summer post 4

The book I chose to read for my summer project was Stolen by Lucy Christopher. It is about a 16 year old girl named Gemma who gets abducted by Ty and brought out into the middle of nowhere with just him. I chose to read this book because it seemed interesting and intriguing because of the kidnapping and I like those kind of books. Even though I cant say I related to it a lot because I have never been in a situation like being kidnapped or anything like that I still enjoyed reading this book because the plot kept advancing and kept me interested.
If I had to recommend this book I would recommend it to people who like suspense and a little bit of mystery. Because what you think he is going to do to her is not what ends up happening and you start to feel for both of them and not just Gemma. I would also recommend this book to people who like crime stories because obviously she gets abducted. I would not call this one of my favorite books because I could not relate to it that much I still found it interesting and think that people should give it a try.

hook readers

"There were no buildings. No roads. No people. No telephone wires or side walks. No anything. Just emptiness. Just heat and horizon. I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand, and waited for the pain that told me I wasn't in a nightmare," (Christopher, 19). This reading was from a section of the book Stolen by Lucy Christopher. This was right after she had gotten kidnapped and is notices, well trying to notice her surroundings and find out where she now is. She is scared and now she knows she is alone because there are no signs of civilization anywhere around her, which means that no one is around to help her escape.
Also in this section she uses a lot of alliteration with the repetition of the word no at the beginning of most of the sentences. The sentence lengths are short which keeps your attention and makes a statement. The diction is also more simple here making it not difficult to understand what her situation is at this part in the story. I chose this section because it is intriguing, it adds suspense and mystery making you want to find out what happens next in the book.

summer post 2

Ty is a 24 years old, has tanned brown skin, toned body, bleach blonde hair, and icy blue eyes. But when he was younger he mother left him and his dad and his dad was not around a lot when he was a kid and one day he and his crew all left behind the farm they lived at and also Ty. He lived off of the land until people had taken him and put him into foster care. When he was older his mother wrote him and told him she wanted him to come live with her in London where she left to but when he got there she was gone and involved in drugs so there he became homeless. That’s when he saw Gemma, he knew from then that’s what he wanted, to “save” her from this life. He also desired a companion so he didn’t have to be alone. On the other hand all Gemma wants is the opposite, to be away from him and back in London with her friends and family. A theme developing in the book is not everything is as it seems. I know this because when she first saw him in the coffee shop she thought he was attractive and wanted to be with him, but then he stole her and all she wants is to be away from him. Also she thought that when he took her he was going to kill/torture/rape her but all he has done is keep her as company. The book is structured like she is talking to Ty, like in a letter, she refers to him as you. It lets you know what she is thinking throughout the book and what she sees and does.

summer post 1

The book I have chosen to read is Stolen by Lucy Christopher. The main characters in this book are Gemma and Ty. Gemma is a sixteen year old girl who lived in London until her unknown stalker, Ty, took her away or as the title says stole her. He brought her to their current location in the middle of nowhere in Australia, some desolate place called sandy dessert.  The obvious conflict is that she is taken from her family and friends by a random man, but other than that she has to learn to deal with living with Ty who is a little crazy, being stranded in the middle of nowhere with little electricity and running water, and trying not to go crazy from being trapped in that small house and the boredom that comes with it. When Gemma asks how long he is going to keep her there with him he always reply’s forever, but I don’t think that she will be trapped that long with him and someone will rescue her. I also predict that Ty will grow on her and she will start to not to hate him anymore because she has stopped ignoring him and is going outside now. What I want to know is how Ty stole her away from the airport without anyone knowing and also how did she not notice him watching her since she was 10 years old? This book reminds me of the movie Tangled because Rapunzel was stolen from her family like Gemma but both after they were captured were not harmed by their kidnappers. It can also relate back to real life because there are so many cases about kids getting abducted and this book gives you a sense on what some cases could be like.

Connections

In this book they have moved around alot through out the country. They had lived in places from Arizona all the way to West Virgina where they are currently living. I think that it would be interesting to have lived in such diverse places with differant people like they did, but their reasons for moving i would not want. They move around because her parents dont have a steady job and they are just trying to make ends meet; so they sometimes have to bail out of a town when the debts get too high. Her father Rex is an alcoholic and wastes alot of their money on booze, and her mother is a quirky artist who spends alot on her art supplies. She has three siblings, one older and two younger, so her parents have four mouths to feed when they dont even have a steady job. Even though they dont have a near to perfect life they handle the situation well and Jeanette and her brother always find something fun to do and thats what i admire about Jeanette.

Even though i have only lived in Mason my whole life and dont have those kind of parents, i can stillrelate to this story because i do alot of traveling. i have been all across the west to places like Arizone(which was Jeanettes favorite place to live) and New Mexico, ive traveled up north to Maine and south to Florida, but my favorite vacations have been out of the country. I like out of the country vacations so much better because you get to experiance a whole new culture unlike american. I recently went to the Bahamas and everything was so differant, and since ive never been there i had so many interesting new things to do. And thats how id like to picture how Jeanette viewed their circumstances when they always moved around, a new adventure with new experiances. She also liked animals, exept for the fat rat in Welch, and so do I. She always found new pets in the places she moved to and i also encountered alot of new animals. While in the Bahamas we swam with animals like dolphins, sea lions, sting rays, and even sharks, and now I get why she loved new pets. So even though my family and Jeanettes family are completely differant, we still share similarities and can connect to eachother.

Living In Welch

Right now in the book they are the poorest they probably have been so far in the book. They were living with their grandmother in a samll town named Welch in West Virginia but after the grandma tried to molest her younger brother and they started fighting her they were forced to move out. the house they moved into doesnt have any running water that means no showers, no running toilets, no faucets, or anything like that. they only have electricity when they pay for the gas bill which isnt that often. Now there also happens to be a hole in the ceiling which they have tried to patch up, but did not do that good of a job at. And to make matters worse they also arent fiting in well at that school, it is a very weird town and the kids dont like new people.

If i were jeanette i would have a hard time adjusting to that situation. I think that it was a good thing that they moved out from their grandmas house though. She was abusive and you could tell she didnt love them like a grandma should, she wouldnt even let them call her grandma, they had to call her by her first name which was Erma. She also made them stay in the basement and if they talked too loud-talking loud to her was anything over a whisper- she would yell and threaten them. Also lets not forget that she tried to molest Brian until Jeanette noticed and stoped her.

But now their situation isnt the best either but their trying to make the best out of the situation, like Jeanette usually does. Their school also is full of bullies who used to beat up Jeanette everyday, that is until she helped the "leaders" neighbor and they stoped picking on her. I think that its very conserning that that can all go on, the bullying, the grandma, and now the house. I think they are pretty tough to make it through all that.

Blog Assesment

Throughout this trimester I have been blogging. I would say my blog which showed the most voice would be my Characterization of Jeanette Walls. A specific phrase that shows my voice from that post was, "I can connect to Jeanette because I am also a daddy’s girl, though my dad isn’t like hers." This shows my voice because I connected to the book. I also shared a little bit about my personality and personal life. Another phrase from that post that showed my voice was, “it is also common when you have been chilling in the sun, I also obtained freckles during my trip to the Bahamas this spring break." This illustrates my voice because I used words like chilling that show my personality. I also shared information about my life by saying where I went to vacation.

I incorporated purposeful diction and syntax choices into my post. An example of abstract diction from my post would be, “Since she's an optimistic person she also is very positive." This would be Abstract because I described an intangible emotion, being optimistic and positive. This helped show my voice because I didn’t just use some overused word like happy I found two other synonyms for that word which were less boring. A syntax choice I put into my piece was, “She has a very forgiving nature and that is what makes her Rex's, her father, favorite kid because she always is on his side when he does something bad." I used commas in this portion as my syntax. This helped show my writers post because instead of using the comma to just put a pause in the sentence I used it to help you know who Rex was by putting that in the middle after I mentioned him.