Sue Jones B8 September 12, 2012 Due September 18
Book Review Assignment for Book #1
1. Title, Author, Number of pages.
The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton, 180 pages
2. Setting (place and time):
This story takes place in a town in Oklahoma in the 1960's. The characters spend time at the movies, at the Curtis home, in an empty lot and a city park, near and in another town called Windrixville, at fast food drive-ins, and at the hospital.
A list of important characters:
• Ponyboy Curtis is the fourteen-year-old narrator of the story. He's smart in school and lives on the poorer side of town where the kids are called greasers.
• Darry Curtis is Pony's oldest brother who is twenty and in charge of the family since their parents died in an automobile accident.
• Sodapop Curtis is Pony's older brother who is seventeen. He is movie-star handsome, has dropped out of school, and works at a service station.
• Steve Randall is Sodapop's best friend.
• Two-Bit Mathews is the clown of the group, is eighteen and a half, and is still in high school.
• Johnny Cade is sixteen, is neglected and abused by his parents, and has been beaten up and cut by the Socs.
• Dallas Winston is a real hoodlum with a police record.
3. A brief summary of the book read (The summary must be of
the book from beginning to end, but you may --and should -- leave out major spoilers since it will be read by others who haven’t yet read the book.). 1 to 2 paragraphs
Ponyboy Curtis and his two brothers live alone since their parents died in an automobile accident. They have a group of friends that makes up a sort of gang. At the beginning, Ponyboy is walking home from the movies alone and is jumped by a group of Socs (the rich boys). His brother and friends save him, but he has been cut a little and it really scared him. Earlier Johnny had been severely beaten and threatened by the same group.
Pony, Johnny, and Dallas go to the drive-in movies where they meet two Soc girls, Cherry and Marcia.
(I would summarize the rest, leaving out major “spoilers,” but I'm not going to do that now since this is where we are in reading the book.)
1. Rate the book on a scale of 1-10 . (1 being “I would not recommend this book”, 10 being “It was the best book that I have ever read”.) You also must include the reason why you give it the score that you do.
I would rate this book a ten because the author has shown how things really are for some kids, she shows the feeling on both sides of the Soc/Greaser conflict, and the story is exciting and gets the reader to feel emotions. This is a book I could read over and over again. (I have.)
5. Some kind of connection to the book: 2 paragraphs
Text to text: Connect the book to another piece of literature that you have read.
Text to self: Connect the book to yourself in some way.
Text to world: Connect the book to something that is going on in the world.
The Outsiders reminds me of another book I read this past summer. It is Beyond the Western Sea by Avi. The main characters of Beyond the Western Sea are some Irish kids who have to leave their home because they are so poor and starving during the Irish potato family. Their father had gone to America, and now he has saved up enough money to bring the rest of his family to the United States.
As they travel to the port and while they are on the ship, many people treat them terribly because they are poor and because they are from Ireland, not from England. It is like in The Outsiders when the kids are looked down on and beaten up because they don't have a much as some other people and because of where they are from – one side of town instead of the other.
