What kind of power hierarchies are displayed in your independent reading life?

     While I did my inquiry on this question I finished the book Be More Chill . This book is about a boy named Jeremy that is on the social outskirts and all he wants is to be popular and he finds the perfect way. He gets a pill called a "squip" that goes into your brain and tells you what to do to become popular and cool. After he has taken the squip everyone starts respecting him and treating him like he is an actual person making him feel better about himself. In the beginning of the book I thought that the squip was the thing in the book that held all the power but I soon learned that the people that could resist the squip were the most powerful. This book showed how it is good to be human and knowing that can make you have the power in the situation.

     In the book Be More Chill  I thought that the squip held all the power because everyone wanted it and it was like the ultimate cool person that would make your life so much better. But I soon figured out that the person with the most power was Jeremy's best friend Micheal. Why I think this is because Micheal was the only one who was able to resist the squip's power even when he knew about the squip he still didn't get it even though he was in the same position as Jeremy he was strong enough to see that the squip would not do him any good and that it was better to be human. The person that had the second most power was Christine, Jeremy's crush because even though she didn't know about the squip she was in some ways still able to resist it. She didn't like Jeremy any better and in some aspects she even disliked him more after he got the squip because she could see the way he was actting wasn't normal or cool just unlike everyone else. The person who had the third most power was Jeremy because even though he realized it kinda late he still realized the the squip wasn't helping him and that he had to get rid of it because it was not human like. The person who has the least power is Rich because he was not able to resist the squip at all and ended up dying because of it. 

     In conclusion, Be More Chill  showed how it was good to be human and that sometimes you think that a character has the most power but as the book goes on their real self starts to show and you see the real situation. 

                     

Where do you see social justice themes/idea popping up in your independent reading life?

Where do you see social justice themes/idea popping up in your independent reading life?

In the Divergent series by: Veronica Roth some of the characters belong to a group called the Factionless they struggle for food and are not in a good place economically, they are like the people that struggle today economically. In these books the factionless live in the "fringe" like outside society and they do the menial work like bus driving and the dirty work for very little money and food. The Factionless are mostly separated from the people in their official factions and they hardly see the Factionless. This reminds me of our world today how the upper and lower classes are so separated. The divide is not right and any people have said so like our new mayor Bill de Blasio  and in the Occupy Wall Street protest to give a few examples. The Factionless often didn't pass the test of their faction and then got kicked out and were then Factionless and banned from joining another faction and can't find a way to join back in society. When many people lose their jobs it is hard for them to get back up and recover and find a new job. Especially since housing is so incredibly expensive and no one is making less expensive housing  and jobs are so scarce and hard to find these days. Many of the jobs Factionless are given aren't good enough or high paying for them to support themselves and also they do not have any housing for Factionless. Today many people have jobs that aren't paying enough for the labor  and many do not have things such as benefits. It is unjust that many people have to struggle through everyday life to get money and that there is such a divide in between the upper and lower class.

"Response to Megan Cox Gurdon" Article- RRE

Drugs, smoking, abuse, drinking, "stomach clenching detail" and much much more dark stuff is what some people use to describe young adult literature. But what some people don't realize how great young adult literature can be for teenagers and how it can help teenagers get through a lot of the situations they encounter as a teenager.


Lots of teenagers deal with conflicts that authors introduce in these books so it can be good for teenagers to see that other teenagers/characters go through these things too and that they are not alone. In the article "Response to Megan Cox Gurdon" the author says: "If subjects like these are in young adult fiction books, it's to show that they are real, they have happened to others and they can be survived." This piece of evidence shows how a lot of teenagers feel so alone and young adult authors aren't trying to corrupt their youth they are trying to help. Some ma argue that young adult books are bad for kids to read because they are violent and inappropriate. "There isn't a young adult writer alive who is out there writing books to corrupt youth. No one writing about self harm is teaching how to self harm. No one writing about rape is providing instructions on how to rape or be raped." People think that young adult books are just meant to destroy teenagers but they don't get how the books aren't as bad as they are making them out to be,


All in all, teenagers should have young adult books in their lives because they show teenagers how they aren't alone and what they are going through others go through and that what they are going through is normal. Teachers should engourage teenagers to read young adult literature because it is helpful for teenagers and are good books to read.

Looking for Alaska RRE

The Labyrinth

“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia…You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”  In the book Looking for Alaska By: John Green, a boy named Miles goes to boarding school and meets people that change his life, especially a girl named Alaska. Throughout the book I noticed that Alaska quoted the last words; “How will I get out of this Labyrinth!” Later in the book it became clear the Labyrinth symbolized life and things that happened in it.  Alaska tried to avoid things in life she did not want to think about which led her to a bad place. When this happens Miles tries to avoid the things in the “Labyrinth” he doesn’t want to think about but he eventually realizes that when Alaska ended up not continuing on in the “Labyrinth” when she tried to do this. Miles learns that you have to let the person you failed forgive you, you have to forgive yourself and you have to move on in life despite what happened.

Everyone makes mistakes.  They can be big or small, but you usually feel guilty. Sometimes the guilt is just too much and it effects how you feel about everyday life. In Looking for Alaska the main character, Miles, has to learn that you have to forgive and forget. An example of this is; “When she f*** up, all those years ago, just a little girl terrified into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself. And I could have done that, but I saw where that led for her.” This is important because Miles realized that he needed to forget/get over her death and his part in it or the same thing would happen to him that happened to Alaska. Another piece of evidence that shows that Miles now knows that he has to get over/forgive himself and let himself forget her is “Because I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive me for my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and the Colonel and everyone but herself and her mom. I know now that she forgives me for being dumb and scared and doing the dumb and scared thing. I know that she forgives me just as her mother forgives her.”  As Miles realizes this the book concludes because he learned a big lesson about forgiveness.

The primary them of Looking for Alaska  is forgiveness and continuing on in the Labyrinth of life no matter how much you don’t want to and you have to keep on continuing. This is a good lesson for teenagers because a lot of teenagers make mistakes and everyone handles it in a lot of different ways but Looking for Alaska shows how you need to move past your mistakes.

            

Wonder RRE

      Wonder is a book about a boy named August who was born with facial deformity and for the first time in his whole life he is going to public school. He is faced with many problems because being the new kid is bad enough but even more attention and stares are directed his way due to his facial deformity. In this book when August starts public school he gets many stares and whispering directed his way many of the kids in his school are scared to be his friend and they are even scared to touch him. August's parents have home schooled him all of his life so he was mostly isolated from his peers. In this book August transforms from a kid who was scared of what his peers and others would think of him to kid with confidence and a higher self esteem and maturity level. This book shows that you shouldn't judge a person by how they look or dress but by the content of their character.

      In the book Wonder, August's parents have protected him from the harshness of middle school kids so when he finally is going to public school for the very first time he knew it would be tough. In this book  August's parents are more protective of him then most parents are so when he goes to school he really matures, throughout the book you can see little things that show he is becoming more mature such as; he doesn't need his parents to tuck him in anymore, he leaves his stuff animal behind when he goes to a sleep away trip with his school, he asks his dad to not call him Auggie Doggie any more, and he cut his star wars braid off and in the beginning of the book when kids would be mean to him or he would hear them talking about him behind his back he wouldn't say anything to them but in the end of the book he stands up for himself/doesn't give up. Another thing is in the beginning of the book no one wanted to touch Auggie and no one even gave him a chance except for Summer and Jack but by the end of the book after everyone had seen what a great person August was  and by the last chapter he says wall they're taking pictures " and no one seemed to care if it was my face next to theirs or not. In fact I don't mean to brag here, but it kind of felt like everyone wanted to get close to me."

      In conclusion this book shows how much August developed as a character and how much all the other characters in the book developed, it showed how you shouldn't judge someone by how they look but on how they act and August was a great example of that because even though everyone was scared of him by the end of the book everyone wanted to hang out with him because they had seen what a great person he was.