T1B42

OMG, we're reading this book called I Am the Cheese in English, and it's soooooo confusing.

We had a class discussion two days ago where we came up with a whole bunch of conspiracy theories (because we're Synergy XP) and we all had different thoughts and connections. Sometimes, everyone would agree on one thing because, I suppose it's culture that affects our opinions, but other times, one person would make this one connection and everyone would gasp because it's like this totally, WHOA, never-thought-about-that-before connection.

Anyway, I read another one of Robert Cormier's books ages ago (I actually totally forgot that it was him who was the author, but the inside of the book listed his other books) and that was The Chocolate  War. In MACC, we do these things called booktalks, which is basically where you read a book, and then connect it to whatever project you're doing, or just because we talk about the book and get more in-depth with it. If we're just writing a classic review, we connect it to other things in our life, but with booktalks, it's a lengthier presentation and we usually try to get the audience involved so we start discussing things in the book, what they could mean, how this connects to real life, things like that. I did a group booktalk with these other 2 people, Lukas and Daniel, and I actually picked The Chocolate War because it sounded so innocent, you know, like maybe similar to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or something like that. And then I read it over the summer, and it took me SO long, I literally would spend like an hour reading each chapter, because firstly, there were a bajillion words I didn't know (this was back in like Grade 5/6) and also, the meanings were really deep and rather confusing. It was about this guy named J-something (like James or John or something) and a school's annual chocolate sale. Sounds okay, right? Then you get deeper into the book and find out about this gang who police the chocolate sale, it's like a really cool thing or whatever, and then they start bullying John (James?). It gets really dark. ... So, as you can see, I didn't really start reading I Am the Cheese with a really hopeful, positive outlook with regards to the ending.

I also didn't expect it to be easy. *sighs* But it's actually really interesting so far, and I feel like the plot could go 4 different ways, there are so many clues and red herrings and things like that. Mr. Hauck mentioned in class last day that it was almost like a mystery, because we don't know what's going on with Adam (the protagonist) and really, I'm just confused.

I think that it's good that this book is so complicated, though, because there's just so much to talk about, especially in class discussions. *Also, our class freaked out when Mr. Hauck told us he had questions about the first part, because we all (well, me at least) thought it was a quiz. Turns out it was just... well, questions to get our brain going for the discussion afterward. Sometimes I'm probably way too paranoid. :P