Kelly Going lives in Beacon, New York. After graduating from college, she has had many jobs. These include adult literacy tutor, ticket agent for a major airline, front desk clerk at a resort hotel, and an assistant in a Manhattan literary agency. K.L. Going likes to travel and she has lived in Maine, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and New York.
Fat Kid Rules the World is her first novel. She has stated that the idea for the book came to her while riding on the subway in New York. The novel came together quickly which she feels was due to the fact that she began writing just prior to September 11, 2001. She has said that she may have used the writing as an escape from what was going on in the world around her. Part of the book was inspired by the life and music of Kurt Cobain.. Going had just gotten into vintage punk music and wanted to express her interests through the book. The character in her book that was modeled after Kurt Cobain was Curt. K.L Going struggles with self-doubt; this showed through the character Troy. Although she is very petite her feelings of self conscious ness showed her "fat kid" character, Troy.
Kelly Going has just completed a new book called The Liberation of Gabriel King. The book is for kids between the ages seven to twelve. It is due out in the summer of 2005. She is currently working on another novel for teens.
Fat Kid Rules the World, written by K.L Going, is a story of two kids brought together by fate. Troy a 300 pound suicidal outcast and Curt a scrawny, high school drop out, who is a punk rock guitar genius. They both live in New York City, but in two totally different worlds. Troy lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Curt sometimes lives in the projects, other times in the subway or anywhere else that he can crash. The two face very different issues, but without even knowing it they help each other throughout the book. Curt helping Troy is more obvious than Troy helping Curt with his problems, until the end of the book. When Curt saves Troy's life unintentionally they soon become best friends. Curt wants Troy to form a band with him.
Alan Sitomer’s newest fast paced novel Homeboyz is a hardcore suspense story that will immediately put readers on the edge and leave them breathless in the end. Sitomer’s character, Teddy ‘T-Bear’ Anderson is an aloof seventeen year old that doesn’t care for anything other than to avenge his innocent fourteen year old sister Tina’s death, by targeting the infamous gang members of his city. As Teddy’s family mourns and his mother falls into a deep depression, his father Mr. Anderson, also known as Pops attempts to run the dysfunctional ailing household and his linen delivery company by himself. While Teddy observes his family, his desire to seek revenge grows stronger each day until he finally uses his extraordinary visionary skills to come up with a plan.
The story, “Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor, is a third person limited narration which means the reader can only look into the mind of only a few of the characters. Those characters are Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga, or Joy. Schmoop discusses a deeper understanding about the narrator of the story.
The Book I chose to do for my book report is Live Original By: Sadie Robertson. She is one of the daughters of the Robertson Family, also known as the Duck Commander (Duck Dynasty) family. This book that she wrote is about how the duck commander teen keeps it real and stays true to her values. The Robertson family is a Christian family that lives in Louisiana, and they make products for people who hunt ducks. The show is a reality TV show, they have become really wealthy but they owe it all to God, and they trust in him completely. They have had many trials, one of the trials they faced was being asked not to pray before meals on the TV show, but there was no way they would agree to that. They have put their faith before fame and that’s something that’s really important. Sadie Robertson is 18 years old, and currently a senior in High School and graduates in 2016.
When I was little I remember driving across country, going to Florida, and past neighborhoods that were anything but mine. They had old houses that looked like they were going to fall down any minute, real trashy looking. In Colorado, my house was nice and always kept up. I sat in the car wondering what kind of people lived in those run down places and what they were like. The answers came to me years later when I read the book, Famous All Over Town, by Danny Santiago. The main character, Chato, is a young Hispanic boy living in a neighborhood like the ones I saw when I was little. After reading the book, although I never thought I would have anything in common with people who lived like that, I learned that Chato and I have do have similarities, but we have more differences.
Justin Torres Novel We the Animals is a story about three brothers who lived a harassed childhood life. There parents are both young and have no permanent jobs to support their family. The narrator and his brothers are delinquents who are mostly outside, causing trouble, causing and getting involved in a lot of problems and barely attending school, which their parents allowed them to do. The narrator and his brothers were physically abused by their father, leading them to become more violent to one another and others, drinking alcohol and dropping out of school. Physical abuse is an abuse involving one person’s intention to cause feelings of pain, injury and other physical suffering and bodily harm to the victim. Children are more sensitive to physical abuse, they show symptoms of physical abuse in short run and more effects in the long run. Children who sustain physical abuse grow up with severely damaged of sense of self and inability. The narrator and his brothers were physically abused by their father and showed long run symptoms of Antisocial behaviors, drinking problems and most importantly they becoming more violent themselves. Many psychological and sociological studies such as “Childhood history of abuse and child abuse potential: role of parent’s gender and timing of childhood abuse” and “school factors as moderators of the relationship between physical child abuse and pathways of antisocial behavior can be used to prove the argument that children who sustain physical abuse grow up with criminal and antisocial behaviors.
Straying away from life as a whole only to be alone, some may say is the strong way to heal themselves when dealing with extreme grief or a major crisis . In the book Wild, twenty-two year old Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost it all. Dealing with the loss of her mother, her family torn to pieces, and her very own marriage was being destroyed right before her very eyes. Living life with nothing more to lose, lifeless, she made the most life changing decision of her life. Strayed never seems remorseful on her decisions to up and leave everything behind while deciding to flee from it all. This being her way of dealing with life, it shows her as being strong; a woman of great strength and character. She shows personal strength, which is more than just a physical word. It is a word of very high value and can only be defined by searching deep within your very own soul.
Every individual has times in their life where they feel isolated and alone. When this occurrs a person will search for ways to connect or feel important.. The person will do anything they can to be noticed and appreciated. In the novel, Famous All Over Town, by Danny Santiago the main character, Chato, has many reasons to feel lonely. In almost every aspect of his life he is being let down in one way or another. He has to try to deal with a family on the brink of falling apart, he has to go to a school which doesn't teach anything "fun," and he has friends that are a bad influence on him. The novel reveals how he has to endure hardships, most of us do not have, to get through a day. By the end of the novel the reader begins to understand why Chato starts to write on buildings all over town.
In a society that is facing numerous problems, such as economic devastation, one major problem is often disregarded, growing obesity. As the American society keeps growing, so does growth of the fast food industry and the epidemic of obesity. In order to further investigate the main cause of obesity, Morgan Spurlock, the film director and main character, decides to criticize the fast food industry for its connection with obesity in America. In his documentary Spurlock performs a radical experiment that drives him to eat only from McDonald's and order a super-sized meal whenever he is asked. By including visual and textual techniques, rhetorical appeals, and argumentative evidences, Morgan Spurlock was able to help viewers know the risks of fast food and how it has caused America to be the world's “fattest country”.
The Watsons go to Birmingham is an interesting book about a family who lives in Flint Michigan in 1963. all their neighbors call them the weird Watsons because they're a really strange family. it is a third person point of view, the main character is a 11 year old boy and has a 14 year old brother and a 7 year old sister the older brother bully's the younger brother it takes the 11 year old boys perspective, it has won a few awards.
We live in a society where we are surrounded by people telling us that school/education and being educated is the only way to succeed. However, the school system is not up to the standards we want it to uphold. There are three issues we discuss the most which are the government, the student, and the teacher. In John Taylor Gatto 's essay “Against School”, we see the inside perspective of the educational system from the view of a teacher. In “I Just Wanna Be Average”, an essay written by Mike Rose, we hear a student 's experience of being in a vocational class in the lower level class in the educational system when he was supposed to be in the higher class. Both Gatto and Rose give their opinions on how the educational system is falling apart. Today the government is only trying to get students to pass, making it hard for teachers to teach what they want. Students are affected everyday by the school system. They sit there - bored - and do not think that the teachers care, making the
Literacy, or the capability to comprehend, translate, utilize, make, process, assess, and speak information connected with fluctuating settings and displayed in differing organizations, assumes an essential part in molding a young's persons trajectory in life. The ability to read speaks to a key factor of scholarly, social, and financial success (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). These abilities likewise speak to a fundamental segment to having a satisfying life and turning into an effective worker and overall person (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1999). Interestingly, recent studies have demonstrated that low reading skills lead to critical hindrances in monetary and social achievement. As stated by the National Center for Education Statistics, adults with lower levels of reading skills and literacy have a lower average salary. Another study evaluated that 17 to 18 percent of adults with "below average" literacy aptitudes earned less than $300 a week, though just 3 to 6 percent of adults with "proficient" reading abilities earned less than $300 a week (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
Struggles result from the strains between conflicting powers in a literary work to captivate the reader in the plot and characters. The novel Little Bee, authored by Chris Cleave, exploits the individuality that lies within a person, as the characters have a person vs. self and also a person vs. person conflict while pursuing their own identities. Cleave introduces an internal conflict as Sarah defines their personal battles in depth: “The summer my husband died—we all had identities we were loath to let go of. My son had his Batman costume, I still used my husband’s surname, and Little Bee…still clung to her name she had taken in a time of terror” (p. 22). Cleave reveals conflict as it comes from different cultures and through the search of self that the characters challenge. Although the characters have their own issues, they are able to stall their self-conflict in order to aid another person.
Between character differences and overall structure of the memoir Girl, Interrupted written by Susanna Kaysen, it is difficult to find ways the book is similar to the film. Changing the way Kaysen perceives and shares her story with the audience changes the meaning behind her experiences illustrated throughout the text. Rather than seeing the gritty details of being hospitalized in a mental institution as described in the memoir, James Mangold, the director of the movie, portrays a less abrasive version so as to be visually pleasing and relatable to the viewer. In Girl, Interrupted we see a harsh change in the substance of Kaysen’s work compared to Mangold’s film. Characters are either toned down or changed entirely to suit the norms and restrictions of ratings and public opinion. When looking closer there are many factors to take into consideration as to why the film differs so much from Kaysen’s memoir such as the audience, budget, and casting. It may also go without mentioning that personifying someone’s life experiences as perceived in a memoir can prove to be difficult. Despite the many differences it is almost impossible to envision a better representation of the memoir as the movie has portrayed. The director and cast did the best they could in order to make Susanna Kaysen’s memoir come to life on the big screen.
Gonsalves tries to support his argument of Million Dollar Baby being a bad film by stating that it is dark, gloomy, and about death. However, this is a huge exaggeration. The film is an inspirational story about a rookie boxer who rises against all odds. The story takes a dark turn during the crisis of the film, but that is less than ¼ of the movie. He also argues that Million Dollar Baby is a bad movie because the script is not complex and it is generic. Although the film may be generic at some points, that is also a small portion of the movie. The film takes a defining turn that separates it from other movies at the crisis of the film, making the movie far from generic. There are arguably three main characters to the story and each of them
This book is about two greasers named Bryon and Mark. Mark whose parents died when he was a young age went to live with Bryon. This book is in first person, and takes place behind the eyes of Bryon. The book first starts out by introducing the other characters in the novel: Charlie, a bartender who allows Mark and Bryon to come in to his bar, but wont let them buy booze. M&M a small longhaired child who always seems to be munching on M&Ms, and he lends Bryon and Mark money all the time. After their rendezvous with M&M the boys visit their mother in the hospital, and while their Bryon meets Cathy who is M&Ms sister who just came back from medical school. After a conversation, Bryon invites Cathy to go on a date with him, and Cathy accepts. Soon Bryon talks Mark into double dating with him, then he proceeds to borrow Charlie’s car. The next night Angela, who is Bryon’s ex sends someone to attack him, and who ends up attacking Mark. Mark is sent to the hospitable, but recovers in a day or two. The story then resumes with Bryon continuing to date Cathy, and Mark seems to become more and more jealous. One night Mark, Bryon, Cathy, and M&M decide to drive up and down the Ribbon to get M&M cheered up because his dad was ridiculing him for his long hair. The Ribbon is a long stretch of road that teens hang out. While driving along M&M gets out and walks away with a group of other long haired children, but because you cant stop on the ribbon on a green light all they could do is watch him go away. For the next few days Cathy and Bryon are searching the Ribbon while Mark mysteriously brings in large sums of money to pay for his mothers hospitable bill. Bryon notices this, but never asked Mark where he is getting the money. The next day Mark says he might know where M&M is. Mark discloses a hippy hangout, and that is where Mark goes, but without Cathy. Bryon finds that M&M had been there, but was not around that day. The next day Bryon and Cathy go to the hangout and find M&M, and he was really bad.