false 12 153 96 true 5767166 read 5 true 3782591 currently-reading 52 true 3782590 to-read <![CDATA[Ellen added 'The Outsiders']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79954024 to: The Outsiders (Paperback) by S.E. Hinton
This is the book about which the NY Times wrote,"it transformed young-adult fiction from a genre mostly about prom queens, football players and high school crushers to one that portrayed a darker, truer world."

S.E. Hinton published the Outsiders in 1967. She won the very first Margaret E. Edwards award. She started writing it as a short story at the age of fifteen about a boy who was beaten up on his way home from the movies. She wrote the novel at 16. On the day she graduated high school she received her publshing contract.

The narrator is Ponyboy. He's fourteen, and he lives with his two brothers. Their parents had died in a car crash months earlier. He's a greaser and in a gang. Their enemies are the socially elite kids at school, the Socs.

I won't spoil the story, but Ponyboy at the end of the book is failing school because he can not come to terms with what he has experienced in the course of the book. He was an "A" student and a track star. His English teacher gives him an opportunity to get a "C" if he writes about anything at all personal to him. The book ends with him writing, "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home...

And that's how The Outsiders begins.

By the way, Ponyboy was not the boy who was brutally attacked on his way home by the Socs.

]]> <![CDATA[Ellen added 'The Rag and Bone Shop']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/80034149 The Rag and Bone Shop (Readers Circle) by Robert Cormier
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> <![CDATA[Ellen is on page 178 of The Outsiders ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79954024 Ellen is on page 178 of 180 of The Outsiders ]]> <![CDATA[Ellen joined a group.]]> http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/20.Best_Teen_Books Ellen joined the Best Teen Books group. ]]> <![CDATA[Ellen added 'After']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76955073 to: After (Hardcover) by Amy Efaw
This isn't a book I would normally read, but it's one of two the North High School book clubbers chose to discuss next meeting.
The main character is unsympathetic and cold. How could a reader like a teen who gives birth and puts her baby in a garbage can and into a dumpster (the baby lives). Little by little, as Devon recalls the months of her pregnancy and the early morning she gave birth, the reader learns more about her reasoning. In the end, she realizes that she meant for the baby to die, and she asks to plead guilty. That doesn't make her any warmer.

Forget that review.
I read it more carefully this time.
Devon “was so hard on herself,” according to Coach Mark when he testified. Coach Mark said, “She hates to make mistakes. She doesn’t cut herself any slack,” and how after a game where she perceived she had made a mistake, she’s “go off by herself. And you get the impression she doesn’t want to be disturbed, that you should just let her alone for a while. (pp. 319-320)” I thought that described Devon’s behavior after she began to worry that she could be pregnant. I would have talked about Devon’s mother; I would also have said that having the psychiatrist lay out the explanation of why Devon threw her baby in a dumpster was an contrived way of telling us, rather than showing us, how a supposedly good person could do such a thing. It’s more revealing that even in Delta Pod she starts out trying to be “good.” How could she live like that, with those self-imposed rules on how to behave? ONLY in court does she recognize that “At any time she could have changed her own course (p. 338).”
I’ve finally figured out what had confused me in the ending.
“Devon throws her head back, smiles up at the ceiling.
She’s never felt so free from something in her life
She’d won (p. 350).”
She’d admitted she was real, that she made/makes mistakes, and that she can accept that.
]]> <![CDATA[Ellen added 'Literature for Today's Young Adults']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/68380528 to: Literature for Today's Young Adults (8th Edition) by Alleen Pace Nilsen
Another boring textbook. It had an exhaustive list of YAL books of each genre it explained. The book was mostly organized by genre. ]]> <![CDATA[Ellen added 'Breaking Dawn']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78704471 to: Breaking Dawn (Twilight, #4) by Stephenie Meyer
A perfect Bella is a boring Bella. It's also an oxymoron. The books were interesting when they stayed within the confines of the human world, and an eternity of perfection seems both frightening and unexciting. Reading this, I would suggest that no one read any of the books. The ending ruins them. I skimmed it. It was without interest. ]]> <![CDATA[Ellen added 'The Book Thief']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74416810 to: The Book Thief (Paperback) by Markus Zusak
Warning: I sobbed through the ending of this book. I've been touched by the great authors, moved, amazed, and rendered speechless, but none of them has ever made me sob.
Every character is perfect, the use of figurative language startles on every page, and every detail of every character's life is perfectly realized.
Do yourself a favor. Order The Book Thief now from amazon. You'll find out what I just said is true.

NOTE: This is my second reading. I'm creating a Book Thief WebQuest. Look it up in about a week.
I picked up on a lot this second reading. I rushed enthralled and involved in the first reading. I didn't sob this time, but I still felt the pain. ]]> <![CDATA[Ellen added 'Eclipse']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78591412 to: Eclipse (Twilight, #3) by Stephenie Meyer
excellent. I couldn't put it down. I read it all day. ]]> <![CDATA[Ellen added 'New Moon']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78340672 to: New Moon (Twilight, #2) by Stephenie Meyer
They get better and better. ]]>