Reader Response for Dairy of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth

                     I am responding to Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth by Jeff Kinney.  I have read 217/217 pages.  The text is fiction. 

                   The main Characters are Greg Heffley (The protagonist), Rowley Jefferson, Manny Heffley, Rodrick Heffley and Mr. and Mrs. Heffley.  There are many other characters but most of them are just minor characters that are exclusive to various subplots.  The genre of this text is realistic fiction because it has many things that are drawn from the writer’s imagination but true to real life, such as a pre-teen going to middle school and kids feeling awkward about going through puberty.  The setting is in the present day, during the months of September and November.  The story takes place is in an unnamed town, Greg’s house and Greg’s school.  There are many little conflicts in the book but the main one is that Greg is started to through puberty and has to deal with the many changes that are going on with his life.  The theme of this book is dealing with change.  I think this is the theme because Greg needs to cope with the changes that are going on with his life, such as the puberty issue that I talked about before, becoming more mature as a person and accepting that he is not a little kid anymore.  Because this book doesn’t revolve around on central plot it is hard to choose a climax, but I think the climax is when Greg is at his Uncle Gary’s wedding and is going into his Grandmother’s room so she can have “The Talk” with him.  Like I said before, the protagonist is Greg Hefley.  It is hard to name an antagonist because this book is written as a diary and it doesn’t focus and the struggle between Greg and any other character.  In my opinion the characters that are best suited for the title of the antagonists are the teachers at Greg’s school who constantly make the student’s life hard.

Retell

          The title of this text gives me a different message than the actual text.  In the book the characters are going through puberty and have to deal with changes in their lives.  When I first read the title, it said to me that the main character would have to face the truth about himself.  This is further backed up by the fact that the cover features Greg sitting down and looking depressed.  I think that this is very misleading and shouldn’t happen often.   

What I want to remember about this book is the author’s style of writing.  Unlike traditional fictional novels, the author wrote this book as if he was really writing a diary.  He makes it seem like he is writing a biography of somebody’s life.  I think this is why his books are so popular, because he can connect to anybody, even if they don’t have a diary.  I this book was non-fiction then I would classify it under auto-biography.

To be honest, the character I dislike the most is theprotagonist, Greg Heffley.  I really don’t like his personality.  He constantly is being selfish, lazy and he is not one to admit his mistakes.  I’ll also admit that this is actually what gets me to read more of the book. That’s because his attitude adds humour to the book.  For example, when Greg was trying to get the maid to do most of his chores for him, she saw how lazy he was and made many notes to him that got her out of doing work.  It’s Greg’s attitude getting him into trouble that makes you always want to read more.  So while I dislike his personality, I also think it is the most appealing thing about this book.

Relate

                As compared to other text’s by Jeff Kinney that are in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, I think this book is the one with the most subplot’s that are relevant to the main plot.  Like I said before, this book has many subplots in it and one central plot that is referred to many times.  In the first four books there are no main plots.  The story is really driven by different little subplots and if they weren’t all in the same book, they could even become a daily comic strip in the newspaper.  That is why this book stands out from the rest.

At the end of the book, Rowley Jefferson and Greg Heffley make up and become friends again.  If I were Rowley I would not have forgiven him and become friends with him.  As I said before, Greg is selfish, lazy and thinks that he is always right.  Rowley always acted the opposite of Greg.  That made him very happy in life and he got very popular because he was his very nice, self.  In each book before this one Greg was always keeping him down and never let him do anything to his full potential.  In my life, many adults tell me to hang out with people who I can do my best with and Greg is far from being that.  That is why I would have done the opposite of what Rowley did at the end of the book.

This text makes me think about children taking on responsibility.  Many times when children grow older they have to learn to do things for themselves.  This happens to everyone I know and in the book Greg is learning about this.  At the beginning of the book Greg talks about how he always makes his mom do his laundry and letting her do everything around the house.  In the middle of the book Greg’s Mom decides that she is going to take some courses and the men of the family will have to start working around the house.  This was supposed to teach him to do things for himself and become a responsible person but he still was lazy.  A similar thing happened to me when my mom and dad starting leaving the house more and I had to start doing the dishes, and cleaning up after myself.  Unlike Greg, I actually became more responsible and learned independence.  Greg was still lazy after his experience and stayed that way until the very end of the book.  This also shows that me and Greg are very unlike each other and probably never will be alike.  

Reflect

I noticed that the author didn’t give us any information about the fight between Rowley and Greg.  At the beginning of the book, the narrator (Greg) explains that he and Rowley had a fight and they weren’t friends anymore.  Throughout the book this is frequently mentioned but there is no explanation of the cause of the fight or what happened during the fight.  In most books that I read, such as The Maze Runner which I did my last reader response on, there is an explanation of the events that occur immediately before the book.  Even if it doesn’t happen right away, there is always an explanation later in the book.  This is something that bothered me slightly, while I was reading the book.

I think that the illustrations really make this book a creative piece of writing.  In this and all the previous books, the main thing that attracts readers is the illustrations.  The author uses amateur pictures that a 10 year old could draw as the pictures.  This makes this book stand out from most as it uses humour to the story and it makes the reader feels as if they are reading a comic, not a novel.  This also shows that the author knows how to make it seem as if we are reading somebody’s diary.  I think this is also one of the main selling points for this novel.

If I could speak to the author I would ask him what his inspiration for writing these novels were.  Whenever somebody is thinking of an idea of a story there is always something that gives them the idea.  This book is written in diary format and from what I know; there have never been any past works of literature that are fictional biographies/diaries.  I do know that there have been biographies written but there have been none written in this format that has been released.  The author may have had past experiences that influenced Greg’s adventures and I would really like to know what his real reasons for writing this amazing series.

Reader Response for the maze runner

Reader Response

Jan 17 2010              Daniel Campbell

I am responding to The Maze Runner by James Dashner.  I have read 374/374 pages.  The text is fiction.

The main characters include Thomas (the protagonist), Chuck (the  deuteragonist), Minho (the tritagonist) and the Grivers (the antagonists).  The genre of this text is science fiction because it is loosely based on scientific principals such as scientists wiping childrens' memory and combining machines with animal DNA to create monsters devoted to attacking people.  The setting is a giant stone maze with walls that change position each night. The time is unclear at first but by the end of the book it can be inferred that the book takes place in the future.  The conflict is that Thomas and a bunch of other children were sent into a giant maze with walls that change position every night.  The only way to get out of the maze is to solve it and avoid being killed by the Grivers that come out at night.  The climax of the story is when the maze walls stay open at night and the Grivers get in and get one child at a time.

Retell

To summarize the text in 1-3 sentences I would say that Thomas arrived in a huge stone maze with his memory erased.  He met a bunch of other boys in the same situation and made many friends and enemies.  After surviving many adventures in the maze, he was able to lead the surviving boys out of the maze and confront the people who made the maze.  My favourite part of the text was when Thomas went into the dangerous area of the maze at night just because Minho and Alby couldn't have made it into the safe area in time.  This was my favourite part because Thomas new he could never survive at night with the Grivers but still went out just because he thought he had a slim chance of getting them back by the morning when the entrance to the safe area was open.  This is also my favourite part because Thomas to a dangerous risk just to save Alby who was mortally wounded and was mean to him from the minute he got to the maze.  He showed the character trait of empathy and that is why I like that part.  This book is really about acceptance.  I think that is what the book is about because when Thomas first arrived he was mocked and ridiculed by everyone except Chuck.  Chuck accepted him despite what everyone said and that led to Thomas becoming a hero and being accepted by nearly everyone.  Also if they didn’t accept him the boys would have never gotten out of the maze.

Relate
    This text makes me think about child labour.  This makes me think about it because in towards the end of the book it is revealed that scientists forced children to design a dangerous maze and put children in the maze just to see what they will do.  The scientists should not have been allowed to put them through that because that is child labour which is an important issue that my class did a project on.  If I could be the character Chuck, rather than jumping in front of Thomas, I would have just pushed Thomas out of the way when he was going to be stabbed by Gally.  At the end of the book the boys escape the maze and confront the scientist than made the children create the maze.  Gally was one of the boys from the maze who disappeared and at the end the boys see him with the scientists and he tries to stab Thomas.  Chuck jumped in the way of it to save Thomas.  While it was a noble thing to do I would have just pushed Thomas away from the blade because it would save his life but Chuck would still survive.  Although that’s what I would do, it would also be hard for me because I would have just came out of a life threatening experience and seeing a knife at that time would freeze me in my place.  The scientists that worked on the maze remind me of President Snow from the Books: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. They remind me of him because like the scientists they were heartless and didn’t care for the safety and well being of the people that they watch over.  They all sent monsters to attack people.(Snow sent mutated animals to the arena, the scientists sent Grivers to the maze).  They all made children kill one another and they all manipulated kids’ mind to mess with them.  Those reasons are why I thought President Snow and the scientists were alike.

Reflect
    While this text is a science fiction and very unrealistic, it does have realistic parts in it.  The thing that I found realistic that really interested me was the scientists.  At the end of the book, it is revealed that the scientists work for WICKED.  An agency that says that they are trying to say humanity after the earth was burned by sun-flares.  They claim that the only way is to experiment on children and find a cure for a disease that cam up after the sun-flares.  That basically means that they are hurting and killing people just so that things will get better in the long run.  I think this is realistic because while this novel is set in the future, the same things happen in the present day.  Throughout history war has gone on and thousands of innocent people have died just because the other countries think that eliminating people will help make peace in the world.  The same thing may also happen on a smaller scale too. eg. When people have to pay more taxes just to make Canada a nicer place.  Even though this is science fiction, one of the main idea’s come from the real world.  I like the part of the text when Ben got banished into the dangerous part of the maze a night.  I liked it because it touched on an interesting point......forgiveness!  The reason Ben got banished was because he attacked Thomas because he had a bad feeling about him and partly because he got attacked by a Griver and was hallucinating.  Ben did apologize to him and got better from the hallucinations but the other boys still didn’t forgive him.  They exiled him and the only person who cared was Thomas, the boy who Ben attacked.  While it may seem mean to like that part I really like d it because the boys’ heartlessness made that part much more interesting and if the book ended soon after, I would’ve put that as the climax.