Post #2 Glass By: Ellen Hopkins

     The book Glass by: Ellen Hopkins is told through the point of view of the main character Kristina Snow(who also has an alternate personality named Bree.) At the beginning of the series (the first book: Crank,) Kristina was a normal high school nerd. Then, she goes and vists her dad, who, she comes to learn is a heavy crystal meth user. While she's with him, she meets Adam, who gets her hooked on Meth herself. When she goes home, she goes on a date with this guy named Brendan. When they're in his car, he sexually assaults her. She gets pregnant and at the end of the book has a beautiful baby boy named Hunter. Kristina's dad hasn't really been in her life too often. A while back, he left his wife and two daughters (Kristina and Leigh, her older sister) and moved to Albuquerque. He isn't a good role model because he was the reason that Kristina ever got involved with drugs in general. If she never would have been court-ordered to visit him a year ago, she wouldn't be in the current state that she's in now: fighting with her mom and having to lie to her on top of that.

  When her addiction gets really bad, and Bree is starting to take control over her more, she calls her old best friend Robyn. Robyn went away to college this year, something Kristina couldn't do because of Hunter. The reason Kristina called her was because she knew that Robyn would be able to get her a pretty reasonable stash for the weeks to come. She gets to her apartment early and while she's waiting on the stairs, she meets Trey, Robyn's roommate. Before Kristina leaves, she trades number with Trey so that they could hook-up the next time he was in Reno because he figures her supply will be gone by then. When they meet up, they end up going on two dates: one that wasn't a REAL date. . . but it was just him selling drugs to her in his car. The second one started at a local Starbucks but ended up at Treys cousin Brads house. Trey and Kristina grow closer and closer as a couple and through out the rest of the book, they grow closer together as a "couple."  


       The conflict in through out the whole story with Kristina, the protagonist, is that she is addicted to Monster. No matter how hard she tries to quit, it's too addicting and the chemicals (and Bree) take control of her. When her mother kicked her out and kept Hunter, she moved in with Treys cousin and his two daughters (Latreya and Devon), he was even closer to Trey, which means he was even closer to the Monster. When the real mother of Latreya and Devon returned home, Kristina was forced to move out. That's when her a Trey moved in to an apartment together. They got Hunter back, but not too long after, lost him again because of their drug dealing. The couple uses too much of their sale because of their strong addiction and don't have enough to sell to their customers. In order to get money, Kristina has to steal from her own mother. They soon get caught and plan to flee the state but they fall asleep in Treys car and get busted while sleeping for having a half pound of glass in the car with them. The resolution to Kristinas problem is that her and Trey end up going to jail where she is forced to detox from the Monster. Soon after she's in jail, she discovers that she's pregnant with Treys baby. I think that it's a good thing that she has detoxed from drugs because now she'll have the chance to prove to her mother (if she even wants anything to do with her) that she is healthy now and is in fact a fit mother.

Summer Reading Book Response

The Outsiders

By: S.E. Hinton

 

   Over the summer, I read the book The Outsiders by S.E.Hinton. The main character of the book is Pony Boy Curtis who lives with his two older brothers Sodapop and Darrel (who they call Darry) and is 14 years old.  Their parents died in a car accident and through out the whole book Pony Boy has dreams about them and how his life would be different if they were still alive. Darry takes care of Sodapop and Pony Boy by roofing house's, he is 20 years old. In the book, the boys are part of a gang called the Greasers. Their friends are Johnny, Dallas, Steve and Two-Bit. Johnny comes from an abusive home where his parents are always fighting. He tries to stay out of the house as much as possible so he is almost always at the Curtis' house. Dallas is from New York and known as the toughest of the gang because he went to jail when he was only 10 years old. Steve works at the DX gas station with Sodapop who is also his best friend. He's never been too fond of Pony Boy because he's Sodapops kid brother. Two-Bits real name is Keith Matthews but they call him "two-bit" because he always has to get his "two-bits" into everything.

  The beginning of the book started with Ponyboy leaving the movie theater. He's the only one in his family who was actually interested in something other than fighting. He was walking home by himself when a couple of Soc's (rich, middle class kids) called out "Greaser!" They got out of their blue Madra and pushed him around. "Need a haircut, Greaser?" one of them yelled out as he pulled out his knife. They held it up to his neck and he realized that they could kill him. They suddenly just walked away just as Dally was running up to Ponyboy, now laying on the ground, and picked him up and shook him. S.E. Hinton most likely started the book with this scene to show the situation and living conditions that the characters live in. This scene sets up the rest of the story by showing how often fighting is used to solve issues or just for fun. 

 I think that this book is a good read for any teenager because it’s not like most other books. Most books today are all about the same thing or have the same plot: They have one or two main characters, a problem occurs, they solve the problem, and then the story is over. The Outsiders isn’t like that.  S.E. Hinton really went into detail about everything that was going on in the story. Instead of just having one problem in the main characters life (in this case, Ponyboy), she had more than one at a time. For instance, Johnny killed a Soc in a fight that had been started in the park (that’s one problem) then there was a terrible fire at the school that was near where the boys ran away from the cops to. Another problem was that after the fire, Johnny got fatally sick and was put in the hospital.

This book has been a classic since 1967 and has been passed down from generation to generation. It will always be a favorite no matter how old you are. The situations and issues that occur in this book can be related to no matter what age you are, there’s something in there for everyone. There aren’t a lot of books today that can really suck you in and grab your attention and make you hungry to read more and more, but this book does just that. Like I said before, newer books all have the same plot and the same problems but just different names of characters and settings. I don’t know of any book that has been released in the past 5 years that I would read more than once, or I would read on my own. The Outsiders will always be a “new read” to me every time I read it because if you really enjoy a book, every time you read it, you get a new meaning. I can’t wait to read the follow up book “Rumble Fish” next!