'My Sister's Keeper' Book Review

The novel I have studied is ‘My Sisters Keeper’ by Jodi Piccoult. This novel is based in the United States and is based around a teenage girl, Kate who has had Leukaemia from a young age.        
   In this novel, we come across many characters, the main ones being Kate and her family. The story is told from the point of view of Anna, Kate’s thirteen year old sister, who was brought into the world to help her sister to survive. Anna is my favourite character in this novel. Throughout the novel we read of the family’s troubles, up’s and down’s, and mostly, how Anna feels about the whole situation.         
         There are many themes in this novel such as love, family, sadness, sickness and hope, but the theme that interested me was the theme of conflict. Conflict develops at the start of the novel and continues throughout. The strongest element of conflict in this novel is when Anna goes to see a lawyer behind her family’s back, and asks for the right to her own body.       
           At this point she is fed up of always being used to help her sister survive. We read of how every time her sister Kate goes into hospital, she somehow always ends up there too. Shortly afterwards, her parents find out about the lawyer she hired and Anna and her parents have a row in the kitchen.   
           I liked this novel as I could relate to the setting, the home life and everyday lives were similar to mine. The family live in a standard house, in a normal house, in a basic neighbourhood. The children went to school and the family did things together at the weekend. They struggled with money sometimes, but managed to keep their heads above water. The culture in this novel is similar to my culture and therefore I could relate to it.      
          I liked the writer’s style in this novel. We see the point of view from a young teenager and we see how life is in her mind. At different stages in the book, we are told the novel from different points of view, for example when Anna goes into the lawyer, we read a chapter from his point of view and we see how he saw Anna and what he thought of her case. In one part of the novel the point of view switches from Anna to her father. We read of how he feels towards Kate’s illness.
            The writer uses a lot of dialogue in this novel, and a lot of conversations take place. She also writes paragraphs to describe how Anna is feeling and what exactly she is thinking. 
           Overall, I think the writer has a mixture of both optimistic and pessimistic outlook on the novel. The main vibe throughout the novel is negative, with Kate’s illness being the main plot to of the novel, but she also writes of the positive elements such as the happy moments the family has together. However, the ending is dramatic, but it also describes to the reader how the family feel and how they move on with their lives.            I really enjoyed the novel and I think it would be a good novel to read with our class and to study

And the Nominees Are...

I would like to nominate Caitriona Eves as best Student Blogger for her amazing TY blog. for those who haven't read it, all I'll say is that every blog is a poem that rhymes. here's the link to check it out for yourself!


http://tienies.blogspot.com/

Almost time !!

Next Monday is the 14th of November which  only means one thing. Work Experience!! its all everyone is talking about lately and everyone is so excited for it!! everyone is going to different places and the excitement and nerves is starting to kick in!! I'm going to the primary school in straffan for mine :) I'm really looking forward to it and cannot wait to hear how everyone else got on too ..

English trip to Dublin! :-)

Yesterday all the T.Y's went to Dublin for the day as part of their English TY course. We all Came into school excited and ready for the day ahead of us. We got the bus at 9am and got to the city centre at about a quarter to 10. First up for class Eriú was the W.B Yeats exhibition on Kildare Street. We got to see lots of documents that Yeats wrote himself and we found out lots about him. After that we went to the National Library. We were all expecting lots of books, but when we got there, there was no books? Just lots of documents from years and years ago. Next up was what we had all been waiting for.. the Bog Bodies Exhibition! We were all excited and nervous to see them, but i have to say, they weren't as bad as i expected! Overall they were interesting and i found out lots about what happen to us after we die! then we went for lunch on Grafton Street before meeting up again for a quick walk to the Abby Theatre for the play 'Juno & the Paycock'. they play was good and we all understood it alot more than we did while reading it! We all loved the actor that played Johnny for some reason! overall it was a great day had by everyone!

Time Travelling!

As part of our T.Y history course, we have been talking about our family trees. I love finding out about my ancestors and i have found the whole process very interesting. i found out that my family is quite alot bigger than i thought! we have been looking up many websites that trace families back to 1902!
now in history we have moved on to Women in History. we had to pick one women and find information about her. I didn't know who to do at first, but as i researched the topic, i found lots of people to do. I changed my mind lots of times, starting with Eleanor Roosevelt, to St.Brigit. to finally deciding on Princess Diana. These women are all very different and range from different times in history but are all very interesting!
I can't wait to time travel a little more!

this week we have been doing lots!
1- Fun Walk: so many off our classes have been practising our routine to the funwalk
2- Projects: our home ec project on 1900's fashion was due this week
3- Mini-company- we have been working on our idea lots this week and things are finally starting to come together
4- Reading: we're going to see juno and the payacock in 2 weeks time so we are trying to finish reading the play before then... we are also reading our own books in creative writing...
5- Activities : today is thursday so after luch we have pilates, dancing and then photography
:)

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

tomoro is our anual funwalk and we have been given the colour YELLOW! because we're ty's, we have been practising our fun walk lots and lots and we are becoming quite competitive! our theme is bananas and as its friendship week we are trying to base our dance around friends.... we have deceided to have martha and caitriona as bananas in pyjamas as they are best friends and the rest of us have a routine to the banana song, with a bit of gwen stafani's b-a-n-a-n-a-s at  the end... we are all really excited about our dancing and we're praying that the weather will be kind to us all!