Dear Mrs. Zrihen,
I have been reading the book Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka. It is an autobiography. Here is a passage that I really enjoyed on pages 51 through 53:
“Dad, look at this,” I said. “One hundred toy soldiers for just $1.25!”
My dad looked over the ad. “That looks great,” he said. “But sometimes you have to be careful. They design those ads to make the toys look better that they really are.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “And look – you get four tanks and four jeeps and four battleships and eight jet planes and a ton of army men, and it’s only a dollar and a quarter.”
“How much do you have?” asked Dad.
“Um…nothing,” I said.
“Well,” said Dad, “save your allowance and give it a try.”
So I saved my allowance for two weeks. That was a dollar. I popped a quarter out of one of Jim’s coin-collecting books. And I had my $1.25. I promised god I would let Jim play with my hundred piece army a couple of times so He wouldn’t have to kill me with an earthquake for stealing.
I filled out the order form. I checked the box marked “Rush the TOY SOLDIER SET TO ME!” And I mailed off my money to:
LUCKY PRODUCTS, INC.
Somewhere in N.Y.
HERE’S MY $1.25!
Then I waited. And waited. And waited.
I kept looking at the as I had saved on my desk. Eight machine gunners, eight sharpshooters, four bombers. The whole army was even “PACKED IN THIS FOOTLOCKER.”
Then one day when I came home from school, there was a brown-paper-wrapped package on the dining-room table. It was addressed to me. Yes!
I scooped it up and ran upstairs to my room.
I ripped open the paper and pulled out a little box. It seemed a bit small. About the size of a deck of cards. I figured maybe they packed each division in a separate box. Army guys in one. Navy guys in another. Jets and tanks and battle cruisers in another.
I opened the cardboard box, which was marked sort of like a footlocker.
Tiny little bits of dark green plastic spilled out. Each piece was thin as a dime, and about that tall. For one horrible second I thought the mailman had broken my hundred piece army. Then I looked more closely at the pieces, and discovered that the truth was even worse – the little pieces were my hundred-piece army.
I picked up one skinny bazookaman. He was too skinny even to stand on his base. Four skinny riflemen, eight very skinny machine gunners. All worthless.
I chose this passage because I thought it was very funny to watch someone else get ripped off and now I don’t feel alone. This passage helps the book in showing how Jon Scieszka had a weird life.
My two before reading strategies were one, to skim and scan for text features and to read the synopsis. My two during reading strategies were one, to understand any vocabulary I didn’t know and two, to relate the story to everyday life. My two after reading strategies were one, to review what I had read that day and two to prepare for Reader’s Journal.
The genre of the book is autobiography. It is characterized by the author telling stories about his life. Some characteristics of the book are funny and shocking. The topic of the book is Jon Scieszka’s life growing up. The main idea of this book his life and how he acted with his brothers and is stated. Two supporting details would be that he had five brothers and he was one of the oldest brothers.
One cause and effect I found in this was that he played a rough called Slaughterball and effect was that he broke his brother’s collarbone four times. Some text features I saw in the book were a lot of photographs, illustrations, and different font types and sizes for the titles of the chapters.
The author’s purpose is to inform people about his wacky life. The author’s perspective is definitely subjective because everything in the book is what he experienced.
I would this book a nine out of ten because the book was very good and very funny, but I hate autobiographies. I would recommend this book to any middle schooler who likes to read funny biographies.
Sincerely,
Michael Heskiel
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