Clay David Almond Sparknotes

As a child Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother; a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games that left one of her sons nearly dead. She no longer considered him a son, but a slave; no longer a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army cot in the basement, his clothes were torn and smelly, and when he was allowed the luxury of food it was scraps from the dogs' bowl. The outside world knew nothing of the nightmare played out behind closed doors. Dave dreamed of finding a family to love him and call him their son. It took years of struggle, deprivation and despair to find his dreams and make something of himself. A Child Called 'It' covers the early years of

Shown from the start of the novel, Dally was described as the ‘real character’ of the gang. He was tougher, colder and meaner than the rest. Although during the incident of the burning church, Darry’s character changed and showed that he had feeling as well. This was proved when Dally, jumps inside the burning church to save the children as well as Ponyboy and Johnny. When that news came out on the newspaper, it had so many people shock as well as the Social and if they hadn’t seen it for their own eyes, “[they]would have never believed a Greaser could pull something like that.” Through this, it was proven that Dally had realised how much little things matted in life and that despite being a hero, it was also important to make sure others were okay. Hinton has proved how Dally has changed in his beliefs as well as his

Everyday, Brother takes Doodle to Old Woman Swamp and the same thing happens: he grabs his little brother, stands him up, then Doodle collapses soon after. Through hard work and perseverance, Doodle eventually learns to walk on his own. Brother gains confidence in Doodle, and now believes in his own ability to do nothing wrong. In Old Woman Swamp, Brother also creates a development program for Doodle. Brother and Doodle’s relationship is beginning to flourish, “Doodle and I spent lots of time thinking about our future. We decided that when we were grown we’d live in Old Woman Swamp and pick dog-tongue for a living...Mama and Daddy could come and live with us if they wanted to. He even came up with the idea that he could marry Mama and I could marry Daddy” (Hurst 4). The daily trips Doodle and Brother take to Old Woman Swamp together slowly strengthen their bond. The beauty of Old Woman Swamp allows Doodle to imagine a perfect world. His innocence causes him to not understand that his idea of a ‘perfect world’ is never going to become a reality. Brother is old enough to know everything Doodle is imagining is a lie, but the picture he is painting is so serene, that all Brother could think to do was to agree. Doodle cherishes every second he has with his older brother, and Brother realizes how precious his little brother really is. Old Woman Swamp is a land of fantasy, whose warmth and comfort gives the two brothers a safe haven.

• Johnny Cade – 16, beaten up by Socs before beginning of novel, idolizes Dally

“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good” (Gailman, 5). The young boy in the story returns to his childhood home as an adult and recalls his memories. As he walks down his lane, the novels protagonist goes from a young man to himself as a young boy. The young boy shows how a child sees the world around them, while the parents show how adults see the world. The child’s creativity, imaginative, and innocent mind is let loose through the same situation as the adults from a different perspective. The memories from the neighbor’s farm begin to come back to him and when he sees the pond the smallest memories begin to return. He recalls that the pond used to be call the ocean by the young girl Lettie. The magic as he recalls began with his family car and continues to an unknown world in which he brings back an unknowing monster. The young boys spiritial enlightenment begins as the two children travel through this unknown world. The enlightenment continues as the different experiences occur throughout the time that the monster is present. This monster, Ursula, turns into his nanny quickly convinces his family of her well-being on the farm. Ursula begins to create problems for the young boy, by not allowing him to leave the farm,

When the narrator was six years old, his little brother Doodle was born, but to the disappointment of the narrator (who subconsciously selfishly wants a capable brother to play with), Doodle is invalid and doctors think he will not survive. As he is born, the narrator describes that, “He was born… from the outset, a disappointment… Everybody thought he was going to die” (1). Everybody sees no hope in the “disappointment” of the narrator’s baby brother. The narrator also realizes himself that he will not have a brother that can play mutually with him.

“The Scarlet Ibis,” a short story by James Hurst, carries a deep symbolic meaning about a coming-of-age experience for a young boy who has a deformed brother. His brother’s name was William, but the narrator in the story, whose name we don’t know, nicknames him Doodle, because when he first started crawling, he crawled backwards like a doodle bug. Throughout the story they begin to bond and develop a special relationship; part of it is love, and the other part is pity for his brother who will never be like him. But most of all, we see a change in the main character. He begins to see things differently because of his brother, and gains a deeper understanding of the world through this coming-of-age experience.

Throughout the story Doodle, a boy born with a caul over his head and a range of physical and mental problems, must combat his deepest and darkest fear, Isolation. When the narrator’s mother gave birth to doodle, his entire

The novel “The Watsons go to Birmingham” by Christopher Paul Curtis is a historical fiction story about a 10-year-old boy named Kenny, who is also the narrator, and his family’s struggles and their trip to Birmingham with Joetta, Momma, Byron, and Dad. Byron is the oldest child of the Watsons, he is pretty self-centered and has a “giant attitude”, it makes sense, since he’s 13 and earns himself the title of “delinquent”. Joetta is the third child of the family she is 6 and is very caring. Momma and Dad have pretty self-explanatory roles.

A theme that I picked up from reading the book is to look around and see what is good in the world. This applies in many reasons. Dally has trouble seeing good things in the world, he always is seeing what is dark and not so good. He went to jail for the first time when he was ten. Johnny thinks he should look in a sunset, Ponyboy and Johnny watch the sunset when they are at the church, Johnny learns to love sunsets.

Invalid, different, clingy, a disappointment, and a burden; all words I had used to describe Doodle. He was just about the craziest brother a boy ever had. He was born when I was only six years old, and I had thought of him as a disappointment. Everybody, except my Aunt Nicey, had thought that he was going to die. Nobody had faith in his survival. As a baby, he would just lie on the rubber sheet in the center of his bed, and he was never “all there.” Although many doubted his survival, he lived. As time went by, he would grow, gain intelligence, and conquer obstacles. He finally began to move once he was two, and then eventually crawling, even if he did crawl backwards like the Doodlebug he was.

It is about a 14 year old boy named Ponyboy Curtis, who is in a gang called the Greasers. The Greaser have an awful reputation in their city, and members of the public believe that they are hoodlums and they deserve to be in jail. Some of the Greasers have embraced their role, and they act like real hoodlums and fight Socs, another gang that hates Greasers. Ponyboy is proud of his gang, but sometimes he wonders about doing the right thing and has an inner conflict. The book expresses his thoughts very clearly,

Sammy Clay, a man stuck in an era of developing trials filled with errors and binding contracts, sleeving over the borders of scams, finds himself growing up in a undistinguished neighborhood in a city called New York. Now by all means, it is not necessary to definitively state in what exact part of New York he was situated in, but the impact his neighborhood had on him. New York, itself, is a state that has a rich history and has flourished and in retrospect, has swallowed and spit out some of the most interesting people to walk the Earth. It has been the home of many women’s and men’s failures and successes. In an era of rebirth, both in terms of comics and international affairs laid the cusp of uncertainty that accompanied refugees fleeing from Hitler’s regime and lucrative markets and

McCann introduces readers to Rebecca – a middle aged, single mother who has the task of raising her disabled adopted son Tomas. Despite Tomas being Deaf, he is a “normal” thirteen year old boy. “There was a raw wedge of thrill in her love for him.” (McCann 178). Rebecca devoted her life to Tomas. Due to him being deaf, she never knew what he could comprehend. As for McCracken’s “Thunderstruck”, we are introduced to a brittle mother-daughter relationship. The story focuses on Laura, the mother and Helen her eldest daughter. Laura is characterized as a constant worrier. “She had never truly gotten rid of a single maternal worry.” (McCracken 201). She was far from a perfect mother, a flaw of Laura’s, was that she never knew how to be authoritative towards her children. Especially when Helen wanted to test her boundaries, such as sneaking out, doing drugs and being mischievous. Helen is twelve year’s old, whom is

In the story, the theme of hypocrisy is supported by the forest, the prison, the scarlet letter, and the Puritans. Throughout the course of the book, when characters are within the forest, their true nature is generally shown. When Mr. Dimmesdale is within the forest, he is weak and deteriorating, both physically and mentally, and appears to be in the most forlorn state, having nearly completely given up on living a true life and torn between revealing his true self and continuing to wear the fake face he puts on for the Puritan society; while he is also weak and deteriorating physically in the eyes of the Puritans, they still regard him as being mentally strong and pure, something they are fooled into thinking due to his ongoing acts of hypocrisy.