Viewing the Story

Author’s Note: I chose to do this book because I thought that it would be interesting to see what it would be like from another person’s point of view.


I am doing my point of view piece on the book Give Me Liberty by Laura Elliott. This piece will be about the point of view in the book, and what would be different if the narrator changed.

The person who is telling the story in this book is the narrator telling Nathaniel’s story. Nathaniel  is a 13 year-old boy who doesn’t know much of what is going on during the American Revolution, but finds out more information about it as the book goes on. The whole book is an unknown narrator telling what does; describing Nathaniel’s life. If the main character walked to the door trying to figure out what the people in the other room were saying, it would be described like this in the book: “Nathaniel inched toward the door attempting to listen to find out what they were talking about.” The book never specifically mentions who the narrator really is.

If the story was told by someone other than the narrator, it would be much different. For instance, if it was told from Nathaniel’s point of view, then the book wouldn’t describe so much information that Nathaniel didn’t know at the time. There aren’t very many scenes where the main character isn’t there, because it seems like the narrator is only telling what is going on with Nathaniel. There is a lot of extra information of the American Revolution in the book, but if the book was in Nathaniel’s point of view, there wouldn’t be so many facts and information about the things that were going on away from where the main character was.

In conclusion, a book or story can be changed a lot when the point of view is changed. Sometimes, even in song lyrics, poetry, and many other types of literature,  there are different points of view. In this case, the point of view would definitely change the whole story if it was changed.

Alike Yet Different

Author’s Note: This is my compare and contrast essay. I used the characters for my compare and contrast piece, but an essay would have more information about how these  characters are alike: Reynie from the book The Mysterious Benedict Society and Violet from Paperquake.

Sometimes it’s easy to find a character from one book that’s like or not alike from a character in a different book.  Characters should be classified as alike if they act the same way. So if one character is brave and confident and another character is timid and shy, they wouldn’t be alike. Sometimes characters grow during books in the same way. They start out as mean, and end up becoming nice, then they also would be alike. I found that Reynie from The Mysterious Benedict Society and Violet from Paperquake were similar yet opposite in many different ways.

Reynie Muldoon started out as an orphan, often picked on by the people he saw every day: the other kids at the orphanage. Violet Jackstone started out being in a family of with sisters who always picked on her because she was born with a heart defect. She was also bullied by people at school. Reynie saw an ad in the paper for “special” and “talented” children to take a test. At the time, Reynie didn’t know what was coming. Violet started finding these notes addressed to her nickname, and she didn’t expect that the clues would lead to something so big. What happened to both of them was something that they didn’t know would happen.

As I mentioned before, they didn’t know that they would end up in a huge adventure to solve a mystery, so this is why they didn’t feel like they were brave. Both characters didn’t feel like they were brave when their adventures started. They didn’t have confidence that they could do something for themselves, and they didn’t think that anyone liked them because they didn’t get the support that made them more confident. Violet’s family and peers didn’t think that she was capable of doing anything for herself. Peers, sisters, and even parents thought that she was just a weak little girl. Reynie was bullied into thinking that nobody wanted to be his friend, or his family. As their stories went on, they figured out that with the help of the right people, they were actually brave, but it just took time to figure it out for themselves.

One of the few things that are different between Reynie and Violet is that Violet had a whole family: Parents and siblings. She wasn’t adopted like Reynie. He lived in an orphanage because he didn’t have a family. There was a woman who worked at the orphanage: Her name was Ms. Perumal and she was the closest thing to a mom that Reynie had. Ms. Perumal was the only one who saw potential in Reynie, because she had taught him everything that he needed to know and more. Violet had a family, but they didn’t support her. Reynie didn’t have a family at all, but someone that he was close to taught him to believe that he was smart enough to do whatever he wanted to when he got older.

As you can see, characters in books can be alike yet different in many ways. They were alike in ways that also could also make them different from each other. Both of them weren’t sure about who they really were, but as their stories continued, they figured out that they were brave after all.

Sacrifices that People Make

Author's Note: I thought it would be interesting to do the same book as I did for the prediction essay.

A lot of parents don’t want any of their kid suffering from unhappiness. They want their children to have a great childhood without any huge problems. Everyone knows that people always face problems, but not everyone has to deal with things like Leukemia. Leukemia takes many lives of children. Having a disease like Leukemia as a child doesn’t give you a chance to stop and enjoy childhood. If you were the person responsible for a child with Leukemia, what would you do to help them?

The main theme in the book My Sister’s Keeper is sacrifice. Sacrificing one child for the safety of another. Imagine having a kid, and, at the age of two, she is diagnosed with leukemia. Would you have made the same decision as the parents in the book? It’s a huge sacrifice to have another kid to help cure the other, like the parents did. One kid is a huge deal. Children require a lot of care: They need to be sheltered, clothed, fed, and cared for by a loving parent. Put yourself in the place of the parents in the book. What would you do about it? Do anything for a cure, or do nothing and feel bad for yourself? 

Doing something about your child’s cancer is one thing. Coping with how long it would take is another. In My Sister’s Keeper, the parents have a kid that was genetically altered to be Kate’s exact donor match. Waiting for the next child to be born to have surgery on her right when she turns one month old was horrible for the parents. They were watching their little girl slowly die, waiting for the cure to come. Sacrificing the safety of this new child was something that the parents had to do. They had to transplant bone marrow from the new girl, Anna, to Kate. It was helping Kate with her illness to have transplants right away. However, the whole surgery took place when Anna was only one month old. They had to have surgery performed on a very small baby so their other child could live. That is what we would call a sacrifice.

Some people, like Anna, would think that this was wrong. Having a kid only to have her be a harvest crop for another girl. As the girls get older, Anna becomes more and more agitated with being in the hospital almost as much as Kate. Now put yourself in Anna’s position: Wanting to play hockey, wanting to have friends, wanting to live freely only to be put in a hospital as much as the girl with leukemia. What would you feel? Pride? Would you feel like a hero for helping your little sister live? Or would you only wish that you could live a normal life and have someone else be a donor?

Not being a donor to your dying sister is a hard choice to make. Either way, there would be someone hurting. The choices that Anna had to make were hard for a girl her age, because most younger teenagers don’t have to make decisions between life and death. 

Reynie and Violet Character Comparison

Author's Note: I am comparing Reynie from The Mysterious Benedict Society to Violet in Paperquake.

Reynie- 

• He does things for himself, because he has a special talent.
• He doesn't have much of a family.
• He doesn't have a role model.
• He makes friends while solving mysteries.

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Violet- 

• She depends on other people to do some things.
• She has a big family, and is one out of three triplets.
• She has someone that she tries to shape herself into.
• She already has friends at the beginning.

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Their similarities- 

• They weren't sure if they were brave or not towards the beginning of their stories.
• Towards the end, they both found out that they can be brave in times of need.
• They were both pulled into something that they didn't think would be so big.
• They both like to solve mysteries.
• They are both really good thinkers, which helps them solve mysteries.
• They don't have a past of solving mysteries.
• They are both picked on for different reasons.