Readers Journal #11 When I Was Your Age

Dear Mrs. Zrihen,

         I have just finished reading the book “When I was Your Age” edited by Amy Ehrlich. The reason that I picked this book is because on the front of the book (cover) it says “original stories about growing up”. This meant that this book isn’t just a bunch of whole stories because below there was all sorts of authors. The significance of this book is that most of the book was sort of interviewing. For example the title of one was “interviewing with a shrimp.”

         There were six things that I did before, while and after reading this book. First I did two things before reading this book. One thing I did before reading this book is I looked and stared at this book cover to see what it would probably be about. Another thing I did before reading this book is I flipped though the book and noticed that before every short story it showed a picture of the author when he was young. Second there were two things I did while reading this book. One thing I did while reading this book is I pictured everything that was happening in my mind. Another thing I did while reading this book is I compared what happened to my childhood. Third there were two things I did after reading this book. One thing I did after reading this book is I compared thee possible mistakes in this book and compared it to possible mistakes that can happen to me. Another thing I did after reading this book is I rethought about it and thought of some lessons that can probably be taught. The genre of this book was short story/ memoir. One characteristic of this book being short story/ memoir is that there are whole lot of stories of different authors life when they were young. The main idea of this book is that some famous people had a regular childhood just like any other kid. This statement was implied. If I was to  give this book another title I would say “My Childhood Memory.” The reason I would choose this title is because when a reader sees this title (about 13 perhaps) he would see the rest of the cover and see famous names and their childhood memories. One supporting detail that describes the main idea would be interview. This detail is factual. Another supporting detail is when because this gives you a hint that the book is a memoir. This detail is sensory. The third supporting detail is bus problems. This is sensory. The essential message in this book is that everyone is able to have the same childhood. In one of the short stories there was one easy seeing cause and effect. One cause of Paul Fleischman was that he was very short in his high school years. And the effect was embarrassing things like he said when he is doing a math problem in class sometimes he wasn’t able to reach to the top. Something that I would compare and contrast from this book to me would be me to Norma Fox Mazer is that she had an annoying friend with the nicest mom and dad that she doesn’t want their relationship to drift away. I have an annoying friend who isn’t really my friend. Five different text features in this book were title, sub-tile, some italicized, photographs, and bolded words. There were a lot off stories so pattern of organization for one of them would be cause and effect because the main character had an annoying friend and the effect is that his parents are really nice and she doesn’t want to ruin the relationship with his parents. The author’s purpose for writing this book is to inform readers on different famous peoples life. The point of view of this book is first person. I was familiar with every single word in this book and if there were some that I heard of before I used obvious context clues to understand. If I was to rate this book out of ten I would give it a ten because it had valid and factual information on each person. I would recommend this book to anyone from 5^th grade and up.

                                    Sincerely,

                                             Ofek Peer