocabulary words and to understand what the story was talking about.  The two after reading strategies were to think about what I read and used the bookmark you gave me to mark where I left off.

          The genre is realistic fiction and its characteristic is that it seems like a story that really could happen, unlike science fiction that will never happen.

          The characters are Owen, Owen’s mom, Andre, Caitlin but she changed her name to Jeremy and is Owen’s sister, Mason Ragg, and Izzy Shank.  The characters seem like people coming alive because of the way they made the book you literally see the story in your head.  So far the characters in the book are flat, no one has changed.  The protagonist is Owen and the antagonist is Mason.  Owen’s motive is to stop Mason from taking his Oreo cookies.  Mason’s motive is to be a bully.  Owen has two foils, Nima and Jeremy.  Nima sells momos, which are a kind of dumplings.

          The book is set in New York and we don’t know when it is set.  The conditions I guess you can say are bright and sunny.  The social conditions aren’t explained. 

          The exposition is at the beginning of the story.  Owen starts off being a fat kid at gym class.  The other kids mutter to themselves around him.  Andre calls him “flapjack”.  He’s well treated at home because his sister thinks he has a lot of potential.  Owen is working on a machine like a television called “Nemesis.”  His mother has him on a diet.  And Owen loves his Oreo cookies.  Every day he always looks forward to eating the three Oreo cookies his mom packs in his lunch.  The conflict starts when Mason steals Owen’s cookies.

          In the rising action, Owen reacts to his cookies being stolen by looking to see if anyone has cookie stuff on their face.  He sees Mason sitting where he and Izzy usually sit.  Owen sees that Mason has three cookies stacked on the side.  That is where he gets the suspicion that Mason has stolen his cookies.  Then Owen walks home from school with Jeremy sad that he didn’t get to eat his cookies and that his coach tortured him.  Further into the story Nima tells him to make a machine like Nemesis to stop Mason from stealing his cookies.  Owen builds the machine and sets it up in the beginning of the day.  When he sees that Mason Ragg comes back from the bathroom not hurt.  Then Owen goes to the bathroom to check on his machine and he sees that his Oreo cookies are gone and the machine didn’t go off.  Then Owen goes back into the classroom walks up to Mason and asks him to give back his Oreo cookies.  Mason said that he knew nothing about his Oreo cookies.

          I haven’t gotten to the end of the book so I can’t talk about the climax, falling action and resolution.

          The main conflict is Owen wants to keep his cookies from being stolen.  The conflict is character vs. character.  The tone of the story is witty and the mood is light.  I haven’t read enough of the story to say what the motif is.  I can’t say what the moral of the story is because I haven’t gotten to the end of the book.  The point of view is first person because Owen is telling the story.

          The pattern of organization is the book is divided into chapters.  The author’s purpose is to make money.  The author’s perspective is that she is sensitive to fat people.

          I think the book is good.  It’s very funny.  I would recommend this book to everybody because it is very funny and there is no such thing as people who don’t like funny books.  Everyone likes funny books.   I rate what I’ve read five star out of five stars because it is really funny and I like humorous books. 

I think this is a really good book and I can’t wait to finish it.

Sincerely, your student,

Michael Heskiel

Michael Heskiel's Readers Journal #3

September 14, 2011

Dear Mrs. Zrihen,
     In the book Fear, edited by R.L. Stine, I've read another story that I like a lot.  It is, "Shadow Children" by Heather Brewer.  Here's a passage from it on page 101:

     "It stretched out its hand again, caressing Jon's hair the way someone might pet a puppy.  Dax jerked Jon from it and glared.  It met his gaze with its shadowy eyes, blinking like it couldn't possibly understand why he wouldn't want it touching his brother.  "You cannot escape."

     Dax gripped Jon to him, standing holding his brother as tightly as he could without hurting him.  He looked at the Jon-thing and tightened his jaw.  "Watch me." "

     I picked this passage because it's scary and courageous at the same time, and I kind of like that mixture.  If it was me had to deal with shadow children I'd be too scared to do anything.  This passage is important because without it Dax and Jon would never had gotten out of the cave.

     My two before reading strategies were to skim and scan the story and find figurative language.  The during reading strategies I used were seeing how the figurative language in the story was used and trying to guess what happens next.  I used the after reading strategies were reviewing what I had read to help with the second strategy, comprehending the story.

     The genre of the story is horror because it has monsters and the supernatural in it and horrible things can and do happen to the characters.  And there are no happy endings. Dax is the protagonist, the Shadow Children are the antagonists.  At the beginning of the story, Dax does not believe in the Shadow Children, by the end of the story he's scared of the truth.  He seems like a real person, so I would say he is a round/dynamic character.  His motive is to save his brother from the Shadow Children.  

     The story takes place in two places, Dax's home and the cave of the Shadow Children.  Every piece and layer of the cave is made of Shadow Children.  The story doesn't talk about the time, weather, or social conditions, but it takes place at night and it's cold.

     The story starts when Dax and Jon's bedroom get invaded by the Shadow Children when their night light goes out.  The rising action begins when Dax loses Jon and continues when Dax falls into the cave of the Shadow Children when looking for his brother.  The climax happens when Dax faces the Shadow Children trying to save his brother.  The falling action comes when Dax and Jon run out of the cave.  There really is no  resolution because while Dax has his brother, it seems that the Shadow Children do too.

     There was no other conflict in this story.  The main conflict is external.  It's Dax against the Shadow Children, character versus supernatural.  The tone of the story is definitely scary!  The mood is dark because you don't think there is going to be a happy ending and there isn't one.  The moral of the story is be afraid of the shadows.

     The story is told from Dax's point of view because he is the one telling the story.  This is a short story, so the pattern of organization is none.  Dax just starts tell the story and it goes from there.  I think the author's purpose for this story is to scare and entertain you.  The author's perspective is that she is wrote story to entertain readers and make money.  Some figurative language that I found were:  "Jon screamed.  And it wasn't one of those little-brat screams for attention.  He sounded terrified.  Like his life depended on someone hearing and responding to his terrified shriek."  Another one is, "A small trail of colored dust, shimmering and full of light, floated in the air between Jon and the monster that was mimicking his form."  Another one is, "The floor shrank until there was only and island of shadow left."  Here's another one, " Dax pulled himself free from the hole, his muscles burning."  And my last figurative language, "Shadow lurked in his eyes - the darkest that Dax had ever seen."

     I thought it was very good story.  The is a lot of very intense moments.  I was surprised to find out that the cave was made out of Shadow Children.  I  enjoyed the parts that Jon would run away, because they would make an imitation Jon.

     I would recommend this story to anyone who enjoys horror and suspense.  I give the story four stars out of five because the story was good but the author could have used more descriptive words that I could understand.  

  

Your student,

Michael Heskiel

Fear by R.L.Stine Reader's Journal #2: Horror & Suspense fiction

Dear Mrs. Zhrihen, 

The book Fear is over 300 pages, so I’m still reading it.  In this book, there are thirteen stories.  One story I liked was “Dragonfly Eyes” by Alane Ferguson.  I like this story because it is very intense.  This story is about two girls, Claire and Savanna Rose, who were hostages.  These two girls were held hostage in their school by a man who does not have a name in the story. 

A passage from the story that I like is on page 129 is:

“And then a loud crack of the door followed by shrill screams as my killer burst inside our classroom, his gun held out in front of him, both hands gripping the handle tight.

“Give me two hostages!  I want two!  Now, now, now!”’

            I like this passage because it starts the action in the story.  This passage is important to the story because without it, all the good parts wouldn’t be there. 

            The genre of the story is horror and suspense.  The story takes place in the science classroom of the girls’ school.  The main problem was the hostage issue.  The characters in the story remained the same through the story.  They never really came alive for me, they always stayed scared.  But I thought that was pretty cool.  Only the antagonist changed in the story.  He went from wanting to kill Claire to not wanting to.  The real protagonist in the story is Savannah Rose, who dies early in the story, but her soul goes into a dragonfly.

            I think that this story was a really good story because you don’t see that type of action in most stories.  I recommend this book to everyone because the story starts off really good and ends really good.

            Your student,

            Michael Heskiel