Reader's Journal #4- Realistic Fiction

                                                                                                                                           9/19/2011

Dear Mrs. Zrihen,

This week I’ve been reading the book the Horse Whisperer, by Nicolas Evans. Since the book is 350 pages I did not get to finish it this week. “There was death at the beginning, as there would be death again at its end” On page 1, I found this quote interesting because it’s true.  And it got my attention since this was the first sentence in the book, it kept me hooked. This quote explines that once something happens at the beginning it still happened at the end, Death for someone close will remain there at the end too.

Before, while, and after I used many strategies. Before I started reading I looked at the front cover, it has an illustrating of a horse in a dark background, I immediately guessed that there were horse races, that got dangerous I assumed from the dark colors in the back. Another strategies I used before reading was that I skimmed and scanned through the book for text features, I found that the book is divided into 4 parts. While reading I Asked the questions like Q. “how can I relate this to my life?” A. I could relate to this story about horse riders, that this summer I had a chance to ride horses but I chose not to since I was scared and that is what happened after the accident. I did not do two after strategies since I did not finish the book.

The Genre of this book is Realistic fiction, because This book is based on a family that there daughter is a horse racer, and she had an accident with the horse at a race, which is possible to happen to anyone. The dad tom booker makes a huge deal out of it since he was a horse trainer once too! Therefore, It is realistic fiction since it is not a memoir or a biography, & the characters are made up. So far into the book I cannot tell any characterization & the protagonist and antagonist situation is not really Clearfield yet. The setting of this book is not exactly mentioned; some places would be in tom’s house.

The plot structure of this book is in the exposition Tom’s Beautiful daughter goes out at night w her friend on the horses and gets hit by a car L then in the rising action She finally recovers from the comma and all the citizens of town have been talking about it, I did not reach the climax, Falling Action and Resolution yet. The conflict of this book is a professional horse trainer & racer gets in a comma from an accident while in a race. She is forever traumatized, will never forget what happened, the question were all wondering is that is she ever going to ride a horse again? Did it change her love for horses? I hope she does decide to ride again. Character vs. Self- because she is facing a problem only she could fix or decide what to do. 

The tone of this book is definitely very mysterious! Which makes the book to grab your attention by making a really dramatic scene were all dyeing to know about! My mood as a reader was just the same as the tone, but a bit sad since the accident and everything that is mentioned about it…

I think the moral of this story is that safety comes first. Before you ride a horse you have to make sure everything is good. Some mistakes in the book were made since winning came before safety.  The point of view of this story is first person since the words I she he we me and myself were used a lot by the author’s choice. The pattern of organization of this book was chronological order, since at the incident it tells us what happened first second third or last. Author’s purpose of this book was to entertain about horse racers and a typical life of a horse trainer.

“A horse rider should never give up like a loser, fight until you win it” This figurative language is a simile. “Horse trainer, must study her horse like a book” simile. This is the only two figurative languages I ran into.  I rate this book a 9 out of 10 since horses aren’t really my favorite animals so I couldn’t relate to everything in the book! But so far, it’s good J

Love,

Your student,

Raheli Haliva J