I think that the Lit presentations is a good idea. I think it will help the other students understand each others books. I also think it is good because if I hear about the other books maybe I will want to read one of them. My group is doing a lot of little things because it is one of those books that needs it. I am actually excited to see what the other students present. I think once the class hears about our book they might be interested in it. Our book has a lot of good scenes in it. I think it will be fun to play around with our book The Glass Castle. I would def. recomend our book to others. Too bad our book isn’t appropriate for the age group I want to teach because I think it is a great idea to present a book. There are so many different ways one can present and to see all the ideas could be fun. There are so many scenes in The Glass Castle that our group can choose from because each scene in our book had an impact on the next. I just hope that somebody in our group knows how to draw.

I decided to talk about the book Lives on the Boundary. I wanted to touch base on what we discussed in class in my fish bowl. The topic of grammar I think is a big issue. I believe that kids in lower grades could probably write a paper better than I could grammatically speaking. There is so much that teachers don’t keep discussing as you move up in grades, grammar being one of them. They( the teachers) just expect that you should know it. I don’t remember learning anything about grammar after probably my 4th grade year. I also think that because of the standardized test that teachers seem to focus more on math. When it comes to English, teachers want you to basically just know how to anyalize a story and find the answers to questions in them. I find it that know that I am in college the standardize testing didn’t really help me today. I feel that the smaller things like grammar, review of adjectives, verbs,etc, have been lost while going through our system in school. Yes, I agree that college students should have an idea of basic grammar and maybe the responsibility should be on them, but do you know how much easier both the teacher and student would be if it was discussed even if it was one class?

I am very interested in this book. I am shocked and disgusted at what goes on within this story. You have two parents who have 4 kids and who really don’t take care of them. Jeanette is the protagonist in this novel because this is a book through her eyes. She lets the readers be right in her position too. Things never seem to get better for the family or I should say the kids because the parents really don’t care. Jeanette has become the parent or the head of the household. She is still digging out of trashcans herself. I think one of the worse parts in this novel, which my group discussed, was the fact that the dad whored his daughter off. He wanted to win money playing pool and jsut sent his daughter, Jeanette, right upstairs to be with some drunk fool. I think this book has really opened my eyes and made me appreciate what I have. Even when I think things couldn’t be worse they really could.

The mom is not willing at all to get any welfare and because of that everybody suffers. The mom doesn’t even want to work. She has a job she just never goes. She even goes to the extent of hiding a candy bar from her children when they are starving. She makes them eat ham with maggots all over it or ice cream for a meal. I am very anxious to see how the story is going to play out. I want to know what happens to the kids and how Jeanette helps them.