Writing Response to Thirteen Reasons Why by Max Kessler 811


          Many kids become depressed or extremely sad in high school because of the social anxiety, and stress in general, and Hannah Baker was no different. This book, "Thirteen Reasons Why," by Jay Asher is about Hannah Baker, who killed herself, and the protaganist Clay Jensen, who receives mysterious tapes from Hannah, explaining thirteen reasons why she did this to herself. He has no idea why he is on these tapes, or why she killed herself, but he is soon to find out. These tapes explain what happned to Hannah, and why. Her emotions are very mixed. She goes from feeling hopeful and excited to depressed and upset.
          At the beginning of the book Hannah, just having moved from out of town, was excited and hopeful for this new school and town. She became close with two other new kids Alex Standall and Jesse Davis, and they all had great relationship. Hannah was happy and excited to make other new friends. They went to Monet's Cafe together almost every day and just talked and had a great time, "How many times had I (Hannah) fallen asleep, terrified, thinking of the first day of school? Too many. And after Monet's? None. Now I was excited."This shows that even just from these few days of being friends with them Hannah is starting to feel hopeful, and even excited for school. This has given her hope and shown her that she has other people just like her in her school.
          Towards the middle of the book Hannah begins feeling used and bullied. For example on Valentines Day her school gives out these optional surveys to take to see who would "look good with each other" or " make a cute couple." Hannah gets matched with Marcus Cooley, who is a class clown and a funny guy. He asks Hannah to go on a date with him and she accepts. But on the date Marcus hasn't shown up for twenty minutes and finally decides to show up for her. He basically asked her out and she said yes, and he completely blew her off. Hannah is not happy with this event. This occurence might not seem important but seemingly mildly upsetting events like this began Hannah's slow spiral into depression.
          By the end of the book Hannah has lost all hope and is becoming closer and closer to utter depression and suicide. One example of this is when Hannah is driving home from a party with cheerleader, Jenny Kurtz, who happens to be drunk and driving. Hannah demands to get out of the car when she figures this out. As she pulls over she runs into a stop sign and the sign falls off of the car. Hannah gets up and leaves the car. Later that night, "someone was trying to deliver his pizzas on time. And someone else, headed in the opposite direction, was turning. There was no stop sign on that corner. Not that night. And one of them, one of the drivers died." And then this is where Hannah begins thinking about suicide and dying. This is really the beginning of the end for Hannah Baker.
          Thirteen Reasons Why was truly a great book and really made me think about how any little action I do could affect anyone's life in a dramatic fashion. And how people and myself should really think about their actions and how other people could take them or how it could make them think or feel. This book was very influental and powerful.

                     Reading Response to A Long To Water by Linda Sue Park by Max Kessler 811


             The story "A Long Walk to Water," by Linda Sue Park was two seperate stories about two seperate characters from Southern Sudan, Salva and Nya, from seperate time periods. They bring two stories to the table, Salva got seperated from his family when a war outbroke in his village, and he journies through Sudan andall over Africa. Nya walked for three hours twice a day just to get a very small amount of water. A theme throughout this story is having to cope with changeand live on.
              In Slava's side of his story he is forced to deal with change many times. One example of this is when Salva gets seperated from his family, because he is in school and he cannot stop by his family's house or he will be shot or killed by the rebels. He is forced to walk and live with people he has never met before and make connections with them, and fend for himself. At the beginning of his treacherous walk Salva gets grouped with his village, but then on the first night, while sleeping in a barn, "he rushed to the door to look out. Nobody. Nothing. They had left him. He was alone."He must adjust and move on if he wants to survive in this environment.
               In Nya's story every year for five months her and her village are forced to move to the lake for dry season. Which means needing to wait for hours for the gourds of water to get even near to been full, whereas in her regular home the walk towards the water would be much easier but the one right near the lake would take much longer. Every year, twice her and her family would have to bring all of their clothing and everything else necessary in her house to the other house. Nya must be able and willing to adjust many times to her daily routine and house twice a year.
              Salva also goes through the change of having a person look out for him from having to be all by himself. As Salva is walking along with his new group he spots someone, "When the man was only a few steps away, Salva suddenly found his voice. 'Uncle!' he cried out and ran into his arms."He then became very attached and loving towards his powerful and strong uncle. I think his uncle gives him hope of finding his family and gives a father figure to look up to again.
            This book is on the whole was extraordinarily good. It really made me think about how many kids have to be going through this right now and how people should try to raise awareness so things like what happened with Salva happen less often. This book has a happy ending, in that Salva starts a funding project for Nya and her tribe and gets them a water fountain. A great ending for a great book.