Blog 6

I believe readicide is a problem in schools. I believe teachers should give students books that they would actually be interested in reading in. In all honesty...if we don't understand what’s going on in the book then spark notes will be the main source. The only time I actually enjoyed reading a book was the Great Gatsby because I wanted to read it before it came out as a movie. I think especially like reading a series will actually help students to become more engaged in the novel. I think definitely more modern books will help spark interest in students. I don't understand why teachers make us read novels that were written in a different time period, the language is unfamiliar to us. More books are being produced in modern language, which increases popularity. By forcing kids to read books they will dislike, it causes to have less interest in reading any book all together.

Now I am being one sided by saying this, there are students who enjoy Shakespeare, old literary novels etc. But unless you are pursuing a career as an English teacher, I don’t see how these novels is preparing students for the job market they are about to enter. However, I do believe it is important for students to understand how to analyze a text and the use of different writing strategies. One method I really like that English teachers do is create seminars where the class would discuss the book all together. It challenges students to use the amount of knowledge they have of the story and get more in depth with it. That I believe is a good way of challenging students’ knowledge of a book without giving a test on it. Those capabilities will help students going into college. I do believe the school system should encourage students to read books, but it will only be encouraging and not forceful if students actually like the novel.

Post 5

The Book Thief is definitley a lot harder to read compared to The Fault in Our Stars. I wouldn't say this is exactly my favorite book but I do enjoy the interpretations in the stories. Even though this is already becoming a movie, I am curious to see how much different it will be from the book.

Scenes to keep:

Well right now I will admit the book is kind of slow so not much has happened. One scene that is very important to keep for the book, The Book Thief, is the scene where Liesel and her mother witness the death of her brother. This scene is a key symbol because when they attend the place where he is buried Liesel grabs her first book, hence beginning to symbolize the actual book thief.

The second scene would need to be when Liesel meets her foster parents and has to leave her mother. This scene is extremely important because it is the first turning point Liesel is going to be living a new life. She is frightened, rarely speaks to them, and they need to show the personality difference between the foster parents. The mother (called Mama) is cruel, always makes Liesel work with her in manual labor by doing laundry for the rich, and her vocabulary is very interesting. Papa is more humble and cares for Liesel a lot more like his own child, and helps her to learn how to read, so the heartwarming scene with Liesel and Papa would be really nice to see.

The third scene should be when Rudy and Liesel meet. Young love can really grasp the attention of an audience. I absolutely love Rudy and how free spirited he is. One particular scene with these two should be when Rudy says if Liesel loses the challenge she has to kiss him. This scene will be the easiest to interpret into an actual movie, even though their world isn’t the easiest, they still enjoy each other’s company.

 

Two Scenes to cut out:

One scene I don’t really find necessary is when Liesel and Mama are taking and doing laundry for the rich people. I just believe this scene is repeated too many times in the book and it just needs to be cut off, maybe if this scene was shown once then I would be okay with that, but it drags the book way too long.

Another scene is where the brother of Liesel actually dies, maybe the only reason I wouldn’t put this in the movie is because the book made it a little bit confusing on how he died or just exactly was happening. It confused me a lot so I’m not sure how this could be interpreted in the movie