My Sister's Keeper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDRbyQpylXs

the tenth circle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKSLPblYbnU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exB2PDrvNak

This is my last blog! I am still coming up with a format for my presentation on Jodi Picoult. My Sister's Keeper had so many cliff hangers and i was unable to put the book down. This book explores the modern advances in genetic engineering. It shows the long term consequences on a young girl who has been brought into this world genetically perfect to save her sister from a rare leukaemia. It is very American, which is Picoult's style.

Jodi Picoult has been busy traveling through America, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and South Africa. "I finally returned home last summer...not quite sure if my children would even remember who i was," says Picoult about her long world tour. I have been viewing Picoult's own newsletter page for her fans and find it very interesting and helpful for my own research. Picoult basically blogs about whats new with her writing and talk about future books that she is in the process of writing. She recently discussed her latest film news. My Sister's Keeper continues to inch along in development at New Line Cinema. A script has been written and got excellent coverage meaning everyone pretty much liked it. Also, another one of her novels, Keeping Faith has been optioned by Lifetime television. They are also looking to replicate the success of the book, Plain Truth, their most watched movide of 2004. This news is exciting for Picoult and she is definitely gaining more readers as a result. I plan to watch these movies and incorporate them to my final project.

The research paper is due on thursday and I am almost finished completing it. It took me a while to come up with a research topic and i finally decided to base it around teen suicide mostly because The Pact's plot centers around a suicide. This is such a sensitive subject and i've never really explored the subject in depth. The Pact's author, Jodi Picoult, purposely chose to involve suicide in the book's plot because of her own experience as an English teacher and knowing a suicidal student was among her class. Picoult felt responsible to help this young teen girl overcome her depression and suicidal thoughts.

Many of Jodi Picoult's novels run a similar theme of love and compassion. Once people start reading her novels, they cannot seem to stop. Her writing style is addicting and seems to touch other people's lives because it can relate to people in so many ways. Picoult is a page turner type of writer and she writes with a fine touch. After reading many reviews on Picoult's novels and even reviews on the writer herself, I have read numerously that "Picoult is a rare writer who delivers book after book, a winning combination of literary and the commercial." I feel like Jodi Picoult really digs deep into the complexity of human relationships and she targets popular issues of today's society which graps so many people's attention. She forces me to think. I am constantly thinking about what is right and wrong. Her novels are definitely ones that move me which makes it such an easy read. Her novels center around themes such as family, relationships, and love. She has published 15 books, all which have been a huge success. The Pact brings to life "a familiar world" that forces me to keep reading.

I am in the middle of reading The Pact. I'll probably be finished reading it soon since it is hard to put down. The story is a definite page turner. It is a contemporary novel about love and friendship and remains suspenseful page by page. This novel is a tragedy of two families. It is haunting and makes the reader question certain things in their own life. So far, the novel has been intensely moving. PEOPLE magazine said, ""Engrossing… The Pact is compelling reading, right up to the stunning courtroom conclusion. Bottom line: Picoult's deft touch makes this her breakout novel." There are a lot of characters so it is hard to soak in all of their names in the beginning. I can't wait to see what happens later on in the book.

Recently, my friends have been raving about the author Jodi Picoult. I want to spend the fourth marking period reading her novels. Many people have recommended her books such as The Pact, My Sister's Keeper, and Nineteen Minutes. I'm excited to read these books that people have been talking about. I know I will enjoy them since I trust my friend's judgement. I can't think of a final project to do so I may have to work backwards in order to think of a good idea. If anyone has suggestions let me know.

I’m coming to the end of the novel Herland and I don’t love it as much as The Bluest Eye. I came across a discussion website discussing what it would be like in a society where women held the reigns of power and found the topic quite interesting. One person expressed that they felt that society would be a little better run, more democratically, less violently, and that decision would take a little longer to be made but they would be the right ones. Reading Herland helped sway this particular person’s conclusion about what the society would be like. One person disagreed completely and stated that if you were to replace all men with women in positions of power that there would be no difference in the way women would lead or govern. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a social critic and feminist writer in the United States. One would assume she was a feminist based off of her creation of a utopian society made up of entirely women. Gilman aims for familiar targets like the role of women, violence, and the institution of marriage. Because of Gilman’s ideas, she is considered radical and dangerous. I liked that Herland was a short read and had many roots to the key themes and genre. I came across a book review. on Herland that discusses the significance of the short novel. It is a feminist classic and this book review provided a new perspective to the book.

I just started reading the book called Herland. I found an online textbook of the novel, which has been a help to me so far. It’s an electronic textbook. The plot of the novel involves three male explorers Terry Nicholson, Jeff Margrace, and the sociologist Vandyck Jennings and their discovery of a female utopia. This novel was written to express the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, feminist views and beliefs. Two thousand years ago, a foreign army exterminated the men of Herland. The women rebelled and found a way to asexually reproduce. I have researched that Gilman is an accomplished writer and a sharp social analyst and theorist. In this book, Gilman tells of a group of three adventurers who set out to find this county of women after hearing rumors about it. So far, I’m enjoying this novel. It is very different from the usual types of books I read.

The Bluest Eye incorporated so many themes. The story is about so many things one being race relations in the 1940s. Others include child abuse, bullying, and one that really struck me was the piece on beauty; why and how her entire community can consider a young and innocent girl ugly. Reading the last paragraph of the novel really haunted me. I came to the realization that so many innocent characters must face discrimination, but they had to stay strong and endure the pain. Those characters that couldn’t bear the agony would be destroyed. I came across another insightful blog that focuses on The Bluest Eye. These blogs help me formulate my own blogs and are really helpful to me. book discussion guide
This blog contains important quotes from the book along with brief summaries before the quote is said. I think "The Bluest Eye" is a very good book for teenagers to read. It allows us to understand how cruel humans can be towards each other. The world we live in today is full of discrimination and racism still exists everywhere. To create a better living place, we have to be generous and kind to everyone and treat people with the same respect we would want in return. “We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. and she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength."

I just decided to do another project using the Bluest Eye. After a lot of research I found a reenactment of one of the scenes from the novel and found it very interesting so I want to reenact a scene from the book myself. Pecola is such an interesting character and acting out one of her dramatic dialogues would be something fun for me. Pecola displays such self-hatred as the novel progresses. I think reenacting a scene in which her self-hatred is so apparent would be a strong visual. Pecola is just as upset by her parents’ fighting as is her brother, Sammy’s behavior. He runs away sometimes, and Pecola often wonders why he never takes her with him. She secretly thinks that maybe if she were prettier, then things would be different, especially if she had blue eyes. People would see her differently, including her classmates and teachers, and she would even see herself differently. She would see herself as beautiful, instead of the ugly little girl she is disgusted with when she looks into the mirror. Pecola’s mother treats her coldly and is ashamed of her. Maybe this is why Pecola can’t even find her own beauty that lies within herself.
After some research, I came across a website that provides key questions that allow the reader to dig a littler deeper into the novel. This website is a book discussion guide for the book. There are a lot of reflection and discussion questions to think about.

I completed the reading of The Bluest Eye and I certainly enjoyed it. In my research assignment, I chose to focus on the violence in the novel because it was so apparent throughout the entire book. Pecola is a victim of violence and even rape by her own father. Her story is so tragic and powerfully devastating. Pecola grew up in such an abusive and un-loving family and it drives her into a yearning to be beautiful. The standards of the society around her sway her into this state of mind. She thinks that all the bad things that happen to her are because of her ugliness. Pecola blames her appearance for all the negative things that happen to her. This novel is unforgettable and definitely made a mark in my mind. Tragic stories like this one stay with me because there are so many underlying messages I learned from it. The tragedy of Pecola Breedlove helped me understand that adults have such a huge influence on children. It seems inevitable that children listen to everything adults teach them in the early stages of life. I know that so many girls even today feel like beauty is everything. They feel like being tall, thin, and beautiful will give them everything and solve all life’s problems. However, this is so untrue. Girls like Pecola must learn to love themselves to find true happiness. Girls need to learn to love and accept themselves for who they are. This is a problem we find in today’s society, as well as in the 1940s, the time of Pecola’s story. I found a great website with criticism and responses to the novel that give strong opinions about the book. There are Critical essays that give the reader a better understanding of the novel.

So this is my second post and I’m still trying to get used to this. My first post didn’t provide a lot about my own opinions about the novel, The Bluest Eye. I am about half way through the novel. Although it is an easy read, the plot challenges me over and over again. The main character Pecola is a character that will stick in my mind for a while. I find this novel to be extremely depressing and because of this, it is sometimes hard to pick up the book again and again. I did some research and it was interesting to learn that this book has been attempted to be banned in some schools and libraries because of its controversial nature of its themes of racism and even child molestation. In the novel, Morrison wrote, "The damage done was total. She spent her days, walking up and down, her head jerking to the beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear. Elbows bent, hands on shoulders, she flailed her arms like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely futile effort to fly. Beating the air, a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue void it could not reach - could not even see - but which filled the valleys of the mind." To me, these lines summarize the true tragedy of Pecola. I am really fascinated by the character Pecola. I feel so sorry for this poor innocent girl. The book is basically centered on Pecola’s tragedy and devastation. Her world is breaking as the novel continues. It is being destroyed slowly as her mind shatters. After researching some blogs on blogspot, I came across another blog that discusses this novel and I agreed with a lot the discussions. http://kevinbenham.blogspot.com/2008/01/toni-morrisons-bluest-eye.html.
In Kevin’s blog, I came across a point about Pecola’s family that I strongly agree with. Kevin says, “This is not a happy, loving family which gives support and a foundation of a healthy life to their children. And it just doesn’t end with the fact that they believed, which seems to stem from Mrs. Breedlove’s education in movies, that they are ugly.” This made me think about how the mother and father not happy with their own selves, so they take it out on each other and even the children. They even ignore the children as a result.

I thought this scene from a school play was a great visual of Pecola expressing her feelings. This gives me such a better understanding of what is really going on inside of her head. All the confusion and desperation really comes alive through this video.

The Start of The Bluest Eye

I am in the process of reading The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. This book grabbed my attention because it a part of Oprah’s book club and I highly respect Oprah and her philosophy. The Bluest Eye is also a winner of the Nobel Prize in literature and a national bestseller. In the novel, an eleven-year-old girl named Pecola Breedlove is caught up in this fascination for blonde, blue-eyed children and wishes that she had blue eyes as well in order to be beautiful. These characteristics unfortunately are what she thinks defines beauty. She seems to be desperate to have blue eyes. She prays and prays in hope to be something she is not. I am getting to experience this black girl’s universe through the novel’s events. I feel like this little innocent black girl wants to be a part of a white girl’s world for the loving attention that she is longing for. This novel is giving me a perspective of a black girl’s yearning and longing for “beauty.” This novel is a true test to a child’s innocence. Her father Cholly is a violent and drunk man who abuses both Pecola and her mother. I can see that her dysfunctional family situations spark Pecola’s unhappy existence. It is sad to see that Pecola thinks everything will be all right if only she had blue eyes and blonde hair. Morrison gives great depth and detail in chapter 2. Most of the objects are symbolic and meaningful to the novel’s purpose. I like how the novel is broken up by seasons, each being significant to the plot of the story.
Oprah’s website provided me with a lot of insight on the novel and its origin. It fully discusses how the novel came to be which is quite interesting. This website includes some readers own reactions to the novel. One woman named Diana said, “this book has served as a spiritual awakening to me, for it taught me to love my brothers and sisters for their humanity- not their color, religion, sexual persuasion but because we are one in the eyes of our beholder.” Sometimes reading other people’s reactions to the novel help build up my own opinions about it. I like comparing my own reactions to those other individuals who enjoyed the book. “Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" is an inquiry into the reasons why beauty gets wasted in this country” Leonard, John. The video i posted below is a great visual as to how this novel impacts the reader. This video includes significant quotes.

The Sunflower, Herland, and The Bluest Eye are novels that I am about to read. While reading these stories, my blog will serve as a journal where my opinions, reactions, and thoughts will be displayed. These novels look worthwhile. I am a Senior at Pascack Hills High School and this Blog serves as a notebook for Mr. Saxon's English class.