Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Last Song

  
            The book I chose for my choice book report is The Last Song.  The main character in this book is Ronnie Miller.  She is a17 year old teenage girl who just graduated from high school.  At the beginning of the book Ronnie liked to wear dark clothes and dark makeup. Ronnie has beautiful brown hair and had a streak of purple hair that she colored.  Some people thought she was kind of scary because of how she dressed.  At the beginning of the book she seemed to get into a lot of trouble because she would come home late at night from hanging out with her friends and she wouldn't listen to her mom and that would make her mom furious by the time Ronnie got home.  Ronnie was a little bit selfish too because if her parents wanted her to do something she didn't like she would cause more trouble and try to get out of it.  She tried to do that when her mom wanted her to visit her dad for the summer, but it didn't work this time.  Another time she didn't want to go to church so she locked herself in her room and her mom would yell at her until they had to go and then they left without her.  She started to change when she went to visit her dad for the summer.  She started being more forgiving because she finally forgave her dad for leaving after her mom and dad got a divorce.  She forgave him after he forgave her for not talking to him for three years.  She was more kind to her dad and her brother after that and she started being with them more often.  At the beginning of the book she wasn't confident at all.  Ronnie is a lot different than most characters because at the beginning of the book she was trying to be somebody she wasn't.  She really  wasn't someone that would get in trouble a lot, she was just really angry at her mom and dad.  She really didn't know what she wanted to do now that she graduated from high school.  When she went to visit her dad she started being herself again.  She even started playing the piano and talking to her dad all the time.  At the end of the book she found who she really was.  She was kind, forgiving, responsible, and unselfish and she decided that she would audition to go to Juilliard. 
           
            I think that the author picked Ronnie's point of view because she experienced the most in the story.  Her life changed dramatically with her parents' divorce and when her dad died.  There wouldn't be as much of a story with the other characters.  If the author would have picked Ronnie's dad as the point of view nobody would have known how someone felt after he died.  If the author pick Ronnie's brother there wouldn't be much to the story because he was so young he didn't really understand what was going on when his dad was dying and his parents were going through the divorce.  So the author picked Ronnie because she was at a time of her life when not only was there a lot of change because of the divorce and the death of her father, but she was growing from a teenager to an adult.  The author was able to get into Ronnie's mind and let us know how she felt when she got arrested and when her dad died or when she met Will.    I think that the saddest part of the book was when Ronnie heard that her dad had cancer and he was going to die in less than a year.  Ronnie and her dad started to cry and then her dad had to tell Ronnie's little brother and because he didn't think that he was actually going to die he started crying.  Ronnie thought about the three years that she lost with her dad because she had shut him out of her life.  She felt that she didn't know her dad that well and she knew she didn't have much time to spend with him and make up for the time that they lost together. So she decided not to go back to New York with mom and brother after the summer ended and to spend more time getting to know her father, even though she would miss the rest of her family and her friends.  She spent months helping him with everything like taking him places and making him food, but he could do very much because he was getting weaker every day.  The day her dad died Ronnie had fallen asleep on the floor next to him and she woke  up and saw that he was dead.  When her dad died Ronnie was extremely upset because she didn't talk to him for three years and she felt like she needed to get to know her dad better, but then it was too late and he was gone.   

Monday, October 18, 2010

Memoir 2

      
It was a freezing cold day outside and my team and I were up early for our first game.  It was my first year of being on a girls travel hockey team and we were going to be in our first tournament of the season.  For a lot of us it was our first tournament ever and we were nervous.  The tournament was in St. Paul.  We got to the rink early in the morning so we could watch some of the other teams.  The team we were playing wasn’t in our district and we didn't know how good they were.  Even though it was just a game like any game we played before I was afraid.  The game started and after a couple minutes we were fine and we played just like any other game. 
In the game I had checked one of the girls from the other team into the boards.  The ref didn't blow the whistle right away and I thought that he didn't see it, but I was wrong.  I had never gotten a penalty before and I was shocked that I had even done that.  The ref pointed his finger at me and said, "number 17."  I was afraid that I was going to get yelled at or kicked out of the game, but all I had to do was sit there for two minutes.  I thought, "this isn't so bad, maybe I'll get a penalty more often now."  In the second period we were tied 2-2 and we were so excited because we had to win every game to win the tournament and if we lost this we could only get 5th place.  In the last period we were losing 3-2 and we knew if we could at least tie it we could go into overtime.  The game was close, but we ended up losing 3-2.  We were upset because we knew we couldn't win the tournament, but we really wanted to win the next game.  We worked harder this time and won 6-0.  We knew if we won the next game we could still get 5th place. The last game we were really close.  Every time we scored they would score too.  We went into overtime.  We were a extremely tired and we didn't have much energy left, but we kept on playing.  We finally won 5-4.  The trophy was tall and had red and gold stripes and we got medals that said 5th place on it.  We were a little upset that we didn't win, we still got 5th place and had fun.