In the book Echo, by Pam Muñoz Ryan, she tells the story of several different people throughout history. She writes of Eins, Zwei, and Drei whose souls become part of a harmonica to help them escape a forest, only to be saved when they save someone else from the brink of death. Each character is some sort of minority in his or her situation, an anti-Hitler, epileptic, boy with a birthmark on his face that making him not “Hitler-Standard”, an orphan who lives in an orphanage that is going to illegally put him to work and try to split apart him and his little brother, a little girl who is constantly on the move and ends up going to a school where they split Mexicans and other children into separate schools. The author uses several techniques all through the book all achieving different goals. She uses description to build a mood and show the characters’ motivation. She uses symbolism to portray get the readers predicting, and multiple plot …show more content…
In Friedrich’s story, the author ends on a cliffhanger which raises the stakes because we don’t know what is going to happen next and the next two parts are about different people, leaving us wondering if everything turns out okay. The author ends it by saying, “Even as Eiffel and Faber grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and marched him toward the train door, Friedrich imagined only snowy ballerinas-tiny, pure-white stars- twirling and leaping to the hypnotic music. One, two three. One , two, three. One. two, three…” The author continues by telling two more stories about children and the harmonica, ending each one similarly, leaving us thinking what happens next. The author does eventually tell how each character turned out, and when he does, he relates as how to each character’s life is connected to the other and how the harmonica played a role in all off it. I think the reason the author did this is to show the
What happens to a person who has no identity at a time when identity can be one’s last hope – their salvation or a mark for death. In his novel Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli invites readers to experience the Holocaust through the eye of a young boy who misunderstands everything except the love of family and the different forms it can take. Misha, an orphan boy is taken in by a young group of Jewish thieves. He is simple minded of his own identity because Misha adopts the identity of the people around him in his life, first as a gypsy, then as a Jew when he follows his friend’s family into the ghetto. Readers are forced to focus on the simple acts of caring that takes place in a time of suffering because Misha is unable to understand what is really going on around him. Hope and selfless acts of love still exists during a time of havoc in the Warsaw ghetto, is shown through the innocent eyes of Misha. By using techniques such as dramatic irony, revealing characters’ emotion, and a unique choice of a narrator, Spinelli successfully makes his readers to feel empathy.
How would you deal with living in a community in isolation, feeling lost with those around you, and having your whole life changed with one drop of blood? FOUR by Veronica Roth displays all this with a story of a young man named Tobias Eaton. This book demonstrates the drama and strategy which keeps readers involved. From being placed in one environment from birth and choosing something precisely different, readers can see what Tobias had to go through. The main elements of this book are conflict, style, and mood.
Lead-In/Hook: What would you do if you were stuck in a box, and if you got out, you would be killed. Would you try to escape, or stay inside with soldiers treating you like a dog, without a lot of food, and hope for the best? Think about a Jewish boy and a little girl that were caught by the Nazis while trying to escape from a concentration camp. Even if they try to escape, they will be stuck in the middle of a forest with no food, no drink, no arms, nothing. And now German soldiers are trying to find them. Book title, author, & genre: The book I’m reading is called “I survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944” written by Mary Pope Osborne. The Genre of this book is “Historical Fiction”. If you like books with risky actions and hard choices, you're going to love this book. Protagonist: In this book, the protagonist are Jewish brothers and sisters called Max and Zena. There are both very dynamic. They are unique in ways because Max takes risks and has a lot of courage, and Zena is shy and has hope, but she is scared of what will come. One thing that they have both in common is that they will never leave each other's sides. Point of View: The book is written in the third person point of view, the story is told by the narrator, at one point, the story is also told by Zena. Even though it’s the narrator that tells the story, she also describes how they feel. This book is not only told by the narrator, sometimes the characters interact with one another, so you know what they are thinking of. It also makes the story
“Tomorrow When The War Began” by John Marsden, is a novel of survival, friendship, love and war. He uses many language techniques (e.g. simile, metaphor, personification, oxymoron, irony, symbol, allusion etc.) to get across to the reader the importance of each of the themes discussed. He also uses these techniques to set the mood in each chapter and to help emphasise each major point in the novel. “We’ve learnt a lot and had to figure out what’s important- what matters, what really matters.”- Ellie
David Pelzer, the main (and perhaps only) protagonist, has struggled with a lot throughout the book I read. The story is mainly about Dave’s determination to withstand his abusive, alcoholic mother, who will, without a second thought, beat him if he doesn’t get his chores done. Even if he does get all of his chores done, he is starved and forced to sleep on an old army cot in his basement while his family lives in the luxury of the upstairs section of the house. The writer, Dave Pelzer, changed the names of his family to keep their anonymity, which was nice of him due to what goes on in his story. This essay is about a book called A Child Called “It.”
“The Book Thief” is a novel and film about a girl who survives death during WW2 and how words became very important to her life. Liesel Meminger was brought to her foster home unable to read. Her foster father, Hans, finds out she can’t read and helps teaches her German. Liesel then falls in love with words and uses them to write her story.The theme “power of words” is displayed in the novel and film equally. Three ways the power of words were shown was by making an emotional connection with the audience, influencing people to do something, and creating unlikely friendships.
The two books “Soldier’s Heart,” and “The Red Badge of Courage,” have their differences and similarities that take the reader on a wild, emotional journey. The major differences amongst the stories highlights the characters personalities, or traits, and assists in making each book stand apart from
The book begins by giving a detailed description of the main character, Mende. She speaks about her community and her life as an adored and indulgent child of a loving family. Mende was the youngest of five children and the
In many books authors use elements of literature to get crucial points across, such as how Krystyna Chiger did in her book, Girl in the Green Sweater. Using conflict, foreshadowing, and symbolism, Krystyna was able to explain and show her experiences during Hitler's regime (when most of the Jewish race was persecuted). When analyzing the data presented, one can see how the author was able to convey her message of struggle and survival that families in The Girl in the Green Sweater endured during the Holocaust, so that the reader could relate to the characters and situation using conflict, foreshadowing, and symbolism.
Life is a precious thing, and it is so precious that some people will undergo severe anguish to hold on to it. During the 1930’s and 1940’s in Germany, people of the Jewish religion were diabolically oppressed and slaughtered, just for their beliefs. Some Jews went to extreme measures to evade capture by the German law enforcement, hoping to hold on to life. Krystyna Chiger was only a small child when her family, along with a group of other desperate Jews, descended into the malignant sewers to avoid the Germans. After living in the abysmal sewers for fourteen months, her group emerged, and when she became an adult, she authored a novel about her time in the sewer. When analyzing the literary elements utilized in her novel, The Girl in the Green Sweater, one can determine how tone and mood, point of view, and conflict convey the message of struggle and survival that was experienced during the Holocaust, and how they help the reader to understand and relate.
In the short story Bullet in the Brain, Tobias Wolff creates a sarcastically doughty character by the name of Anders. However, it becomes transparent that beneath this stone-cold portrayal of a man resides a troubled past. Throughout the story, Ander’s life struggles slowly begin to show through the cracks, giving the reader insight into what has turned him into such a hateful man. Another interesting character in the story is the man who takes charge of the robbery. He remains unnamed for the entirety of the happenings, and, although he is not alone in committing this crime, plays an important role in framing the theme of Wolff’s work. Wolff uses literary strategies such as imagery and extreme detail to pull the reader into the story, lock in their attention, and relate the symbolism and emotion of what’s happening. These devices have a great effect on the story.
The developmental stage of a young child’s life is very crucial and can be impacted by the media. In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Liesel Meminger is a young girl living in a very important part of Germany’s history, the Second World War. Liesel’s childhood unfolds and develops against the backdrop of a time when words, books specifically were used for power and control. Liesel is someone who has a love for reading and, as such, books become very important to her, not only for her education but for her rebellion and discovering her true identity. Throughout the novel, books become a crucial symbol used to convey the desires and discovery of identity for the main character as her childish ignorance changes to her mature adulthood.
Words can influence the mind in many ways that thought may not be able to. They are carefully placed and shared in different ways by each and every individual. Words have powerful impacts and can majorly impact how one may think, feel, or even lead others to feel. Written by Markus Zusak, “The Book Thief” describes a story of an innocent foster girl, Liesel Meminger, who resides in Munich, Germany at one of the most troubling time periods in history, Nazi Germany. A tale narrated by the one and only Death himself, shows the perspective from his point of view, as well as others, describing how Liesel had been seized away from her birth mother at a young age, and put into a foster family. Her new family, the Hubermanns. As she matures and grows into a more critical thinker, understanding and analyzing everything that carefully happens around her. Her foster-father, Hans guides her and teaches her how to read, which little does she know sparks her journey, the art of stealing books. Liesel soon discovers that words aren 't simply lines on a page, they are strong emotions packed into a form that merely is held in her delicate hands. Not only did she hold the pages of emotion, she held a power, a dangerous weapon of words, a weapon of control, and every book that she had stolen was giving her unimaginable power that made her think in ways that she would’ve never thought she could have. As with Nazi propaganda, and a gift that enabled her to broaden her worldview. Liesel evolves
Dinaw Mengestu, Richard Rodriguez and Manuel Munoz are three authors that have been through and gone through a lot of pain to finaly get accepted in their societies. They are all either immigrants or children of immigrants that had trouble fitting in America’s society at the time. They struggled with language and their identities, beucase they were not original from the states and it was difficult for others to accept them for who they are. They all treated their problems differently an some tried to forget their old identeties and live as regulalr Americans others accepted themselves for being who they are, but they all found a way to deal with their issues.
After watching the video on Pam Munoz Ryan, I learned that she is an American writer who is half Mexican and grew up in Bakersfield, California. When she was in fifth grade she moved across town, this impacted her self-esteem, likewise she was the “new girl,” but she also had certain physical characteristics that made her feel liked by others or fit in her new school as she mentioned, she was too tall, having big feet, and clothes were not right, therefore, she relied on books to help her cope with her life, like she stated, “ redeem myself.” As we can see, Ryan is a great example how literature helps children and young adults to disconnect with reality and cope with life. I feel many children can connect with her books since most of her