!

Period 2

Assignment: Outside Reading, Q1

• Books to be selected from the Green Mountain Award Books
• Students will respond to the reading on Mr. Thomas's wiki online
• Responses will be in the form of:

1. Connections you make to your own life, to literature, or to the world around you
2. Important issues, ideas, concepts or thougts that come up in your reading
3. "I wonder..." questions
4. Clarifying questions
5. Any other questions or comments you may have

!

Let's begin...

Your Name: Theresa Riendeau

Book Title: When The Emperor Was Divine

Comments & Questions: I have an I Wonder Question.

I am reading the book When The Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka.

I wonder what it would feel like to be be walking through my home town and to see a sign in the post office window that said I only had one week to move out of my home, especially having 2 children, and my husband, the children's father in jail.

Chapter 2

In chapter 2 the little girl explaines how her family had to live in a horse stall for the summer. Then how they were shipped on trains to get to the deserts. I find it so hard to imagin what these poor people went through. It's not like they had any say in this they just had to do what they were told, and deal with it.

Chapter 3

I found that in chapter 3 it would be hard being the kids. If I were in the kids position, I would feel like I was in jail because the outside of the camp was all fenced in, the kids mother would stay in her room and not go out and play with the kids, and they even had a bell to ring when it was time to eat. If I were the kids, personally I would find it to be very lonley, and boring, everything would be so different, and so strict. Also I find that the kids don't really have time to be kids, or have the nourishment of their parents by their sides.

Chapter 4

I thought chapter 4 was an awful chapter. This family couldn't wait to get home. They then got released from camp just to go back home to a mess. They walked in the house, and there was writing all over the walls, and their house was turned upside down, everything was ruined. The kids went to school the following day and at the school they used to go to was like starting all over again for them. They were not accepted right off, it took a very long time for the people at school to accept them. The kids mother also had a hard time getting accepted by her old friends, it was like no one recognized this family anymore.

Chapter 5

The last chapter,Chapter 5 lets you understand what happened to the kids father. He was kept awake in a room with bright lights for days, untill he told the police what they wanted to hear. They wanted the father to confess about being a spy, so he finally falsely admitted to it, but he was beaten anyway.

Kristen Gagnon

Extremely loud and incredibly close... I thought that this book was really weird in the beging but now that i have completed it i realize the weirdness has a point. I feel that the reason Oscar was so weird was because of the way his life was and all of his losses. This boook was good and it was an easy read.

Tyler Chase

American Born Chinese

What is this book about? It looks awsome.

This book was pretty good for the most part besides the constant back and forth switch.I like the way they blend noval with comic book that made it a lot more fun to read.This book is an easy read but a good one at that.I would recomend this book to anyone that is looking for a good easy read.

Brieann Mason

How I live now

I like the book so far and in a way it is kind of like my life how my step mom is always trying to push me and my sisters away from my dad...even though I am not even close to being an only child. But even though I am not an only child the family that the main charatcters goes to live with, in a way is just like my family. The only thing I wonder right now is what time peroid is this for a war to be going on!

The book is really good. The two cousins have sex kinda make it a little weird but it gave it the sick twist that the book needed for it to be just right. I enjoyed the book the whole time I read it, it always kept me on the edge of my seat. In normal books I have a favorite character but in this book there was no way you couldn't love every single one of them. Every character had a touching story about them, and it just made them even more interesting. The book was so well done that I have no questions on it other than does this author have anymore books...lol...This book was a perfect war story, with the perfect setting and characters that were also perfect. The whole book never gave away what was going to happen in the end, which made it very interesting to read because the whole way it kept you guessing what was going to happen. I guess the only I wonder question that I have is I wonder how the book would have ended if all of the kids weren't reunited in the end, saying as if one of them had died in the war trying to find the other one? And I also wonder what would have happened if Aunt Penn wouldn't have died in a riot in England? I loved this book so much that I wish that I was one of the characters in the story and that was my life...it was a painful and sad book with a lot of missery the character's go through but I just wish that I could have that kind of life! lol

Mark Harbec

Looking for alaska

When I first started to read this book it was so boring, and I didn't like it very much. But once I started to read more and more my book begane to get interesting. The book is about a boy named Pudge who is a nurd. No one even notices him during hight school. Eventully he goes to collage and meets Alaska a "hot sexy girl," which the author siad she was. Also his life changes in collage because he starts to go to parties, an get more popular. Overall I would recamend this book, it's a grea one. Good gob!//There wasn't much for me to relate to mr.thomas.

Chase Walters

Runaways: Pride and Joy

It looks like a good book.

Mr.Thomas 10/15/07

Come Back to Afghanistan

I am finding this book to be very compelling. Besides being well-written, Hyder's voice, being that of a young person caught between two very unique circumstances--his Afghan culture and roots yet being raised American--is unprecedented in my literary experience. If he weren't Afghani, even though he has never been there, I don't think he could have dealt so smoothly and intelligently with the circumstances of accompanying his father.

10/16/07

Hyder mentions that the only crops he recognizes in Afghanistan are corn (from the movie Field of Dreams) and rice (from movies about Viet Nam). I guess that Hyder's upbringing in the US was very urban if his only memories of corn are from movies. This highlights the challenge and uniqueness of his time in Afghanistan.

10/18/07

In chapter 29, there is a comment by Hyder that I think is indicative of his thoughtfulness and political acumen, which seems to be far beyond that of the typical twenty year-old Amercan. He wonders if maybe the US really isn't interested in rebuilding Afghanistan so much as retaining a US presence there militarily, which means that the right amount of chaos suits the US just fine. What exactly are our motives? I want to research how this has played out since the book was published in 2005.

I think Hyder is very fair and as unbiased as a person in his position could be. When Americans act as if they actually care, as Capt. Thomas does in Chapt 31, Hyder is moved.

10/19/07

Several times Hyder speaks of the feeling of going back in time--just going to Afghanistan in the first place, but especially leaving Kabul for the countryside. I can really relate to this through my experience of being in Ecuador in the early 70's. One could leave the capital, Quito, and quickly be in country where people lived exactly as they had hundreds of years ago. Not only that, there were towns, such as Cuenca, that were truly medieval. I loved this feeling of time-travel.

Karen Potter

Extreamly loud and Incredibly close

Chapter one: This chapter was pretty good. I like the book so far. The boy talks about the games his father and him played. I thought that was kind of special for a dad and a son to play games and spend time to do that with each other. I thought it was weird that he wrote down his feelings in chapters. He would write one, small sentence on one page. It would go on for a couple of pages.

I thought he shouldn't have dug up this father's grave with that person. I thought that was a little wierd.

The book was ok, but it is not something I would origanally read.

Manville powers

I read the book The Runaways It was an interesting book about some kids who try to put there parents in jail for murder in there quest they find out a lot of weird stuff but any ways it is a realy good book!

Mit Lyman

I read the book American Born Chineese, i thought it was an ok book it was an easy read because it was a comick book. The story was kind of hard to follow witch makes the book a little complicated but it is still a good book. I would recomend this book to someone that would want to read a book quickly.