Non-Fiction Reading response

The article, The Ivory War by Patricia Smith, is about elephants being killed for their tusks. Thousands of elephants are killed for their ivory. Poachers shoot the elephant, take their tusks, and just leaves the body lying there. In the article it states, “Some experts say that if nothing done to stop the slaughter, African elephants could on the road to extinction.”

            The author wants me to think that this is a bad idea. I feel that this is a horrible thing that these people are doing to the elephants. A person from the Wildlife Conservation Society, an ecologist, and Wu Shaohua were quoted in this article. Cristian Samper (Wildlife Conservation Society) and Andrew Dobson (ecologist) were both on the same boat. They feel like killing elephants for their tusks is a bad idea. But, Wu Shaohua says, “Love for ivory is in our blood.” He is saying that it’s hard for him not to love the ivory so much.

            This article makes me wonder why people continue to kill elephants. This is making them an endangered species. I would like to further research if there is anything being done to stop this.

Reading Response on a Poem

Readers may think that poetry might not have a message the author wants to get across. The author of the poem, “Photography” by Nikki Giovanni wants readers to see how beautiful nature is and love it.

            The author of the poem wants us to see how beautiful nature is. For example in the poem it says, “the eye we are told/ is a camera/ but the film is the heart not the brain” (Giovanni 1-4). This shows that the author wants us to think that nature is a big beautiful picture and that we should save it in our hearts. The author also wants us to feel it with our hearts and not just see the amazing view.

            Another example from the poem, “Watching the red sun/ into the ocean/ one thinks of the beauty fire brings…” (Giovanni 23-25). This shows that even the most dangerous things can be beautiful. People attach fire to being something harmful, which it is, but fire can have another meaning. Not just danger but beauty.

            After reading this poem, I realized that nature is beautiful. Even the most dangerous things can be beautiful. Nature is one big picture that we just have look at differently in different cases.

Revised Reading Response

Nineteen Minutes

Boom! Boom! Shots were fired at Sterling High School. In my independent reading book, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, a school shooting occurred at Sterling High School. I’m not so far into the book yet but, this shooting happened and it made me wonder, how does a school shooting affect people?  Will this make people uncomfortable everywhere they go?

In the book, many people were wounded or even found dead in the school after the incident. I feel that after this whole problem, the students and staff at Sterling High won’t feel safe, knowing that you don’t really know what is running through anybody’s head.  Peter Houghton’s mom said the same thing. She said that everything was just fine and that she would have never suspected this. This also made me wonder, how does Peter’s mom feel about this? How will everyone else react towards her? In the book, one of the detectives said, “She didn’t look like a person who’d created a monster,” (Picoult, 53). This shows how people are feeling towards her or that people will be giving her mean looks for giving birth to a son that was shooting in the school. But, who knew that was going to happen that day? No one knew, not even his mom.

The school shooting made me wonder if Peter was bullied in school. Did he hate somebody in the school so much that this incident occurred? On page 57, it stated, “He’s the only victim that’s been shot twice. Once in the gut, once in the head.” What did this person do to Peter that he was the only one shot twice? So many questions were flying through my head when I read this. Peter must have had something against him, or hated this him most of all.

To sum it up, an incident like this affects everyone that was there or lost loved ones. In the book, everyone was affected in a way, even the shooters mother. Even still lots of questions run through my head. What made Peter decide to do this?