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Significance The events that happen in the story matter because they happened in a very important time period, the Vietnam War. 18 year old, Collin burns his draft card and then hitchhikes up to Canada. The story tells the tragedy of the family after the escape. 13 year old, Grace is put in the middle of her two constantly-arguing parental units. (That is not from the back of the book) I chose this book because, I read the back of the book and thought it sounded very interesting. It read “Ever since Collin printed STOP THE WAR in red paint that dripped down the back of his jacket, the going was rough between my brother and my daddy. But getting in trouble at out house used to mean getting yelled at. Getting grounded. I didn’t know what to make of it when Daddy put our stuff on the porch.” I personally, didn’t like the book one bit, but that is going off topic.
Perspective Audrey Couloumbis wrote this book. It was published in 2005, but the time period taking place was during the Vietnam War, which I don’t know what years that it took place. It is hard to tell if the author for/against Drafting people to war. Because in the book, she puts a lot of people who escape and then have great lives, and provoking it. But then also she puts in how the families suffer because of their sons decision. I suppose if a reader was around in the time of the Vietnam War, it would change their perspective of the book. They could relate easier and it all would make more sense to them, as for me it really didn’t.
Evidence Other than the whole drafting issue, there are others too. Like problems with communication through the parents. And I think the author is making an argument to have clear communication, to communicate with each other, rather than have other people communicate for you, or keeping lies from each other. The versus opinion would be that it doesn’t matter about communication, and it is fine to have all these un-talked about issues that just float in the air. But I can support my opinion, which is that there should be good communication, I’ll give you an example. Let’ say you have a cat. It is an indoor cat. But someone accidentally ran outside when you were leaving to work. You need to get to work, and don’t have time to go get it. So instead of calling your spouse in the house, you just figure they’ll go get it. And when you come home you see it getting eaten by a coyote. But, if there was the communication thing, you could have called someone to go get him while you still had the chance. But instead, it turned into coyote dessert.
Connection
This story took place in the time of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam didn’t happen a whole long ago. It was reasonably recent. There are still people living Veterans from the war, and I’m sure that it still affects their lives. Well, this doesn’t really affect my life, but I can really get a sense of it, because there is a war in Iraq right now, and I am the same age as Grace, in the book. But I am pretty sure they are not drafting anyone from here yet. So again, I can only get a sense of it. But on other aspects, I really could relate to it. The reasons are personal… So I will just stop there. J This piece really wouldn’t inspire me to read/write anything about this subject, considering I really didn’t enjoy the book. There was too much pointless information, and and many of the chapters, it seemed like the author was just trying to take up space by putting in pointless detail. Oops, getting off topic again… sorry!
Supposition At the end, the parents opened up and just told each other everything, and Collin called from Canada and said everything was okay. So based upon this information, I think that Collin will be safe, and eventually, after the war stops, will come home and that the parents will hopefully start getting along better again and all is well. But, it would be different if they got a call saying Collin was caught and had to serve jail time. I know for sure that then the parents would get really mad at each other, for one parent kicking him out in the first place, and the other for helping him on the journey to Canada. If this didn’t take place in the Vietnam War and in the Iraqi War instead, I think most of it would be the same. Just minor differences. Like what? Well I really don’t know.
Thank you for reading my January Book Review of Summer’s End.
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