“A Long Way From Chicago” by Richard Peck The book “A Long Way From Chicago” is an adventurous and funny story. The story takes place at Joey Dowdel’s Grandmothers farm house in the country. Joey and his sister Mary Alice were sent to their Grandma’s house during the summer because their parents had to go to Canada for their work. At first, Joey felt uncomfortable with his Grandmother because he had never met her before but eventually he got to know her and they became close friends. On the first week at Grandma’s, a man named Shotgun Cheatman died. Everyone in the town went to the funeral because he was the well known assistant to the Mayor. The funeral was held in Grandma’s house and a creepy thing happened that night when Tom the cat crawled inside the casket. The next day, Joey, Mary Alice and Grandma left the house and walked across fields of tall grass and “cow pies aplenty” to Salt Creek to go fishing. They found an old wooden boat and Grandma rowed the boat out into the creek. While on their fishing adventure, they encountered a cottonmouth snake that fell into the boat and a party of drunken men on land dancing in their underwear. Strange things began to happen the next couple days. First, Joey was in the living room of Grandma’s house making a jig saw puzzle. He heard the sound of a horses hooves walking slowly on the street then the sound stopped in front of the house and heard someone put something in Grandma’s mail box. Joey heard the horse walk away and a little while later Grandma’s mailbox blew up. Next, Ms. Wilcox’s outhouse was destroyed by a cherry bomb. Then, a dead mouse was found floating in the bottle of milk that was delivered to the front
Hutch, the main character of The Big Field, has played baseball all of his life. He has always played shortstop, the same position that his father dreamed of playing as a professional. “Hutch, had always thought of himself as the captain of any infield he’d ever been a part of” (Lupica 1). Hutch finds himself being demoted to second base because there is another player, Darryl, on his new team that is expected to go pro and also plays shortstop. Hutch struggles because he does not want to play second base and his father does not support him because he does not want baseball to break Hutch’s dreams like it did his own. Hutch is betrayed by his father and Darryl when he finds them practicing together. Hutch has to learn to adjust and eventually becomes friends with Darryl, the up and coming shortstop. He understands that if he wants to win, then he needs to work together with Darryl. His father also comes around and finally gives Hutch his approval. Students should read this book in a high school English classroom because it demonstrates how relationships can be difficult, but teamwork can help to solve many issues.
Throughout a lifetime, one can run through many different personalities that transform constantly due to experience and growing maturity, whether he or she becomes the quiet, brooding type, or tries out being the wild, party maniac. Richard Yates examines acting and role-playing—recurring themes throughout the ages—in his fictional novel Revolutionary Road. Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living miserably in suburbia, experience relationship difficulties as their desire to escape grows. Despite their search for something different, the couple’s lack of communication causes their planned move to Europe to fall through. Frank and April Wheeler play roles not only in their individual searches for identity, but also in their search for a healthy couple identity; however, the more the Wheelers hide behind their desired roles, the more they lose sense of their true selves as individuals and as a pair.
Sidewalk is a book written by Mitchell Duneier, an American sociology professor at Princeton University, in 1999; where the book has gained a lot of favorable reviews, leading its winning the Los Angeles Times Book prize and C. Wright Mills Award. Similarly, the book had become a classic in urban studies, especially due to the interesting methodology, which was used by Duneier while he was conducting his research. The book is based on observations, participant observation and interviews, which gave the author the ability to live and interact with the book and magazine vendors on daily bases. Although, this gave him an insight into the life of the sidewalk, many methodological issues have concerned scholars and students of sociology since the day this book was published. Duneier had admitted during the book that he couldn’t be completely subjective while conducting his research and writing his book due to his involvement and personal relationship with people who work and live at the sidewalk, which raise the question, whether the research is still relevant if the researcher is only giving us an objective outcome?
Our generation does not focus on what was done before but what is here now. When looking back in time the history is much relevant then the present. Completing this project made me appreciate Scotlandville even more for what they’ve done to make the Scotlandville family what it is today. I also took a greater appreciation in the Alumni Association and the Scotlandville community for all the funds they have invested and giving us programs that could help us with our secondary education.
In the story "So Much Water So Close To Home" a young girl is raped, killed and found in a river where four men are fishing. What makes this story interesting is that after discovering the body they did not report it until after they left, three days later. When one of the men who discovered her, the husband of the narrator, Stuart returns home he doesn't tell his wife about the incident until the following morning. Because of this, Claire believes that all men are responsible for the murder of the girl. Due to these facts she acts irrationally, suspiciously, and with distrust not only towards her husband, but also to all men in general.
A Cold Day in Paradise is a book that was written by Steve Hamilton and takes place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The name of the book is very significant to the meaning of the book. The cold day represents the metal bullet that is in Alex McKnight’s chest and on cold nights, it is a reminder of a traumatic event that took place. While Paradise is the place that he lives and where the last death took place and it was also on a cold windy night.
Teen pregnancy is affecting the graduation rate in high schools. “Approximately 1,000 high school students will drop out with each hour that passes in a school day in America” (National Women’s Law Center, 2007). Teen pregnancy first came into view in the 1950’s. In different states teens that were pregnant were not allowed to attend school, most of them had to switch schools out of state in order to attend. Teenage pregnancy was normal in previous centuries and common in developed countries in the twentieth century. As higher education became available to women, they began to start their families later in life. By the 1950’s, parents were encouraging their kids to stay in school and to not marry until they graduate high school so they can focus on school better. Today, any teen pregnancy is frowned upon and they are getting judged. Parents want their kids to enjoy all the benefits of higher education before they begin their families. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “in 2011, a total of 329,797 babies were born in the United States to girls between the ages of fifteen and nineteen.” Teenage pregnancy is the number on...
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
The book, Into the wild, takes us into the world of a young man named Christopher Johnson McCandless. He travelled across the western United States from 1990 to 1992, and on April 28, 1992, he started his last adventure and walked into the wilds of Alaska. About 112 days later, he died of starvation. Unsurprisingly, public opinion polarized on his behavior. Some may admire his courage and noble ideals, though some regard him as an idiotic and arrogant narcissist. Although he died on his way to find the truth and back to nature, I believe that Chris McCandless should be considered as a hero, but I cannot completely approve of all his behaviors.
...self exaggerated stories. One thing she tells herself is that her mother was kidnapped by a lunatic. On another occasion a classmate asks where her mother is and she says that her mother is on a business trip in London. Their similarities help each other to grow and mature and eventually come to terms with their situations.
Basically, we all know and understand that stress is bad for us. However, it is a natural state of the body, which is a good thing itself when present in small quantities....
Teen pregnancy is a heavy topic in the United States that is now becoming the norm to most people. It has become broadcasted everywhere from TV shows, movies, and the Internet. Approximately 7% of teenage girl between ages 15-18 in the United States will become pregnant. Teen pregnancy has been down 42% since 1990 yet United States teen pregnancy rates are higher than any other first world country. Teenage pregnancy effects teenager’s physical health, social life, education, and jobs.
Stress is a familiar word in today’s world and everyone that has to earn a living or studying can get stress easily. There are differences between stress at school vs stress at work life even stress in daily life; students nowadays are going through many pressure, mostly the stress they are dealing with appears during exam period. Simply, stress is a mental illness that contains apprehension and anxiety and was caused by problems surrounding your life. Stress can affect health and emotions negatively and it causes an issue for the body if there is no solution to deal with it, bad stress appears in a long-term and happens when life’s problems have no way to handle. On the other hands, not all stress is bad for you, some are considered good stress
Statistics show that teen pregnancy has declined since past years but still continues to be a problem among adolescents. For example from 1990 to 2010 the teen birth rate has declined from 61.8 to 29.4 for every one thousand teen girls (Teen Pregnancy & Childbearing 1). Even with a decrease from the past twenty years, National statistics show that in 2012 there were still 305,388 teen births. On average there were twenty-nine births for every one thousand girls and only fifty-four percent were planned. More pregnancies occur among girls of minority. For example forty-six out of every one thousand girls of Hispanic descent were pregnant in 2012 while African American girls had close to forty-four for every one thousand. Compared to Caucasians they had more than half of the number of teen births in the year of 2012. With a drastically large number of teen births in the year of 2012 alone, 9.4 billion dollars were spent on teen childbearing. New York State alone spent 337 million for 12,592 teen births. The number of teen pregnancies compared to teen births also has a drastic difference. For example the teen pregnancy rate was 41,590 in the year of 2012, compared to 12,592 births. Meaning thirty percent of the girls terminated their pregnancy. With ...
Approximately one million teens get pregnant and give birth every year in the United States. Eighty percent of those births are to unmarried teens (ProQuest). There are serious consequences for teen pregnancy for the child as well as for the mother. The opportunity to a bright future dwindles down with such a high responsibility; a child. Many teens who end up pregnant do not finish high school and are less likely even consider going to college. Another effect of teen pregnancy is that both mother and child become apt to health issues. Infants are more likely to suffer from low birth weight and other health problems. Most teens do not have health insurance therefore it becomes harder to provide adequate healthcare for themselves and their babies. Not only are children of teen parents more likely to be unhealthy physically but sometimes emotionally as well. A teen cannot provide the fostering environment that a baby needs to develop. Although teen pregnancy rates declined throughout the 1990s, a 3 percent jump in births to teen mothers between 2005 and 2006 raised alarm that sex education programs and campaigns to reduce teen motherhood were failing (ProQuest). Various methods of contraceptives and the righteous yet difficult choice of abstinence are among possible solutions Preventing teen pregnancy is an issue in the United States of utmost importance and society as a whole must convince teens in a more innovative , extreme way and they must push forward now.