2/13/2007
Title of novel- After
Author- Francine Prose
Number of pages- 330 pages
Publisher and copyright- Harper Collins 2003
Why did you select this novel? I picked this novel because I looked at it and read the little summary thing on the back. It looked pretty good so I decided to read it.
What clues did you get about the novel from the cover design and the blurbs on the book jacket?- When i looked at the cover and what was on it i thought that it was a book about what happened after some tragic disaster happened.
Write a detailed summary of the first 30 pages introducing the main character, setting, and plot.- There was a school shooting that happened fifty miles away from Tom's school. Tom is the main character in this novel. His school is in a town called Pleasant Valley. The school is now taking extra precautions and they hired a new councilor named Dr. Willner. The day that they go back to school they stepped off the bus and found a long line of kids waiting outside to get in. Dr. Willner had hired people over night to install metal detectors by every door. They also hired guards and people to inspect kids' book bags. They now have a very strict set of rules and have to attend an assembly every day to go over the new rules.
2/13/2007
Write a page character analysis of an interesting character you have met so far. It doesn’t have to be the main character although it may be. What is the character like and how does the author reveal the characterization to you?- An interesting character in my book would have to be Dr. Willner. He is the school's new councilor. He has really strict rules at the school. He made it so that nobody can wear red, because be thinks that it is a color that symbolizes an attack on the school. The author reveals this person as a mean guy, because he is taking away all the kid's privileges when they didn't do anything wrong.
3/12/2007
Choose two significant quotations from pages 1-75. Write the quote below along with the page number and explain in a well-developed paragraph the importance of the quotation.
page 71
"I mean, what's the point of going to school if it's like being sent to prison". I think that this is an important quote because it really summarizes what the whole book is about. All that has really happened so far was that their school keeps getting more rules and nobody likes them.Page 20
Silas was a serious stoner. He was the only one of us who regularly came to school high. I like this quote because it explains a little bit about one of the characters in this book. Silas is the only one in the group that smokes marijuana.3/15/2007
The setting of this novel is in a little town called Pleasant Valley. The author describes the classrooms in the school. Most of the story takes place in the Pleasant Valley High school. I would have to say that the high school it self is a pretty significant place in this novel because of all the changes that are taking place in it, do to a school shooting that happened 50 miles away.What is the setting of this novel? How does the author use a sense of place throughout the novel? For example, in Ellen Foster we learned that the novel was set in a southern town in the early 1970s, but Gibbons moves Ellen from place to place as Ellen comes of age and finally ends up at her foster home. What places are significant in your novel and why?-
3/15/2007
Choose any scene from the novel and take on the point of view of another character in the scene and rewrite the scene from that character’s point of view. For example, how in Ellen Foster how would Starletta have related the details of her visit to Ellen’s foster home?-