Finding Buck McHenry

The next book I would like to talk about is Finding Buck McHenry. This book links cultures together and tries to how what diversity used to be, nonexistent. In the book a young boy, Jason is cut from his baseball team. he loves baseball and is crushed by the cut. he gets a idea to start his own team  and begins to assemble players. besides the other kids who got cut Jason befriends Kim who also wishes to play. While this is going on Jason befriends the gray hair African American janitor Buck MacHenry. Buck begins to help in coaching the kids and brings in his flame throwing grandson Aaron to play on the team and get Aaron over the crash that took the lives of his parents. While teaching them baseball, Jason a avid baseball card collector finds  Negro League baseball card of a former player named Buck Mchenry who shares a resemblance with Buck Machenry, could they be one in the same? Buck does have a lot of Negro League stories and he knows a lot about the segregation they felt throughout the playing days. In the end the characters find out who their coach really is and they learn about what it was like back when segregation was everywhere. This book uses baseball to tackle real issues that can attract the young reader and teach them at the same time.

The Giver

The second book I would like include in my literary blog is the science fiction book The Giver by Lois Lawry . The Giver takes place in a setting that is kind of like it could be a alternative society to the one we are living in now. The book is in a way a pre-warning of things to come if we do not change our ways. This could be because of us letting government take too much control (i.e. a extreme radical form of Communism) or the fact that world is too much and we need to simplify it too take away the conflict that divides us. The main character Jonas is chosen to become the new receiver of memories from The Giver. The memories are kept by certain people as they feel that the masses aren't able to properly process the way things used to be. Upon going through his training Jonas realizes the way they are living is wrong and he needs to do something, what that something is he does not know. Jonas then begins to plot what he can do to in order to restore what he can to society. The book is very thought provoking to me now in my older days than when I read it when I was younger. I remember really starting to like the book when I heard the song "My name is Jonas" by Weezer as they made me feel it was ok to like it. The message I see now is more that we need to be more informed and at the same time we need to be better people so that our society would enver become what Jonas had to endure.

A Good Day

The first book is for my blog is the first book I read to my daughter, A Good Day by Kevin Henkes. The book is intended for small children but like most book for small children A Good Day has a clear message. No matter how your day is going there is a light at the end of the tunnel and perseverance will help make things better. The other message is that for every bad day there is a good day. This book is from the realistic fiction genre. The things that happen in this book happen all the time and usually occur quite frequently. The first activity that someone's could do in response to this simple yet insightful book in a classroom setting would be to have people think of something bad that may have happened to them and then something good which in turn shows that for all the bad things there are good things. The second activity could be to share experiences in which they made someone's day better just like the little girl finding the lost feather. Even though, the bird lost his feather he could still fly, but the girl finding the feather turned her day into such a good day. This book is great in the terms like I mentioned. I hope that kids are being read too and the books have a strong message jus as this one days. The sun is going to come up again and things will get better, is a message so many people need in this day and age. Keep working hard and good things will happen.