Niya Cephas-Crank

By -
All in all Crank by Ellen Hopkins was a pretty good book. Heavy and harsh for adolescents but I think that just adds onto the realness of the book. Maybe upper high school kids or maybe just seniors would be reading this book but any grades lower than that I wouldn't recommend it. If someone were to teach this book for lower grades I would probably suggest they take certain sections from the book and just study those because even for me at times the material got very heavy. But by this book being very realistic and harsh it puts the readers into perspective on just how terrible addictions can be to people, especially young adults. The structure and poem theme of the book added onto my interest because of how different many of them were. And not only that but how descriptive and poetic each of them were. 
" I mean, I'd thought about the monster, dreamed about the monster, lusted for the monster, regretted knowing the monster, but I hadn't touched the monster in over a month. Hadn't even seen it. Thought I might be over it. Was it still alive in me? Could it still have such a solid hold on me?"
This quote really stuck out to me because it not only shows Kristina's serious addiction to meth but just how she personifies the drug as well. 
This book most definitely puts into perspective just how scary and life-threatening drugs can be. Not only was it poetic and different from other books we have read but it took us into a life of people who deal with this on a day to day basis. I think this book is a good read not just for upper high school-college range but adults as well. 

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 9, 2016 at 3:54 PM

    I totally agree with you that the structure of the book made me more interested in it, as well! I also love your point you make about how the poems show Kristina beginning to personify the drug. I think that's a really good way to say it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownNovember 9, 2016 at 9:12 PM

    The personification of the monster and the fact that she named it the monster is definitely something that I agree with as well because that just me to bits. It just made think of meth and how horribly it transforms people's bodies, and watching her talk about how she couldn't sleep for like 2 days at a time but then she would be like a corpse the next day. Like, no Thank You! I have a great hatred for drugs and how they seem to be taking over people's lives but this enhanced it as far as Meth is concerned.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing Pains - The Symbolism of the Tree in Speak

By -
I have felt the paralyzing pain of internal disease. The kind of trauma that causes your mouth to curl in and swallow you whole. I, like so many other women, are walking the halls in Melinda’s shoes in “Speak.” I thought Laurie Anderson did a phenomenal job of twisting all of the tribulations a high school girl goes through, into the tree that Melinda is. Whether we’re as strong as an oak or weak as a bush, we have all gone through the disease that strikes Melinda from the inside out. Melinda is like a half-dead tree. Some parts of her strive to blossom and create beauty. Other parts are broken and diseased. Like a dead tree, Melinda needs to save herself and “cut off the damage, [so it] is possible for the tree to grow again” (187). The symbolism of a tree is significant in “Speak.” Trees reflect her growing process. In the beginning, Melinda is a sick and lifeless tree. Her view is negative and dark. She’s so far past repair, bursts of sunlight do her no good. Sunlight would be pe
Read more

How Starr Goes from Acting to Embracing in The Hate U Give

By -
In The Hate U Give, Starr Carter is caught between two worlds. She lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, but her father sends her and her brothers to a private school where she is surrounded by white people. She talks about acting differently depending on what group she is around, which can create some identity problems. She says on page 11, "Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black." When at Williamson, she sees white kids that think it's cool to engage in black culture, but she knows they don't understand what she goes through in her Garden Heights community. She witnessed her friend Natasha's death when she was 10 years old, and she sees gang activity in her community all the time. When she is among her black friends, like at the party, they tease her for hanging out with the white kids. This reminds me of a Drake song where he says, "I used to get teased for being black, and now I'm
Read more

Speak and the Symbolism of Nature

By Anonymous -
   Laurie Halse Anderson's,  Speak , dives into the murky, muddy waters of adolescent rape culture. When the book was published in 1999, rape was not a comfortable topic to discuss with adults, let alone teenagers. Anderson writes about Melinda Sordino and her freshman high school experience which is turning out to be rather negative. Soriano stands as a thriving young role model for struggling teenage girls all over the world. Although she isn't an outstanding student or have plenty of friends to juggle, through Melinda, other young women can see that it's completely normal and okay to struggle in high school not only academically, but socially and emotionally. One of my favorite parts of the novel isn't a super obvious quality. Throughout the novel, Melinda's attitude changes and grows with the coming of spring and through nature and art, she learns to move past her troubling end of summer experience and once again find the importance of her voice.    Melinda st
Read more