"The River" Update + Reading Skills

 "The River" Update + Reading Skills

Now, I have finished reading Chapters 1-5 altogether.

The whole story so far within these five chapters is that Derek has managed to convince Brian and his mother to let Brian and he head to the wilderness so that Brian can teach the modern-day society how to survive in the natural wilderness of Earth. So Brian and Derek prepare for two weeks for their trip. Chapters 1-3 cover this section of the story. Chapters 4-5 describe the time when Brian and Derek board the plane and they land in the wilderness on a river. 

Based on the content in Chapter 5, it says that Derek had brought all these emergency materials with him so they both could stay safe. But Brian refuses to let Derek have those materials. The reason is unknown and unrevealed now. But I am making a prediction here.

My prediction here is that I think that since Brian is doing this for the government and mostly, Derek, he doesn't want to change anything from his last experience in the wilderness, so that he can truly show the government and the society what he actually had to do in order to survive in this type of wilderness.

I would side with Brian if I were in his shoes.

A text-to-text connection I can make is that in this book's case, Brian doesn't want to change any aspect from his last wilderness experience to this wilderness experience. Another book that has this type of situation is the book, "The Report Card." In "The Report Card," the main character Nora Rose Rowley gets fed up with the importance that every adult attaches to school report cards. She also wants to find a way to hide the fact that she is extremely smart and gifted, so she purposely brings home a terrible report card full of Ds, and she does this because she wants to be just a normal student, and is worried that if she gets grades like Bs or As, she could get moved up into a honors or gifted program. She tells her best friend Stephen Curtis (who is also smart and gifted, but wants to be a normal student) everything that she did to do this. Now Stephen wants to do the same exact thing that Nora did (with Nora's help). Nora decides to do what she did before to teach Stephen how she got the terrible report card, and how she hid her intelligence all through the whole time. Stephen asks Nora if anything is going to be changed here in Nora's second time of making an attempt to get a terrible report card, but Nora says she wants to do the same thing over again with no changes so that she can truly teach Stephen how to trick teachers into thinking that they both are not gifted or highly intelligent, and that they are perfectly normal students. This is a text-to-text connection between "The River" and "The Report Card."

A text-to-self connection I have is that I remember writing my narrative on my school science fair and being optimistic, and I mentioned in there that I had done the science fair a total of two times in two years. I had done the same experiment for both the years, but I didn't keep every aspect of the experiment the same compared from the first year to the second year. I did this because I wanted to get a better score in my second year compared to my first year. In the second year, I remember changing some of the variables of the experiment slightly in order to give out more accurate results. So therefore, in my text-to-self connection, I did the exact opposite action of what Brian did in "The River." And that was choosing to change my second trial of doing my science fair experiment and not keeping the second trial the same as the first trial. But Brian wanted to keep both his wilderness experiences in the exact same format, so that he could truly teach Derek and the modern-day society what he really did in order to survive in the wilderness.  

A text-to-world connection I have in this case is that I remember almost at the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, the USA Government was trying to reduce gun violence in the country, so they did experiments of gun violence reduction by doing two trials that differed in the amount of clamping down that they did in the country in an effort to reduce gun violence. The first trial failed to reduce gun violence significantly, because the government wasn't clamping down hard enough on which types of guns should be banned. In this first trial, the government banned a few types of guns that were hardly used. Then in the second trial, instead of keeping it the same as the first trial, they decided to clamp down even harder and ban more types of guns in a stronger effort to reduce gun violence. Sure enough, this trial worked well to reduce gun violence more significantly, and so what the government did in this trial is what they are still doing to reduce gun violence. So basically, they had two trials in order to reduce gun violence. The first trial didn't work, but in the second trial, instead of keeping all aspects of the trial the way they were in the first trial, they changed it up by a lot, in order to make a stronger attempt to reduce gun violence. Both trials had been done, and so the government decided that what they did in the second trial, is what they should do in order to reduce gun violence.

So overall, these three different types of connections make a final statement that says that in different cases of two trials, people may choose to keep the aspects of the second trial the same as they were in the first trial, or they may or may not choose to change some things in the second trial for any reason. These three connections clearly relate to Brian's situation in "The River" of choosing to keep all aspects of his second wilderness adventure the same as they were in the first experience (regardless of the fact that Derek is there with him in this second adventure).

"The River" Update + Characters' Prompts

"The River" Update +  Characters' Prompts

  

I have just finished reading Chapter 3, and overall in these three chapters, not the major conflict, but a very minor conflict is taking place in the book already. It is when Derek, the leader of the other two government officials who visited Brian's house, has a conversation with Brian and his mother regarding Brian's return to the wilderness. The three characters all react differently to this minor conflict in the book.

Brian's words and actions regarding this conflict say about him as a person that even though he is reluctant to go to the wilderness again, he cares more about the modern-day society and finally decides to return there in order to teach some survival skills.

Derek's words and actions regarding this conflict say about him as a person that he cares a lot about how the modern-day society survives and he believes that Brian would be a great resource to use in order to teach the society something new. It is shown that he is not greedy over money under any circumstances but he is rather willing to help the modern-day society by teaching them something new. He is asking Brian if he can teach the society how to survive under circumstances like the ones he faced.

Brian's mother's words and actions say about her as a person that she is very close to her son Brian and she is not really that ready to let Brian go back into the wilderness and let him teach Derek and the society how to survive in the wilderness. As a mother, she really wants to decide what is best for Brian, so here, she thinks that not letting Brian go back into the wilderness and having him just write about his experiences is the best choice. Personally, I would agree with her stance because the wilderness is a very dangerous place to be and any wild animal there can attack you surprisingly. If I were in Brian's shoes, I would just agree with her and write a book about the experiences I had there.

Overall, these are the three main characters within the novel after these three chapters and these three characters' reactions to this minor conflict within the book reveal a lot about each person individually. 

"The River" + Theme and Summary Prompt

"The River" + Theme and Summary Prompt

For a brief preview, this book is the second book that author Gary Paulsen has written after the first book "Hatchet." A quick summary of that is that a plane with a boy named Brian Robeson crashes because the pilot has a heart attack and so Brian survives the crash and he is the only survivor. Stranded in the Canadian Wilderness, he manages to survive 54 days of life all by himself, until a helicopter finds him completely fine.

The River takes place two years after the events of the first book. Here, Brian is now living in Canada where three government officials want him to teach the modern day society how he survived 54 days in the wilderness alone, with survival techniques. Brian says he is still recovering from those 54 days and he decides to think about teaching the government all his survival skills. That's all I have read so far, but within those two short chapters, we can tell from the work that Brian acts differently than an average human in some ways, probably because of his time in the wilderness.

In just these two short chapters and only regarding these chapters, this work tells us here that Brian behaves in general, after his wilderness time, completely addicted to the living of the 21st century of the human society, especially with food. With food, Brian acts like he's totally addicted to food and the narrator says that he loves the smell of food and his mouth probably waters up to the fullest.

The work tells us within the first two chapters only that the 21st century human society affects Brian, in a way because in the wilderness, he had to adapt slowly to whole new circumstances, and he had to find food himself and make a living for himself. But in the 21st century, inventions and other technology have made life just superior and easy, especially the abundance of food readily available for people. This one aspect of food abundance in the 21st century human society affects Brian a lot because according to the words of the book, Brian loves the smell of food, the taste of food, even the sounds of chewing the food. People like his mom are even asking him if he is okay. That's how much Brian is addicted to food, according to just these two chapters, mainly because he had to eat food off the plants and other natural places in the wilderness.

As of 9/19

Extra Credit + Lost and Found Book Recommendation

Extra Credit + Lost and Found Book Recommendation



If you liked reading "Extra Credit" then I recommend that you read the book "Lost and Found," another story by Andrew Clements published earlier than "Extra Credit."

This great and entertaining novel is about two twin brothers named Jay and Ray Grayson. They move into a town called Clifton, near Cleveland, Ohio. On day one of sixth grade, Ray stays home sick and so Jay is on his own there. He sees his new school, Taft Elementary as a pretty nice place and there are some good kids too.

But he soon discovers a big mistake while he is there. No one seems to know a thing about Ray, even though he's in the same grade as Jay. Ray's not on the attendace lists, doesn't have a student folder and locker. Jay decides to inform the school about this, but then realizes that this lost information could be very fun to use.

As the two brothers do a very dangerous act of alternating days of going to school without the adults knowing or realizing it, they make new friends they thought they'd never make before.

This book does regard the making of new friends, like how Extra Credit mainly dealed with a overseas friendship that sparked and ignited from America to Afghanistan. But unlike the overseas friendship in Extra Credit, Lost and Found deals with making new friends in just a suburban area and so there are no dislikes or feelings of uncomfortablilty mentioned here. Lost and Found also talks about what it truly means to be a twin, and what it means to be yourself.

Overall, I recommend that you read this entertaining novel "Lost and Found" if you liked the overseas spark of friendship that ignited in the book "Extra Credit."



Extra Credit Final Update: Ending Summary + Characters + Theme + Text-to-self & text

Extra Credit Final Update: Ending Summary + Characters + Theme + Text-to-self & text

I have now finished the book and to be honest, it was actually one of the best books I have read recently. After Abby and Sadeed discover the cultural changes and feelings of America and Afghanistan, they write to each other one more time telling this. Now, they both realize that an overseas connection was developed between them. After Abby receives the fourth letter, she successfully gives her oral presentation for the extra credit project. Then it is revealed that she is not going to be held back after all based on her improved grades now. The story ends with Abby reading Sadeed's last letter during the last day of school, Field Day. Then Abby goes back home on the bus, a changed girl while thinking about Sadeed and Amira. Sadeed also tells in his final letter that he won't forget Abby either.

Complex characters like Abby and Sadeed develop over the course of a text. Before this story even began, both characters were completely different and never even knew each other. Abby was one of those failing students in the sixth grade and Sadeed was just a young boy going to a village school in Afghanistan with his sister Amira. When Abby starts sending the first letter and the other three letters follow later, the two receive letters from one another realizing that they have a lot of everyday life differences to tell each other about.

As this pattern goes for a short time, they interact with each other more and they advance the plot and theme. The plot is advanced more when the two realize that there are other people in their nation who don't like the other country that the writer is sending the letter to. And so it is confirmed that the letters must end, but Abby and Sadeed might find another way to communicate with each other, based on an earlier prediction that I had made and posted in an earlier post. 

On the other side, the theme is overseas friendship and this is developed when the two start writing letters back and forth and start learning about each other's culture and everyday life. And by the time the letters stop being sent because of the cultural differences, the overseas friendship has developed so strong that the two kids can't forget and stop thinking about one another by the end of the story.

A text-to-self connection I have is that in this book's case, Abby and Sadeed are developing an overseas friendship as they send letters back and forth. In my case, I went to India this summer and while I was staying there, I met this one girl also in the 8th grade named Priyanka Shankar. And so we became friends but I didn't tell her that I was from the United States until the final days of my trip. Priyanka said she didn't want to leave me so we started talking on Google Plus, and that's how my overseas friendship developed.




A text-to-text connection is that here is a website article that is closely related to the cultural differences of America and Afghanistan. It mainly talks about the life of Afghanistan and from what it says, I can decipher what major differences there are in Afghanistan compared to the United States. It can be reached via the following hyperlink.

http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/call/docs/10-64/ch_4.asp

Extra Credit Update: Summary + Prediction, Questions, and Text-to-World Connection

Extra Credit Update: Summary + Prediction, Questions, and Text-to-World Connection

Picking up from where I left off, I have read that Abby and Amira & Sadeed are getting closer to learning about each other's cultural and everyday life. However, this process of sending letters back and forth starts to create some country tensions between the three. Sadeed was going to send a letter to Abby one day, when he was caught by another Afghan man, who took the letter Sadeed had in his pocket, and ripped it into pieces and went away. Sadeed took the pieces of paper and he and Amira tried to piece the letter back together. Abby in the meantime, has set up a bulletin board display about her learning about Afghanistan and she had an Afghan flag taped there. A student got "uncomfortable" seeing that and so the principal asked Abby to remove it. The flag had some written words that were important to the Islamic religion so they weren't allowed to be shown in a public school display. This is all that I have read so far in the book.

A prediction I have made is that since Abby, and Amira & Sadeed are not being enemies to each other of any sort, and in their letters, they never mention religion or any items that sound racist, I predict that they will never be uncomfortable communicating to one another. 

Another prediction I have is that since the Afghan stranger man and the student who observed the Afghan flag saw evidence of Abby and Sadeed's communication visually, I predict that Abby and Sadeed will start to communicate to each other but instead, they will start communicating via email because no one can see their emails and then make comments of dislike against this communication.

But a question I have regarding this section of the book that I read is that why are Afghans and Americans disliking one another and are feeling uncomfortable hearing about each other?

A text-to-world connection is that I can see that in this story's case, the presence of a letter written by an Afghan boy to an American girl, and an American public school display of the Afghan flag, that mentions Islam prayer words can make people in either society feel "uncomfortable" depending on which nation they are in, in this case, America or Afghanistan. In our world, I can see a direct piece of evidence of why the two nations are like this to one another. I have seen videos of the September 11 attacks and articles regarding these feelings between the two countries. Ever since then, Afghanistan has been considered one of the world's countries hostile to America because America was the one who was targeted and so it experienced a deadly, and worldly-known attack it didn't deserve at all.

Extra Credit Update: Summary + Analysis of the Text

Extra Credit Update: Summary + Analysis of the Text

As of what I have read, Abby's new pen pals are a boy named Sadeed Bayat, and his sister Amira Bayat. Sadeed  and Amira live in a village called Bahar-Lan in Afghanistan. When Abby's first letter arrives to Afghanistan, Sadeed has his sister, Amira, read the letter and the both learn a lot about United States life, Abby's life so far, and how good Abby is at rock climbing, but not in studies. Since Amira dosen't know a lot of English, Sadeed just writes the first reply letter for her based on what she says, and then he sends the letter back to Linsdale, Illinois through his village school teacher, Mahmood. Some time later, Abby had received the letter from Afghanistan and just from the first letters, the three kids realize that they have learned a lot about each other's outside world, country, and everyday lives.

In character detail, in the beginning of the book, based on what the text is saying so far about Abby's grades being a failure in the September-February period sixth grade, Abby is a girl who really seems to love and have a passion for rock climbing and just being outdoors, rather than indoors (and studying and concentrating on her schoolwork). This is an inference I have made from what I have read and this is supported by textual evidence that tells that my inference is true.

     "Because Abby didn't like being cooped up in her room or library, sitting at a desk with her nose in some book or her fingers tapping on a keyboard. She wanted more hands-on experience with rock climbing, wanted to learn about all the technical gear like cams and pitons and pulleys. And especially, she wanted to be outside." (Clements 18)

   

As of 9/3.