Some thoughts on The Outsiders

I read S.E. Hinton's "The Outsiders" today.  I thought I had read it before, but I was talking about it with a friend and he mentioned some stuff that happened in it that I never remembered.  I think maybe I started it previously and never finished it.  I should have finished it, because I liked it this time.  It was interesting, except when they go to the farmhouse, but that part was supposed to be boring, it was fast-paced, and it has some good insights into human nature.  However, there were a few things that I was wondering about as I read the book:

1.  What kind of city greasers go to rodeos and are big on riding horses?  It doesn't seem to fit well with the rest of their activities. 

2.  The main greasers are tough and bad, while at the same time soft and wimpy.  They're always crying because they can't help it, they always have their heads on each others' shoulders or laps, and at one point they have a pillow fight, not to mention they all took gymnastics together at the Y like I did in kindergarten.  Yet they also murder some guy, have a brawl (although it was organized and it was noted that the other guys were promptly on time), and commit suicide-by-cop.  There's a real dichotomy in the characters' actions.

3.  Some of the plot points don't go anywhere.  For instance, at the beginning of the book it's said that Sodapop understands everything, then isn't really shown to have any special understanding of human nature or anything for the rest of book.  He's just a happy-go-lucky goof off who doesn't care about much.  Instead, Ponyboy, Cherry, and Johnny are the characters that have real insight into human nature and the situation they're in.  Ponyboy also appears to have suffered brain trauma from the big rumble (can't concentrate, changed personality, grades suffer tremendously), yet no explanation is ever offered for those things.

4.  My biggest quibble with the book is that everything is explained; nothing is left for the reader to learn on her or his own.  A big part of the book is Ponyboy realizing that Darry actually does care about him and love him a lot.  The author gives many clues about this, but still feels the need to come right out and say it near the end of the book, complete with an explanation why.  This also happens with the poem about "staying gold" and how Johnny tells Ponyboy to stay gold.  I thought this one would be explained too, but then it wasn't for awhile and I was hopeful...but no, at the end the author spells out exactly what the symbolism means.  I know the book is meant for teens and I'm guessing the author was making sure that everyone who read it would understand everything she was writing about, but I wish she would have left some things for readers to figure out on their own.  She did give many clues when she was making a point, so it's not as if readers had almost nothing to go by.  Discovering deeper meaning on your own is a great feeling.  Also, if things aren't spelled out readers have to think critically about the text to try to decipher what it meant.  This helps readers appreciate a text more as well as develop critical thinking skills. 

At the end of the book there was information about the author and I learned that she wrote this when she was 15-16 years old.  That explains why everything was explained, I think.  She must have been a super smart person who wasn't old enough to realize that other people would understand her meanings too.  I have a friend like that, who thinks that no one understands anything and he has to spell things out for them.  It is both hilarious and annoying.  This book, however, was neither of those things.  It was just plain good.  Two thumbs up.

Review of the Sixth Grade Nick-namers (by Gordon Korman)

I read this book last night when I got home after class.  It's one of his books aimed at elementary school kids, so I wasn't expecting much.  I hadn't read a book of his since middle school, I think, so I was worried that he wouldn't be funny to me anymore.  He was.  It was just like I remembered.  I actually laughed out loud a little, several times.  I think he's just a flat-out funny person who knows how to communicate his jokes only using text really well.  I can't put it into words very well, but he creates scenes so well that they seem to have good comedic timing and tone of voice, even though it's only text.  The message of the book was pretty obvious (people become what they are called).  I wonder if it would be to kids, though.  I thought that Korman would spell it out at the end of the book (and he did a little bit), but he mostly showed his message through the outcome of the story rather than just by having a character explain it.  I thought that was cool and probably more effective than just telling the message.  Also, he wasn't absolutist about it either.  The characters go back to their nicknaming ways and live life the way they always have.  It wasn't like nicknaming was shown to be pure evil and that we should never label anyone again.  I liked it because it seemed realistic and a lot more subtle than I was expecting for a kid's book.  Rating: 5/5

First Post! Wait, I guess I automatically get first on my own blog...

I randomly (sort of, I had to return a book to the library, but the bookstore was random) went to a library and a bookstore before we got the assignment, which was weird because I never went to a bookstore all last semester and I only went along with some friends, not on my own volition.  I'm trying to remember the young adult/children's section at the bookstore.  I don't think I saw one, but it was probably somewhere.  I looked through most of the store, except for the back on the main floor.  It was probably in there.  Pretty good story, eh?  Eh?

Anyway, now that you've stopped reading this, I'll talk about the young adult and children's section at the library branch I went to.  I was going to the library branch to return a book I had renewed 3 times, but never got past the first chapter.  It was pretty good.  I was excited about reading Gordon Korman after we talked about him in class, so I looked him up in the library catalogue.  I saw he had books that were classified as young adult and children's.  None of them were showing up in the branch I was in and there was a huge list of material, so rather than scroll through it I decided to just go look on the shelves.  The young adult section was pretty small, I think it was just one book shelf with a sign hanging over it that said Youth Annex.  I just looked up annex and one definition is an addition to a building, so I guess if they brought the shelf in from somewhere else it could technically be an annex.  I did find 3 Korman books there and I took them all.  I then went to the children's section, which was much bigger (3 shelves and a table), and found many more Korman books.  I took a bunch more.  I only got one book that I read before, the rest were all new to me.  I read one last night, which I'll review in a later post for some reason.

The youth/children's section was smaller than I remembered.  The shelves were lower, the books seemed thinner, the chairs were tiny.  I felt like I didn't belong there, which I guess I didn't.  Maybe the library shouldn't put the young adult section right next to the children's.  I'm guessing that most teenagers would feel more comfortable being lumped in with adults than with little kids.  I'm the same height that I was in Grade 9, and I felt like I was physically too big for the young adult section, with its half-height shelf and the 2 foot high table next to it.  I'm sure that many other teenagers resent being told or are slightly embarrassed to ask where the teen section is and be told that it's right next to the children's.  In this library branch, at least, it wouldn't be very hard to relocate their young adult "section" to somewhere away from the kids books.  Maybe they should.