The Poem of a Monster
A) Monster was a book that seemed like it would be super interesting and not that complex, but once I started reading it I discovered that it is a pretty complex book to follow. To be honest, I was a little relieved when I found out that my book club felt the same way about the book. There are some pretty cool “journal entries” in the book that help the audience gage what the main character’s feeling are about his situation–being a young convict in jail, but the script format that the rest of the book is in, is pretty hard to follow. Unlike a regular script for a play or movie, this book lacks stage direction and emotional cues. It can be tough to interpret what a character is actually feeling, because this book is pretty much all dialogue.
I don’t think I would use this book in my classroom, but if I did, I would probably assign students to certain characters and help them with the possible emotions they, as the characters, might be feeling. I would most likely pair this with book with a unit on justice if I used it…
B)
I am so scared. My heart is beating like crazy and I am having trouble breathing.
Each evening we wait for the first light of the last fireflies, catch them in jars.
Last night I was afraid to go to sleep. It was as if closing my eyes was going to cause me to die.
I knew one day I’d need my own wings to fly.
I wanted to be away from this place so bad, away from this place, away from this place.
One Reply to “The Poem of a Monster”
Kylie,
I completely agree that I was relieved when everyone else in the group also was having difficulties connect with the book. I also shared a very common lesson plan idea, as we discussed in class its hard to tell which age demographic this novel would be most attractive to. Though we discussed a potential lesson plan its hard to read into how successful of a a response we would receive from students.
And I so enjoyed your poem! Yours related more closely to Monster and I am sucker for any poem speaking of light from fireflies.
And to answer your question, my poem was pulled from others too when we brought in multiple pulls from our books!