Anne’s Comments (group member since Feb 19, 2012)

Anne’s comments from the Mt. Mercy University 2012 group.

Matilda!! How could anyone not love Danny Devito and Rhea Pearlman as Matilda's terrible, awful parents? One of the greatest ya lit movie adaptations (and casting)! If you haven't seen it...the priciple Mrs. Trunchbull is absolutely repulsive!

I remember being in middle school and really loving Island of the Blue Dolphins. I can't remember the author or grade at which I read it! I think I'll have to reread it now that I'm thinking about it! As far as teenage YA lit, I enjoyed a Vampire series...I need to look up the name and post it. It had a heroine and was kinda racy. Probably why I like it so much.

The older YA Lit often has more complicated characters. The characters also have more complicated relationships with other characters and this is usually a bonus to the plot. As far as themes, they might be more explicit in younger ya lit and more entwined in older Ya Lit. For these reasons I prefer the older adolescent texts.

The narrator in Surviving the Applewhites is Jake, a young man who is orphaned. Also, in Chopsticks, the main characters are unique, a piano prodigy, and an immigrant from South America.

I wish I would have read Chopsticks. It is a beautiful story and the experimental genre is inspiring.

Joe wrote: "I liked the movie once the games started. I thought that the capitol was way too corny, and that they did not portray how messed up life in district 12 is. The movie left out why people enter their..."
I enjoyed the movie as it indulged my desire to see the characters living so vividly in my mind come to life. The set design and costumes were pretty unbelievable. I thought the character development was very weak. If I didn't read the book I would have been totally uninterested in Prim and Katniss, or Gale and Katniss. I found the direction the writer and director took the story curious. The director and screenplay writer had to leave out a number of factors and characters. Madge, for example. They also chose to take some interesting liberties, such as the riot scene with district 11. I think they did this in order to further the revolutionary theme. I also thought the capital (especially Ceasar) were a bit overdone....but I think this is how drastic the two worlds (district 12 say) and the capital are supposed to be. Quite the contrast! I will be looking forward to finishing the second book and will def see the next movie, if they make one. I do love Woody Harelson as Haymitch. I like that he isn't the complete slob the novel portrays him as. It's more believable that he won the games as Harelson.

I think my fav part is also the character development, how the reader gets to enjoy the characters evolving. I think this could also fall under "relationships between characters". Many times, the way characters relate to one another, his or her speech and actions are the way we as readers are able to view the evolution. It makes Ya Lit an immediately rewarding genre for me as a reader.

My favorite book so far is the Hunger Games, hands down. I am sure this comes as no surprise to anyone in class who has read the series. The runner up is "Surviving the Applewhites." A wonderful, fun and simple story about a troubled young man who learns some pretty profound life lessons from an unlikely family.

I found my husband reading Forgotten Fire and my son(first grader!) reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid! This YA Lit genre is contagious!