I am writing this having just attended my first YA Lit class of the semester. One of our assignments throughout the course will be weekly responses to one or both of the books we choose to read in that particular week. I will be adding these responses to my posts for those books, possibly replacing the "My Review" section with a "My Response" section. Though I would still like to give a brief review on what I did or didn't find appealing about each book. Maybe the Responses should be a separate post, since they may often talk about multiple books and their similarities/differences? I will try to figure this out. For now, here is a summary of what we discussed in class in relation to The Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders:
Most of the people in my discussion group didn't like The Catcher in the Rye. I was sort of the minority voice sticking up for Holden, trying to explain that he just wanted to talk to someone, and that he was depressed, and that it probably isn't good to assume that that he is just a whiny rich kid, because there are plenty of people in the world feeling as hopeless and sad as Holden did. Also, he makes a lot of good points about how the world could or should be, and that it is pretty darn depressing the world isn't as "good" as he wants it to be.
Most everyone seemed to really like The Outsiders. I was glad to have similar opinions on this book. One person in our group brought up the point that the language doesn't seem very well written, and that it sounds very young, possibly because Hinton was young when she wrote it. However, I think that the whole point of the book is that it sounds young, because it's a high school kid's point of view, and because of where and how Ponyboy grew up, he has that view point and that language.
Other people in the group read The Pigman by Paul Zindell, and seemed to enjoy it. They talked about the similarities between The Pigman and The Outsiders. Since I guess both books show these groups of people that become family, but weren't born that way. That is a major theme in The Outsiders, that needing to belong and to not only care about others, but to have other people care about you.
All in all, I really enjoyed the first class of this course and I am looking forward to next week's class.
To Buy: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Pigman by Paul Zindell
Reading for Next Week's Class: Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block, Forever by Judy Blume
Other Reading: XVI by Julia Karr
Showing posts with label the outsiders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the outsiders. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
YA Lit Week One: The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton - 1965
This is the second book due for the first week of the YA Lit course.
Course Theme for the Week: "Introduction to the Course (1-26-2011)
Title: The Outsiders
Author: S.E. Hinton
Year: 1965
Date Read: 1-23-2011
Overall: * * * * * (5/5)
Amazon Blurb: According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser. This classic, written by S. E. Hinton when she was 16 years old, is as profound today as it was when it was first published in 1967.
My Review: I didn't actually know very much about this story before reading it. I knew a lot of middle schools had this as assigned reading, but mine did not, and I just never got around to reading it prior to this. I wish that I had not waited so long to read it though, because it sucked me right in and I just had to know the rest of Ponyboy's story. At times I was fearful to keep reading, because I didn't want anything bad to happen to him or his brothers, or his friends.
I liked the honesty in Ponyboy's voice, and that he didn't seem angry about his place in the world, but that he seemed to accept things even if those things weren't fair. The differences in each character's personalities were very distinct, especially the differences between kids like Johnny or Ponyboy and kids like Dallas. Ponyboy's world is so completely different from mine that I couldn't put the book down because of how little I could relate to his world and his lifestyle.
I think that people of any age could get a lot out of this book. The ultimate lesson for me was to never let all of the bad things in the world black out all of the good things, like sunsets. When Johnny died, it did something to Ponyboy for a while, until he could see that Johnny wouldn't want him to be like that, to become like Dallas, and so in the end he tried to hold onto those bits of innocence he had left.
At some points, I could really feel some similarities between The Outsiders and The Catcher in the Rye, particularly because Ponyboy's thought process was often, in my opinion, very similar to Holden Caulfield's. There were some observations that Ponyboy made that sounded very much like Holden's (like how people are different in their yearbook pictures, and how repetitive both narrators were). This wasn't a bad thing for me, and I don't think I would have noticed if I hadn't read them within the same week.
To Buy: Amazon
Currently Reading:
For Class -- Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block, Forever by Judy Blume
Other -- Bleed by Laurie Faria Stolarz
Books Read in 2011: 8
Course Theme for the Week: "Introduction to the Course (1-26-2011)
Title: The Outsiders
Author: S.E. Hinton
Year: 1965
Date Read: 1-23-2011
Overall: * * * * * (5/5)
Amazon Blurb: According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser. This classic, written by S. E. Hinton when she was 16 years old, is as profound today as it was when it was first published in 1967.
My Review: I didn't actually know very much about this story before reading it. I knew a lot of middle schools had this as assigned reading, but mine did not, and I just never got around to reading it prior to this. I wish that I had not waited so long to read it though, because it sucked me right in and I just had to know the rest of Ponyboy's story. At times I was fearful to keep reading, because I didn't want anything bad to happen to him or his brothers, or his friends.
I liked the honesty in Ponyboy's voice, and that he didn't seem angry about his place in the world, but that he seemed to accept things even if those things weren't fair. The differences in each character's personalities were very distinct, especially the differences between kids like Johnny or Ponyboy and kids like Dallas. Ponyboy's world is so completely different from mine that I couldn't put the book down because of how little I could relate to his world and his lifestyle.
I think that people of any age could get a lot out of this book. The ultimate lesson for me was to never let all of the bad things in the world black out all of the good things, like sunsets. When Johnny died, it did something to Ponyboy for a while, until he could see that Johnny wouldn't want him to be like that, to become like Dallas, and so in the end he tried to hold onto those bits of innocence he had left.
At some points, I could really feel some similarities between The Outsiders and The Catcher in the Rye, particularly because Ponyboy's thought process was often, in my opinion, very similar to Holden Caulfield's. There were some observations that Ponyboy made that sounded very much like Holden's (like how people are different in their yearbook pictures, and how repetitive both narrators were). This wasn't a bad thing for me, and I don't think I would have noticed if I hadn't read them within the same week.
To Buy: Amazon
Currently Reading:
For Class -- Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block, Forever by Judy Blume
Other -- Bleed by Laurie Faria Stolarz
Books Read in 2011: 8
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