Love and a Bad Hair Day

    In the book Love and a Bad Hair Day, the main character, is having problems with her emotions, and it has everything to do with Ryman O'Mally. Ever since that day in high school, Jolene has had a major crush on him. And now he's come back and she doesn't understand why she still loves him so much. I think that instead of fighting with herself and worrying about what her family thinks, she needs to focus more on what she wants for once in her life. It's her time to not try to make everyone happy.
    I think that a lot of people have the same problem in the real world, including me. You spend all of your time trying to make everyone else happy that you tend to forget about yourself and that doesn't do anything good for you.
   But thankfully, Jolene has reliable friends who remind her to calm down and save herself some time. That though, has been even harder for her now because she can't stop changing her life around each day for him. And she's spending so much more time with Ry that her friends can't always support her the way they could if she was stuck working in her salon all day.

Social Action: Tales of the Madman Underground

      In the book Tales of the Madman Underground, there are some times where I feel justice is not being served. I know that this story takes place in the 1900's, but everyone seems to have a distorted view of jobs and working. There is a chance that this could just be the way I think about this situation, but i don't think that it's right to just think that men are the only ones who can work or have a job, and then they say that they have to have maybe three or four of them. And the kids who have to do this are in high school so it makes me tired when the main character is explaining his schedule.

    This issue makes me think about another one. It makes me think that this is a man's world. They do everything and say women can't do the same.
  

Tales of the Madman Underground. Really hard things

   The main character in the book Tales of the Madman Underground is Karl Shoemaker. Karl's life at home is really messed up. His mother is always getting drunk with her boyfriend, his father is dead, and his house is full of unclean cats. But despite all of this, Karl has made it his resolve to be "normal" in his last year of high school. To Karl, being normal is like hiding in the shadows, but not too much that people don't know who he is. Also, being normal includes not being in the Madman Underground, a group where kids thst teachers feel have issues go for a thearpy group during school time.
   I think that this is a really hard thing for Karl because the teachers automatically clump the people in that thearpy group together, so it's even harder for him to become his own person at school.
   This book is a historical book, written in the time of 1973. So most of the things that some adults don't even do, Karl has as a responsibility of doing. For example, he has five jobs and works every single day along with going to school. Karl has a lot to deal with, and being normal this year may be harder than he thinks.

Along for the Ride, by Sarah Dessen

    In the book Along for the Ride, we learn a lot about humanity throught conflicts that the main character, Auden goes through. We also learn a lot about her changes.

   In the beginning of the book, Auden is used to getting everything right, she is in complete control of her life. She knows exactly what she's doing and how she going to do it. But this all suddenly changes when her mother and father get divorced and he gets remarried.Auden has to only slightly alter her focus, but then she gets right back on track. At this piont while I was reading, I couln't help but think to myself, if only I could be that good, to never loose focus or control of my life. But then I started to think, in almost every book, a character like this ends up falling apart at some time. That is exactly what happened to Auden. During her summer break, she has go to her father and his new wife, Heidi's house. When she starts breaking through from the slight chokehold that her mother had brainwashed her into, she begins to go out a little more make new friends. Particularly a friend named Eli, who seems to have her all figured out.

   Auden starts to let go of herself a little, but not in a bad way. When I read these really good parts of the book, it made me think about how just like in Freak the Mighty, It took another person to help steer him in the right direction, it took another person to steer Auden in the right direction too. And that is also what I think Sarah Dessen was trying to do with the character, Auden. You can't do everything on your own, no matter how much you think that you can, because it's impossible. And I think that it's better when you go through journey's with another person anyway.

 

Connecting Annotations

  One of the annotations that I wrote in my book was, "He (Max) still puts himself down, talking about how he doesn't have a brain and how stupid he is, but I don't think he realizes that Freak wouldn't be able to have gotten through that situation with Tony D. alone either."
   When I wrote this in my book, I was still thinking about how throughout the book so far, Max was always putting himself down, especially when he was with Freak who was a genius. But I would always think about how Freak needed Max just as much as Max needed him.
   Something else that I wrote in my book was how Gam, Max's grandmother seemed very afraid of him in the beginning of the book. And even though when Max put himself down it annoyed me, I couldn't help but think that maybe he thought that because he knew that that was what Grim and Gram thought about him, and it made me feel really bad for him. Max was never really dumb, it was just that no one who ever met him thought that he could do anything because no one gave him that opportunity, until Freak came along. I think that the only thing that Max needed was someome to encourage him, and Freak did that so well that even after he died, Max kept changing for the better and I was really proud of him for that.

Freak the Mighty, Character relationships.

 We learned about character's relationships to one another, and the things that the protagonists and antagonists do in the book to each other and the other characters. In the book Freak the Mighty,by Rodman Philbrick, the main character, Max is the protagonist because the book is through his voice and we see everything the way he sees it. I never really get annoyed with Max and seeing things in his P.O.V. because he's a pretty calm and collected character, but he does seem to put himself down alot by calling himself names like Butthead and Stupid. I think the antagonists are Max's grandparents, Grim and Gram because even though they're pretty nice to him, and the closest people to him, they tend to always think the worst of him, like everything he does is going to end in something bad or destructive. Gram, his grandmother also seems to be a little afraid of Max, and he knows it too, and it doesn't make him feel good. And I always end up thinking that Max is not a monster, he just happens to be seven feet tall. Freak, or Kevin is the mentor I think. I think that Kevin is the mentor because he seems to always keep Max on the right track, even though he hasn't really does anything wrong, if that even makes sense. But one thing I don't think Max understands is that Freak needs him just as much as he needs Max. All Max ever says is that Freak is always saving him from sticky situations, but really if they weren't together, working as a team, they wouldn't be able to do a lot of things as well as they do now.