Evaluation of reading journals will be based on the following scoring guide:

Summary: 6/10
If your reading journals are plot summaries, your reading journal grade will be a C.

Connections: 7/10 – 8/10
Your journals must connect plot events to your personal experiences. You should write about both the plot events and the effect the book has on you. Listed here are triggers for beginning such responses. (Select only one trigger for each reading journal – and only if you cannot generate your own original idea.)

• As I read the part about…, I began to think of…
• I know the feeling of…, because I…
• I was surprised…
• If I had been (character’s name), I…
• based on…, I predict…

Sentences must be well crafted and paragraphs well organized.

Author’s Craft: 9/10 – 10/10
You will write a response as described above (connections) plus an additional paragraph on some aspect of the author’s craft. Such comments might include:

• Telling about a section that you really liked and explaining why
• Telling about the author’s use of figurative language (simile…)
• The use of foreshadowing or suspense
• Effective or ineffective use of dialogue
• Themes
• Comparison to other books (similar settings, characters…)
• Analysis of character or comment on character development

To receive an A, you must make your point by basing your response on a
specific quote(s).

During group discussions, you will have the opportunity to compare interpretations, share visualizations, correct misunderstandings and make connections and predictions. Please make use of this valuable resource in your journal entries. Take the time to reflect on and revise (if necessary) your initial responses.

You need a rich vocabulary to be a strong writer. The best way to acquire a rich vocabulary is to read at every opportunity. Although you will absorb many new words merely by meeting them frequently, you will accelerate the assimilation of new words if you will take the trouble to look up the meaning of unfamiliar words as you meet them. Write these words, their definitions, and the sentences they are used in, into your journal.

Sample #1
“Boys and Girls” is interesting in that it explores how strongly society influences the way that we think and act; and it’s surprising to see how even the girl’s own mother and father, entrenched in their traditional way of thinking, disregard her unique qualities and expect their daughter to develop into their vision of a young woman.

It helps that the story is told very bluntly from the perspective of the girl herself, because soon enough it becomes evident that she is subconsciously accepting the stereotype of becoming a delicate young woman, taking to adorning her bed with frilly sheets and dreaming about being rescued by men, as opposed to her old habits of being afraid of what lurked in the corner of her room and being the one to do the rescuing in her dreams. The girl telling the story ends up becoming more feminine whether she likes it or not simply because she is expected to, with the last lines of the story showing her resignation as she accepts that she is “only a girl”. She basically accepts the inevitable, assuming that if so many people expect her to become something, then they must be correct.

I can relate somewhat to the story in that my own father is a landscaper, and so as I grew up I would always go to work with him and try to help him out. I would do menial tasks and always try and do my best to impress him in front of the workers. As I got older I became less and less interested in the kind of work my dad did, and hated having to go to work, even when I would get paid. The girl in the story however, would love nothing more than to keep working with her father, but is being pulled towards her mother, almost against her will. It is clear that the narrator expects that her younger brother Laird is too erratic and absent minded to assume her duties, wondering how such an immature little boy could ever be expected to do the job she is so good at. In her world, she is superior to her brother, yet to the outside world she is seen as just a girl, going through a confusing stage of adolescence who will be replaced in her duties by Laird once he gets a bit older. She sees her mother’s life as dismal and drab, yet she will probably grow up to do the same thing, accepting it as a fact of life because that is what she truly thinks women must do. Having watched her mother conform to that kind of stereotype ingrains that kind of mentality in her just as much as in the men around her.

Sample #2

“No Renewal” is a dystopian look at the future written from the perspective of the past. In this short story, an elderly man named Douglas Bent is going through the process of making himself a special cup of wintergreen tea for his birthday. As he goes through this seemingly mundane process; the oddities, quirks, and to some horrors, of this world are revealed. The world has run out of petroleum (though cars and consumer electronics are still commonplace). As a result, the area around the Bay of Fundy in Newfoundland has been dug up for the clay that humans now make everything out of. There is no wood left. All the animals have died. Partway through the story, Douglas realises that he doesn’t even know how old he is. In search of an answer, he retreats to his attic where a trunk containing remnants of younger years lies. He eventually finds his birth certificate, which shows that his “expiry date” is today. The story ends with him embracing his imminent euthanasia.

It’s an interesting concept. The authour has some very creative ideas that should play out well, but in short, they don’t. At the root of the problems are a number of obvious contradictions and even (prepare yourself) mathematical errors. Most apparent is the fact that though there is no oil left, there are cars. Now of course they could be hydrogen cars or electric cars or solar powered cars or some such. But one undeniable mistake is the existance of the electric clock. The clock would need a housing. The housing could be made out of clay, but the wires inside would also have to be insulated. Wires can’t be insulated with clay. Then there is the “Panic Winter of ’94” where they had to burn their 200 year old clock, but then somehow didn’t have to burn the large trunk upstairs. It’s almost like the author had a bunch of good ideas of things that might happen in the future, but had no time to flesh them out or figure out the implications. Then there’s the error with the dates. the period of time from 1989 to 2049 is 60 years, not 50. I hope he fired his editor and took a math course at his community college or something.

Needless to say, I didn’t think much of the story. it seemed poorly thought out and rushed. There are so many dystopian short stories out there that are better than this one. The only really new idea that this one brought to the genre was digging up clay to make up for plastic, and the actual implications of this were nowhere to be found in the story. Perhaps I am so unimpressed because I just watched Manufactured Landscapes last night, but “No Renewal” is just another unoriginal, formulaic, dystopian short story. The idea of compulsory euthanasia, which was clearly intended to pack a powerful dramatic punch, was considerably watered down, as the idea was introduced midstory. That, and he fact that, like most ideas in this story, it’s already been done before way better (like in The Giver).