Sunday, April 30, 2006

Chernowitz


chernowitz
Originally uploaded by barbfecteau.
I will probably post just once about CHERNOWITZ, but I may post some links later.

To tell you the truth, this book irritated me. It may be because I have kids of my own but I kept yelling at Bobby (In my head, of course.) "Just tell your parents what is going on!!!" Of course, if he did, there would be no story. But still, I found it to be tremendously frustrating.

And I guess that proves that it is a pretty good book. If it can make the character real enough to make me want to yell...

That being said - the story is pretty interesting. I have no real experience with mean thuggy teenagers. Mostly they just come into the library and say, "You are looking very nice today, Mrs. Fecteau," and then go sit quietly and do their work. But bullying does occur and it is good to realize that when you look at bullying from a third-party perspective it usually says a lot more about the weirdness of the bully than the victim. (Maybe I shouldn't use words like "weirdness" to describe bullies - but if the shoe fits... wear it.)

All in all - I didn't love CHERNOWITZ, but it was an interesting, fast read and it made a lot of sense once you got to the end.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

if u were a kid u would understand why he didn't tell his parent. kids want their parents out of their problems b/c they will just embarrass them.