For this book review I read, Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes. The main character is a young girl named Deja, who narrates the whole story in first person. Life is difficult for Deja and her family, especially since her father is sick and very depressed and the family has been forced to move into a homeless shelter. Deja has to transfer to a new school where she is assigned to work on a project about September 11th that slowly helps her understand how much that day has affected her father’s life and the life of her entire family. The story takes place in 2016 in New York City. The conflict is person vs. self. This book tells the story of a young girl named Deja Barnes, who lives in New York City with her younger brother and sister …show more content…
and her parents, who she calls Mama and Pop. Her father is always very tired, sick, depressed and has a bad cough, and because of that he doesn't have a job so they are forced to move to a homeless shelter called Avalon.
The shelter actually happens to be in a nicer, richer part of the city and Deja is able to attend a better school, Brooklyn Collective, than her old one. When a teacher at school assigns a project about the anniversary of September 11th, Deja wants to learn more about it, but she doesn’t understand why her dad gets so angry when she brings up the subject at home. Even though she has lived in New York City for her entire life, she knows very little about what happened on that day. Deja’s mother has a part time job as a waitress so Deja often has to take care of her younger siblings, Leda and Ray. At her new school Deja goes to a new school becomes friends with another new kid, an artistic boy named Ben and a girl named Sabeen, who wears a headscarf. Even though they come from very different backgrounds they discover that through their problems they actually have a lot in common. Sabeen’s family is …show more content…
Muslim, and they worry about being out in public during the anniversary of September 11th. Ben’s parents have just gotten divorced and he has been forced to leave his ranch in Arizona. Meanwhile, Deja is very worried about her father and what is going to happen to her family. Deja hates living in the homeless shelter. She hates that they all have to live in one room, she hates being embarrassed by it. She says “In the shelter, even when I’m awake, I sometimes keep my eyes closed. What I see makes me angry.” Later in the story when they are talking about September 11th, Deja tells her teacher “I wasn’t even born. I’m sorry they’re dead. Honest. But why should I care?” She doesn’t understand the importance of September 11th or why they should be studying history at all. By the end of the story she is able to understand that the horrible events of September 11th have affected her city, her country and her family (her Dad was there when the Twin Towers fell). I liked Deja and I also felt sorry for her. I thought she was a good sister and tried to be a good daughter, even though she had a lot of anger and frustration about her family’s situation. She was under a lot of stress but still tried to focus on the future and helping her family. She was also a good friend to Ben and Sabeen. One of things in the story that caused the biggest problems for Deja and her family is her father’s constant sickness and depression.
Everyone has to tip toe around him all the time and when Deja starts talking about her school project he gets angry and tells her never to bring it up again. Deja loves Pop but she also gets angry with him for not being like other dads. He can’t keep a job so they’re really poor and get evicted from their apartment. She has to wear old clothes that don’t fit and there’s hardly enough food to eat. He is too sick and tired to even help them keep their room at the homeless shelter neat. Deja knows that he really can’t help it but it still bothers her and makes her mad. The problems between Deja and her dad finally come to a point one day later in the story. Pop has a suitcase which he has always kept locked and which no one is allowed to touch but one day Deja opens it to find a tie, a picture of a young man with two other men, and the twin towers in the background. Thanks to her school project, Deja realizes Pop survived 9/11. Later on he tells her what had happened to him and she finds out that he was actually a security guard in one of the twin towers who was very brave and helped save people from the building, but he wasn’t able to save his friends. Deja can finally understand what he had been through and how it has made him the way he is today. His cough and sickness is due to his breathing in all the dust and pollution that went
into the air when the buildings collapse. His depression is due to having seen so many people killed. He had never talked to Deja about it because he thought she was too young to know the truth. So even though his past has made their lives very hard, he was still trying to protect his children. By the end of the novel Deja and her friends understand each other more, and her dad and her have a better relationship, Deja becomes more brave and less shy, and and she understands more about what happened on 9/11. Talking about what happened is good for Pop and after his doctors change his medication, he is feeling well enough to go for walks with Deja in the evenings and talk. Deja says at the end that her family is going to get their own apartment. The friendship between Deja, Ben, and Sabeen is even stronger, and at the end of the story she writes an essay about home and how powerful family and friends are. I think Deja’s essay is the author’s opinion of how September 11th hurt a lot of people and caused a lot of destruction but also made America stronger in a way, because it caused everyone to pull together and try to help each other and on that day everybody’s differences weren’t as important as the fact that they were all Americans. I think the author also wanted to people to know that even though something happened long ago that doesn't mean you should forget it, and even if someone like Sabeen is a certain religion like the terrorists, that does not make her or her family less a part of the American family. For me, that is something we all have to remember. Unfortunately since 9/11 there have been other terrorist attacks on America and around the world. I believe it applies to me because I never really thought of 9/11 before now, and now I feel more sympathy than before, even if it happened 15 years ago, before I was born. Deja talks about the 240 years of American history and I think it is strange that most of us know more about what happened 240 years ago than what happened only 15 years ago. I really liked the book because it had a strong message about remembrance for all those who died on 9/11, and it made me want to feel strong like Deja, and be able to face my own fears, like when she wrote a report on Avalon, the homeless shelter. I felt like I never really thought about what happened on 9/11, but now I feel sad but also proud of all those policemen, firefighters and regular people who died on that day. It was also very interesting to think about things from the point of view of Sabeen and her family because it affected them not just in all the ways it affected the other New Yorkers but in other ways since they were Turkish Muslim immigrants. I would recommend this book to younger students, so they can understand about what happened on 9/11, and also so they can understand Sabeen’s point of view.
The author of this book is Judith Berry Griffin. Genre of this book is historical fiction which show how the small girl, Phoebe could make differently someone’s life. This book of setting is in Manhattan in 1776, Phoebe is a free black. Most of actions take house of General Washington in Manhattan. I think the author set this setting to let readers know about the hero who save president.
involved troubling situations. Look at how she grew up. The book starts off during a time of Jim
This book is about a girl name Ellen Foster who is ten years old. Her mother committed suicide by over dosing on her medication. When Ellen tried to go look for help for her mother her father stopped her. He told them that if she looked for helped he would kill them both. After her mother died she was left under her fathers custody.
One story that the Author told that really struck a chord with me was when she went to the diner and was yelled at for just standing in front of the diner. You hear stories from like this from the past often, but it gives it a different perspective when it’s a young girl. If I was put in this situation, I would personally have a breakdown. I would want to lash out in anger and frustration, but the consequences of lashing out against a white person during this time period were very large. I have lived in predominantly white areas for most of my life, and I have not experienced any overt racism like the author
To start off Melinda is a freshman. The first year of high school. High school is tough, but it becomes extremely tough due to the fact of her having no friends. Plus home is not any
The story follows three girls- Jeanette, the oldest in the pack, Claudette, the narrator and middle child, and the youngest, Mirabella- as they go through the various stages of becoming civilized people. Each girl is an example of the different reactions to being placed in an unfamiliar environment and retrained. Jeanette adapts quickly, becoming the first in the pack to assimilate to the new way of life. She accepts her education and rejects her previous life with few relapses. Claudette understands the education being presented to her but resists adapting fully, her hatred turning into apathy as she quietly accepts her fate. Mirabella either does not comprehend her education, or fully ignores it, as she continually breaks the rules and boundaries set around her, eventually resulting in her removal from the school.
In the short story, The Fall of a City, by Alden Nowlan, Teddy’s dreams are crushed by his uncle when his dreams should remain true till the day he achieves his dreams and his uncle’s stereotypical behaviour influenced teddy is a negative way. It is important for children to pursue the personality and dreams they want to take with them into their future. Firstly, adult’s stereotypical behaviour can influence a children's future choices, but children should have their own dreams and goals to pursue so they get the life they deserve. “Paper dolls and doll houses. An eleven-year-old boy!” (Alden Nowlan, 133). We see how gender stereotypes come in the way of children achieving their goals and dreams since society tend to follow stereotypes every
The novel The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls, brings to the surface many of the the struggles and darker aspects of American life through the perspective of a growing girl who is raised in a family with difficulties financially and otherwise. This book is written as a memoir. Jeannette begins as what she remembers as her first memory and fills in important details of her life up to around the present time. She tells stories about her family life that at times can seem to be exaggerated but seemed normal enough to her at the time. Her parents are portrayed to have raised Jeannette and her three siblings in an unconventional manner. She touches on aspects of poverty, family dynamics, alcoholism, mental illness, and sexual abuse from
As a child, Judy had a large imagination; and loved to play. Judy always had an adoration of books; she relished the texture, scent, and everything about them. There was one thing though, Judy wanted a book about a child that she could relate to. When Judy was about ten years old, she had to leave her New Jersey home for Miami, Florida, along with her Mother, Nanny Mama, and David. They were going to Florida for the winter because the cold weather in New Jersey was bad for David's health. Doey had to stay in New Jersey to manage his dentist office. Judy wasn't so sure about Miami, plus she was worried about her father because he was forty-two and all of his older brothers had died at that very age. At first Judy wasn't so sure about living in Miami, it was so different. Judy soon made friends with a few girls that lived in the same apartment building as her. They did everything together. They hung out at the beach, did ballet lessons, and went to the same school. Judy left Miami and went back to New Jersey for the summer. The n...
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story written in the first person about a young girl named Melinda Sordino. The title of the book, Speak, is ironically based on the fact that Melinda chooses not to speak. The book is written in the form of a monologue in the mind of Melinda, a teenage introvert. This story depicts the story of a very miserable freshman year of high school. Although there are several people in her high school, Melinda secludes herself from them all. There are several people in her school that used to be her friend in middle school, but not anymore. Not after what she did over the summer. What she did was call the cops on an end of summer party on of her friends was throwing. Although all her classmates think there was no reason to call, only Melinda knows the real reason. Even if they cared to know the real reason, there is no way she could tell them. A personal rape story is not something that flows freely off the tongue. Throughout the story Melinda describes the pain she is going through every day as a result of her rape. The rape of a teenage girl often leads to depression. Melinda is convinced that nobody understands her, nor would they even if they knew what happened that summer. Once a happy girl, Melinda is now depressed and withdrawn from the world. She hardly ever speaks, nor does she do well in school. She bites her lips and her nails until they bleed. Her parents seem to think she is just going through a faze, but little do they know, their daughter has undergone a life changing trauma that will affect her life forever.
Hannah the main character, Hannah starts off at a dinner with her family which she thinks is very boring where Hannah who thinks she drank too much wine believing that she is daydreaming. Whilst in her mind as she was "daydreaming" Hannah had came into the kitchen to new surroundings very confused she was greeted by a girl named Eva who had greeted her by the name of Chaya. (Chaya meaning life). Hannah soon hears from Eva that it is the year 1942 and that both her parents were very ill and passed away being left for her Aunt Gitl and Uncle Shmuel to take care of her. Hannah learns that she is no longer in her home town. Hannah with Eva go to a wedding with all the family where half way through the wedding nazis come. It all makes sense to Hannah now because the nazis come and take them to a concentration camp which for some reason Hannah knew what was about to happen once the nazis got closer. The nazis came closer soon stopping right in front of them they get out of their trucks as they start pushing them all into the back of the trucks separating them. As Hannah drives off with Eva and everyone else in the trucks with bars for windows and the rest closed in left while watching helplessly as their houses and belongings burn to the ground never to be seen again.
...he story with the various characters. Melinda’s acquaintance, Heather works hard at finding friends and becoming popular, but in the end she turns away from Melinda. The story is about the high school years. Many times when we are growing up we can’t wait to get there because we will be treated as adults, but the truth is the problems that come along when we are older can be difficult. The various clans of students help present the theme by showing us that there are many different types of people. The popular cheerleaders, the jocks, the geeks and those who are just trying to fit in. Melinda transforming the janitor’s closet symbolizes her hiding her feelings and Melinda’s inability to speak and tell people what happened to her. High school can be fun but unfortunately through the eyes of Melinda it was a very hard time.
Her father works out of town and does not seem to be involved in his daughters lives as much. Her older sister, who works at the school, is nothing but plain Jane. Connie’s mother, who did nothing nag at her, to Connie, her mother’s words were nothing but jealousy from the beauty she had once had. The only thing Connie seems to enjoy is going out with her best friend to the mall, at times even sneaking into a drive-in restaurant across the road. Connie has two sides to herself, a version her family sees and a version everyone else sees.
One can learn responsibility through experience, whether the experience is great, or if it is tragic. In The Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes, twelve year old Lanesha demonstrates her growth by bringing her and others to safety during a deadly storm. Once nurtured and cared for by her non-biological grandmother, Lanesha learns to take care of herself and others. This significance shows her transitioning from a girl to a young woman.
The main idea of the book was a girl learning to cope with her past and and trying to grow from it. Charlie starts of in a mental institution for self-harm. She is then taken out of the place because of her mother’s lack of money. She goes to Arizona to be helped out by her friend Mikey, which is gone most of the time. Charlie gets a job at a weird coffee place and meets a guy named Riley, where they instantly get a connection. The rest of the book is Charlie trying to learn how to deal with all of her past hardships and find a better way to deal with the memories and pain. The only two coping methods she seemed