Twilight

I must admit, I was rather biased when I started to read Twilight. I had heard a lot about it and almost everything I’d heard was negative. In the beginning I felt like the book was dragging on, but once the action started I couldn’t get my eyes off it.

The language used is not fairly difficult and the topic can be understood from quite a young age, therefore I would recommend it to children from the ages of 12 to 14. I think children from around this age will feel connected with the main characters because they will also find or be searching for their first love. It also provides the insight that you don’t have to find your love early on, because Bella is 17 and Edward is almost a century old and hadn’t found his first love until now.

Another confession I have to make; I am actually enjoying having to read so much. At first I was a bit reluctant, for I thought I would never be able to keep reading that much and being convinced I wouldn’t like having to read obligatory. The outcome is the exact opposite and I think - without wanting to sound too cheesy - I have renewed my love for reading by reading books that are ‘easy to read’.

I liked the fact that it is about kind of a whirlwind romance, even though some of it sounds a little too romanticized, it is still fun to read. The book also made me curious; why is Edward able to read everyone’s thoughts but not Bella’s? Why is Bella not shocked when she finds out he is a vampire? And so on, this keeps the reader, or at least me, interested and willing to keep reading on. I think I will even read the rest of the series to find out what the innate attraction between the two of them is and whether Bella will eventually be turned or not. I think she will, but in the last book or so.

What I found less enjoyable, was the book not really finishing. I know it is one of a series, but I would have liked some sort of ending. And it leaves open what really happened to James as well as it jumps forward suddenly to the night of the prom. These jumps forward or gaps in explanation make me think too much about what happened in the ‘missing’ time, whereas I like to be drifting away in a book, not having to think about too many things.

In this book, I did not really identify with any of the characters except for the romance part; every girl likes it when she is taken care of.

After reading the book, I think a lot of the fuss is cultivated; it is nothing extreme, either good or bad. Even though I was pleasantly surprised once again, I still wouldn’t call it an amazing book, however, still fun to read. This might sound odd as I just said I was planning on reading the rest of the series, but honestly, that is just to satisfy my own feeling of curiosity and not being able to handle a book without a proper ending.

The Hunger Games

"May the odds be ever in your favour."

Before I started reading The Hunger Games, I had seen the film of the second book. This obviously influenced my perspective about the book; it made me more eager to read it because I wanted to find out how they got to the point where the second film started as I had not seen the first one. Even though I already knew the book would end with the both of them surviving the book still didn’t become dull, but I can say I was happy I hadn’t seen the first film before reading the book.

It wasn’t until we had made a mind map in class that I realized how many factors were connected to each other, and I think we could have found many more if we’d have had more time because we kept going once we started. I would say eventually everything comes back to hope, hope to survive, hope to return alive, hope to keep to going. You can see the connections we made in the mind map in the picture below. We chose to use symbols instead  of words, as symbols can contain multiple words whilst some words sometimes can’t cover the complete message.We used the phrase “may the odds be ever in your favour” as the centre of our mind map as we believe everything revolves around the odds and they are never in the favour of those who need it most.

I really liked the ending, especially the part of the berries. I did know that they’d both survive, but I was still surprised when the rule about two survivors was changed back suddenly. When I read that part I was shocked and I couldn’t help laughing when they took the berries and the Capitol was forced to recall their decision, as I think that made it all come together; they wanted to make a change, not to be puppets of the Capitol.

However, I thought the first part was taking a bit too long. I do realize that the reader has to know background information before understanding what ‘the games’ are about, but I think that part of the story could be reduced in extensiveness. I became rather bored during the first part whereas I couldn’t stop reading once I got to the starting of the actual games.

Seeing the theory we discussed in class, it’s not a suitable book for children under the age of 10 as the characters are not stated as completely good or bad. I would advise the book to children around the ages of 15-17, as it is rather a complicated set up and I think younger children would find that too difficult to understand.

I think the book is great and written very clever, because every part that is discussed in the beginning keeps coming back, keeping the reader active. As every book intends, also in this book I can identify myself with the main character, the struggles she goes through and wanting to do everything for your family but getting in trouble no matter what. However, I can also quite well connect to Peeta; wanting to help others to be the best they can be even though it might mean having to refrain from what would be best for yourself. I think Peeta does this multiple times throughout the whole book i.e. taking the careers on to help Katniss escape.

The Wizard of Oz

My first impression of The Wizard of Oz was that it looked like a childish book. What surprised me, was the language used, I came across quite a lot of words I had not heard or read before. This might be because the book is rather old, thus the language is also different. Even though I was able to understand the words due to the context, I think it could cause some difficulties with young children that are native Dutch speakers. A lot of imagination is being used in the book, which appeals to me; it keeps the book lively and the story doesn’t get boring.

Personally, for Dutch readers, I would say the book is suitable for the age of 13 to 14. This because of the high amount of difficult words, I think younger children would get demotivated if they don’t understand the used words. If the book was to be given to older pupils, I think they would say it is a childish book and that they think they’re too old to read it. Additionally, I would prefer to let the pupils read the book with much guidance, helping them to understand what the story is about instead of them blocking due to the language.

I liked the fact that the story kept surprising me, once I was halfway through I thought that it was going to become a dragging story, for I thought the road was almost done and they were going to keep on talking about other things to fill up the book. I was pleasantly surprised because there were enough new elements brought up to keep the story exciting so it remained interesting.

The ending was a bit anticlimactic to me; she gets home, the end. It would be more fun if it was to end off with something as that there suddenly was colour instead of all grey in Kansas, making everything happier than before. Now it is as if nothing has changed except that she has made an insane journey.

As in every book about an adventure, every time they start an adventure, it seems as if they won’t be able to bring it to a good ending and then something wonderful happens and everything ends up as you would want it to. What did appeal to me was the story being kind of divided into a few small adventures, making the reader curious how they were going to get to the ending of each separate adventure.

As I said before, I was pleasantly surprised about the diversity of the book and like it a lot more than I thought I was going to. When looking at the characters, everyone can connect to part of all of them. They all want something they think they do not have, when they actually do. And for Dorothy, even if the place she gets to seems much better than where she came from, she misses home and wants to get back to that which she knows and is used to.

I think, in the end, everyone agrees that there is no place like home.