Choice book report #1

Choice Book Report: By: Caysi Simpson
For my choice book report I read the book, Lock and Key, by Sarah Dessen. In this book the main character is a teenage girl named Ruby. Ruby is a fair skinned girl with fiery red hair. In the beginning of the story, Ruby’s personality is somewhat independent because she had to fend on her own most of her life and learned that she can’t depend on anyone, they’ll leave you, treat you like dirt, or not notice all the things you do for them. She pushes herself away from others, afraid that if she gets too close to anyone, they’ll leave her. So she keeps herself at a distance from everyone, staying in her own little bubble of comfort. Ruby’s drunk, irresponsible mom suddenly disappears and Ruby is sent to live with her older sister (whom left her). When Ruby lives with Cora and gets this new life her personality changes. At her sister Cora’s, she lives in a nice house and is sent to a nice school, something completely new to Ruby. With this new life comes a new personality for Ruby. She makes different friends, and lets go of her old ones. She opens up in ways she never did before. She finds acceptance in others, and also finds acceptance in herself as well.
I would say at the beginning Ruby is self-dependent. An example is when Ruby is first brought into her sister’s home, whom she hadn’t seen in years, she tries to run away because she isn’t used to being loved and watched after. What makes Ruby from others was that when she changed, she accepted that and TRIED to keep her new and better life.
By the end of the book Ruby transformed into a new person, because when she got this new life she got new friends. One important friend is a guy names Nate. Nate has some issues at home with his father, and when Ruby finds this out she tries to help Nate. This is very different from the Ruby at the beginning of the book, because the old Ruby only took care of herself and didn’t care about much else. Another way Ruby changes is that when she moves in with her sister, they start taking care of her, and since she’s always been used to taking care of herself she’s not used to it. Ruby is used to doing her own dishes, making her own money, cooking her own food, because there was no one there except her drunken mom to help her out. Until her mom disappears too. But she finds out that letting others help you out in life isn’t such a bad thing after all.

I chose to do the theme(s) of the book because there are a lot and I felt the author really reached out to her readers when she wrote it. One theme from this book was family. Throughout the book Ruby is trying to figure out what family means to her. Is family her mom, who left her and never showed she cared? Or is it this new life she’s given with her sister and her sister’s husband? In the end, the theme of the book was that family is the people in your life that never leave. It doesn’t have to be by blood. Family is the friends and loved ones who stick with you through all the bad times and are always there for support. Family is family. They are the people you want with you till the end. They are the people that hold a piece of you in there heart. I think this is a big theme that Ruby learned at the end of the book, and I think Sarah Dessen wanted all her readers to understand this. I can connect to this theme because I know that EVEN THOUGH me and my family argue and disagree and “joke around”, we will always be there for each other, and that goes for all my friends too.
There was also another theme in the book that really spoke to me. In the book Ruby has a necklace with a key around it; the key belongs to her past house, and her past life. The key to me represents a ton of different things. 1) The key can represent a door in your past that you locked shut and erased. 2) The key can represent the future, and the many doors/choices that you can choose to open for yourself. 3) The key can represent the key to happiness and that you have to open your door (life) and let others into it. The key can mean all those things, which gives the reader something to think about. It can mean ALL those options too.
Those are the themes to the book, Lock and Key, by Sarah Dessen. THANKS FOR READING!
This book report is 816 words long!!!********

New York Memoir!

New York Memoir: By: Caysi Simpson

            The bustling streets, the car horns honking, calls of “TAXI!” echoed out of different people’s mouths. I gawked at New York City in daze. I suddenly felt smaller than I usually did.

            I hightailed forward to catch up with my mom, afraid to lose her and the rest of my family on the crowded sidewalks of New York City. There were so many neon signs flashing OPEN, so many stores and restaurants, so many people…

I was overwhelmed by it all. Never before had I been to such a busy place.

            We spent a majority of the trip walking to new spots sightseeing. There were a lot of skyscrapers, but the biggest building of all was the Empire State Building, reaching around 381 meters!!!!!  At the time though, I was around 9/10 years old, I wasn’t really impressed by a building. It was REALLY tall building, that’s all I was sure of at the time. The thing that impressed me was the Toys R Us store, which had a ferris wheel INSIDE the store!!! And about 3 different levels filled with nothing but toys!  It was kid heaven!

            Of course I couldn’t spend the whole time there, so I followed my family to more buildings, not much impressed by them and continually complaining about how much my feet hurt. I was thankful when I got to sit in a car and rest my sore feet for a while. When we got back to St. Cloud, I realized that the place I once thought was so big, was really quite small compared to New York City.