Book Club Post # 2

My Book Club Book :
SPEAK by:Laurie Halse Anderson

Summary: In this weeks reading I read that Heather , Melinda's only friend in school, has turned her back on her. Heather decided that she can't hang out with Melinda because she's depressed and too weird , so she went to the Martha's clan and left Melinda to be all by herself again ( p.gs 104-107) Melinda has been skipping school and people started to notice, so her parents had to have a meeting with the principal. The punishment she got was that she had to go to school everyday, she couldn't be late to her classes and that she had to do all her homework. If she didn't all that the only thing that she had to do was write an essay but she skipped school again and had to go to In-school suspension. While she was having her suspension with Mr.Neck ( The Social Studies Teacher ) Andy Evans walked into the room , every time Mr.Neck would turn around he would blow in Melinda's ear ( p.gs 113-118)
Melinda is having trouble with drawing her tree so Mr.Freeman gives her a book called
'Picasso' to inspire her. At first she thinks that the book has a lot of naked women but then she starts to get more into the book and at the end she drew a tree for Mr.Freeman ( Its still not the tree he wants though) ( p.gs 118-119) For a whole week Melinda didn't skip school , went to all of her classes and did all her home work , so she and her mother were going to go shopping to buy her new clothes. But when Melinda left school there was a blizzard outside and she was just standing out in the cold with no hat , mittens and with her rear end freezing. Mr.Freeman then offers Melinda a ride home in his car. They start talking about Melinda's tree and how she doesn't seem to put any of her feelings into the drawing. Melinda then shocks herself when she tells Mr.Freeman : " All right , but you said we had to put emotion into our art. I don't know what that means. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel" . Mr.Freeman then explains to her why a drawing should have feelings put into it and then he drops her off at home. (p.gs 120-123)


Opinion: I think that Melinda should really tell somebody about her problem and what happened to her but she doesn't speak to anybody. When people talk to her , some times she doesn't even answer them so they think shes mute or that shes being disrespectful to them. Mr.Neck doesn't like Melinda because he thinks that she doesn't talk because she's a quiet trouble maker. I don't really like Mr.neck because HE'S the one thats disrespectful to other people and he can't tell when somethings wrong with a person. I think that when Melinda finally tells somebody what happened to her , she will be able to draw a tree thats filled with all of her emotions.

Prompt:

This week my group was suppose to have a meeting but we didn't because I'm ahead of my other book club members and Sakeena ( One of my book club members ) was absent.

I had a meeting with Mrs.Hameed about my book.

In the book club meeting two things that we both agreed on was that the movie "SPEAK" and the book are very different. The movie is not as detailed as the book. The next thing that we agreed on was that When Melinda had to draw a tree in art class, she has to express her feelings and put it into the drawing but she can't because of the Issues she's going through.Two things that i disagreed with my book club group was that the main character's name was Heather ( O_o ) and that Melinda is mean to her mother.

I really liked talking to Mrs.Hameed about my book , even though she hasn't read it.She saw the movie so that helped her understand of parts of the book. I was able to tell her the things in the book that have been happening and the things that Melinda is going through. We compared things that happened in the movie to whats happening in the book. I feel that even though Mrs.Hameed hasn't read the book she now has a better understanding of how the book is and whats been happening to Melinda and the troubles shes having. I hope that the next time that the book club groups have a meeting that my group in complete and everybody is closer to being on the same page (that may take a while :[ ). I try to help my club members as much as I can without giving them to much information and to get them to have a better understanding of the book. Even though they do get on my nerves and make me want to rip all my hair out , I can't give up on them because i have to keep them from falling to far behind and help them with things that they don't understand about the book.

How do you feel about your first book club book? What have you liked most about it so far? What do you think is going to happen over the next week's reading?

I really like my book club book. The thing I like most about my book is that it is given from a persons own point of view and as I read the book I learn a lot more about Melinda and what she's going through at home and at school. Over the next week of reading I think that I will find out why Melinda is so quiet , why at the beginning of the book everybody was glaring at her and why she calls her self an outcast. ( Even if I did see the movie :p , I still wanna see what they're gonna say in the book )

Book Club Post #1

Book Club Book: SPEAK by:Laurie Halse Anderson
Pages:1-95
Summary: My book is about a High School girl named Melinda Sordino. It's Melinda's first year in High School and she's a Social Outcast. She has no friends and is almost always depressed. The first day of High School everywhere she looked, her old classmates and ex-friends were glaring at her, Except the new girl from out off state named Heather. At first Melinda didn't like her every much by then she got used to having Heather around . When she walks to her classes people bump her in the hallways and drop her books. Then the mysterious "IT" shows up at school and melinda can't stand to have him around her. Melinda's grades are bad , her parents keep fighting and when people talk to her she almost never talks back to them or she just doesn't talk at all.

Opinion: Usually when I go to the library and see this book I don't pay much attention to it. When we were picking which book we wanted to read for our book clubs I had wanted to read a different book but then a teacher (Mr.Homan) asked me if I had read the blurb of the book "SPEAK" , I said no and he said that i should because it was an Interesting book and I would probably like it.When I finished reading the blurb I knew that "SPEAK" was the book that I wanted to read for book clubs. I really like reading this book ,( i even saw the movie thats based on the book :D ) the book is written in Melinda's point of view and it tell us what she feel as she enters High School , what she goes through at school and at home .Even though I already saw the movie "SPEAK" , I want to finish reading the book because I want to see what happens to Melinda in the book that didn't happen in the movie. When I read the book I never want to put it down ,I get so caught up in reading that sometimes I don't hear my teacher say that its time to stop reading.

Prompt:How do you feel about this new unit of Study? How did your book Club group perform this week? What role did you get the chance to play this week and how did that go for you? Tell me at least two new words that you learned this week as you read your book.

I love this new unit of study! I like this unit of study because I like to read , when ever I see a book that I'm intresrted in I always pick it up and read it. Also my class did book clubs last year and it was great! But there were only 2 people in my book club and we are both fast readers so by the time that unit ended , we had already read about 3 books. I think that my book club preformed good this week but we need to come together and talk more about our book. Also My other classmate and I are both very much ahead of our other classmates who are in our book club. When we have to talk about our book to the our other book club members I always talk to my friends sakeena because she is already up to page: 126 even though I'm only up to page:95.
She's always careful not to tell me too much of what shes read so that I can read it myself.My other book club members talk to each other because they are they are both up to the same page and sometimes they ask us questions if they don't understand something thats happened in the book . This week our class was learning how to be the Deep Thinker and the Historian. I think that I did better as the Histirion because I was able to fill the worksheet the Ms.Hameed gave us and I understood what I was doing. I wasn't every good at being the Deep Thinker because I wasn't able to put down my book and fill in the sheet, everytime I tried to stop and fill in the sheet something intresting kept happening in the book. I kinda forgot what the new words I learned were but Im going to look them up . =D