Tuesday, February 28, 2012

FCA's
1. Identify a position
2. Explain your criteria, application, reasoning for your position with quoted evidence as support. Please indicate the page number of your quote in parentheses following the quote.
3. Explain the position of the opposition and provide counterargument.

          For the first two years of one book one school at Allen Park High School, the books were basically the same, dystopian novels. To say I am sick of dystopian novels is an understatement, I dispise dystopian novels! So this year's one book one school book Life As We Knew It was almost a relief to read after reading the other two books. Life As We Knew It was an action packed book that kept me reading until the end.
          Life As We Knew It was a great book, especially because it's set up like a diary, which makes reading go by faster. This set up also gives any reader an almost personal experience of the natural disaster that took place. The way Miranda, the teenage girl who writes the journal, describes her and her family waiting and watching the news to see why the moon came so close to the Earth makes the reader wait with anticipation like they were actually watching the TV with her family. "The TV connection went in and out, but we never got cable back (pg.22)." When Miranda said this, I had to go check and see if my TV still had cable. The action of Life As We Knew It seemed so real that the reader feels like this disaster is actually happening for real.
         Life As We Knew It was also an interesting book because of how Susan Pfeffer used a plausible natural disaster for the plot line. I happen to be a big fan of sciency disasters, so reading about an asteroid hitting the moon and the moon causing a lot of disasters made the book scary and interesting. The fact that this event could actually happen causes any reader to become terrified of the moon and asteroids. When Miranda says, "...the moon wasn't a half moon anymore. It was tilted and wrong and a three-quarter moon and it got larger, way larger...(pg.19)," I began to fear the moon. Her explanation would make any reader begin to watch the moon with suspicion or go looking through a telescope to see if there are any asteroids heading for the moon.
        Although some people may think of this book as too much of an easy read or too generic, there is so much more to this book even though it is a fast read.People that didn't like Life As We Knew It may have their reasons for disliking the book, but they need to realize that there can be other reasons to like the book. It has action, romance, science, family experiences, and so much more. One can't look at something they don't like in the book and disregard other parts of the book that they may like. Life As We Knew It was an amazing book and I would recommend to anyone that is looking for a scary, science and action filled book that will keep the reader hooked until the very end.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Why I chose "The Men Who Stare At Goats"

The non-fiction book I picked for my project was The Men Who Stare At Goats. I thought this would be a good choice because I love the movie and it seems like an interesting topic to look into. It never occurred to me that the movie was based off a book until my brother told me about it. I then realized that the book was non-fiction and immediately decided that that would be my book for this quarters project. It also caught my attention because it is a very ridiculous topic and I happen to like idiotic subjects that are surprisingly true. This book will be interesting and teach me about the crazy events in the military in the 1960s-2000s.