Most Recently Read Book:
The House On Mango Street
By Sandra Cisneros
My school district is sponsoring this book as a one book, one school activity soon. I think there is a picture book that goes along with it for the younger grades. I definitely think this is a book for at least high school students. Not based on content but based on the writing style. I didn't expect it to be a fast read, but the chapters are really short so it went really fast. It's the story of a girl growing up in Chicago. Each chapter tells about an experience or a person who lives in her neighborhood. I think the style might be higher level reading because it does talk about so many different people and it's not written as a narrative with lots of description. The description is vivid but so much is told or implied through the dialogue. Students will have to make lots of inferences to understand this book. As an adult, I really enjoyed the book. I love Cisneros' writing style, especially the description that goes along with the characters' actions and feelings. I love her short story "Eleven". I'm sure it's on the Internet if you look for it. It's a sad story about a young girl on her birthday, but I love it's message about growing up but knowing it's still okay to act like a younger version of yourself sometimes. Love it. This book was such a great extension of that idea and about finding yourself and following your dreams.
3 comments:
I had to read this for the class I took before the one I am finishing now. I enjoyed the book, but I did not enjoy writing long essays about it. Answering short answer questions was fine, but writing 5-8 paragraphs about a short story that was 4 paragaphs long was very hard. We are supposed to use a "balance of interpretation and evidence" and there isn't so much evidence in a story that short! =)
I still need to get a copy of this book--you've piqued my interest more than the district emails. I'm also going to look for the short story you mentioned--
Now I want to read this book also! Perhaps more than Food Matters. I am a litte scare about reading Food matters and the terrible things I am going to find out and I don't know if I want to know. I'll think about it.
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