Monday, May 16, 2011

Insight from your reading

Hello Everyone,
I love writing this blog. I think about it all week, and it’s fun to come up with new ideas. Yesterday, I winged my way home from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, and had time to read a Newberry Honor Book, HOOT by Carl Hiaasen. It’s a middle grade novel about eco-warriors, saving burrowing owls from insatiable big business. The book is funny and well-written.
The author takes pot-shots at a variety of people. There is a mother who should be charged with battery, another mother who physically and emotionally abandons her child. There is an abusive dad, and a step-dad who is a retired NBA star that has become a couch potato. However, two caring parents allow their kid to find his own way.
The off-spring of these varied homes crash together in a synergistic way to change their part of the world.
It’s a “tree-huggers” book with the premise that you can alter the world within the bounds of the law and by being kind to others.
Intertwined through the entire novel is a bullying theme with a forthright, assertive solution-model. I think it’s well done, but I would love to hear your comments, whether you agree or disagree.
Whenever I read a novel, I try to find the wisdom the author has for me to help improve my own writing. What is the insight I find in this book? How am I at multi-layered concepts? Can I weave them together into an effective story?
What kind of knowledge about your craft did you take from the last novel you read?
Christy Monson




2 comments:

Shari said...

I don't remember, but I'm always trying to learn something from books I've read. I'm going to have to check HOOT out.

Christy Monson said...

Thanks for the note. I just joined good reads. Don't know why I didn't find it before?