Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy Blog #4

Today is the last day of our discussion group. We finally finished the book and I personally thought the book was okay. Talking to my group member we were able to find that the ending was interesting and keep us from wanting to read from what will happen. But overall I think as a group, we didn’t find Goosebumps series to be in our kind of genre we would like to read. I did like to read this series when I was younger, but as of today I don’t really enjoy it as much as when I was in middle school. It was a great reading experience. I was glad that my group decided to read this book because I can see differences in it from recent books I’ve been reading.

Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy Blog #3

I was the Illustrator for our third discussion. I decided to draw Mr. Wood the ventriloquist dummy. I drew the scene where he comes to life and as Kris is using him to perform for the elderly neighbors, Mr. Wood’s starts giving rude jokes. Kris gets in trouble with her parents, but as she tries to tell them that it was the doll, nobody listens. In our discussion, we talked about the progression of the book. In a younger perspective of a child in middle school, I find that it is enjoyable. It’s intensity of horror is beyond my expectation. As a high school student, I don’t think many of us find it as scary, but still enjoyable.

Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy Blog #2

For this second discussion, I was the Discussion Director.  As we talked about the book, we found that the book did a great job at portraying horror. A summary of what we read was that Kris becomes jealous and her dad decides to get her a dummy from a pawnshop in town. She named it Mr. Wood and then she started realizing some weird things are going on. The vocabulary in this section was also very easy. It seems like the first section’s vocabulary are about the same as this section. We also discuss about our connection with the book. A couple of us talked about our dislike of things like the ventriloquist dummy. I personally find those dummy creepy.  

Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy Blog #1

Our group book is Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy by R.L. Stine. For this genre book, we wanted to do horror and be able to relate back to our middle school days. For our first group discussion, we were to read chapter 1 to chapter 6. The story starts out with Lindy and Kris fighting; they are twin.  As they fight, their mom get frustrated and asked them to go outside and enjoy the weather. They both do and soon enough Lindy finds a dummy. She calls it Slappy and decides that she want to make some money being a ventriloquist. Kris finds the dummy to be creepy and the job to be ridiculous but she later becomes jealous as she find that Lindy is able to perform her very first job at a birthday party. My part in the discussion was to be the Vocabulary Enricher. As I discuss with my group member, we were able to conclude that the book itself is at a 5th grade to 8th.   We were also able to infer that in this book the vocabulary level cause not as much suspense to us then to the middle school children. I still find the book interesting and able to compare this book to past books I've read.

Zach's Lie

I am reading the book Zack’s Lie. In the book Zach’s whole identity is all a lie; he is really Jack Osborne. Jack Osborne and his family were forced to change their whole identities when masked men break into their house and threaten them. Jack’s father is in jail, and for his family to be safe they were put into the Witness Security Program. They are no longer the Osborne but the Granger from Nevada. As they move to the new town they are never to reveal their true identities and former lives. Zach struggle with his new life but as he begins to feel like he is getting his life back, he find himself in danger. My question to you is what would be harder for you in keeping a secret--- remembering not to slip up or having to hide your past from those you become close to?