Reading Response #2 Perfect

     This book is about four kids who are striving for perfection, but each of them have their own definition of the word. Whether it be Cara who is striving to overcome her parents high expectations without ending up like her twin Conner who attempted to commit suicide, Kendra who strives to have the perfect body by starving herself and exercise, Sean who wants to be the best at baseball and uses steroids to do so, or Andre who loves to dance but who's parents would never approve.

     To the right is a picture of a girl with tape over her mouth saying, "I won't eat". This represents Kendra who starves herself in order to fit the image of perfection. She wants to be a model so perfection is all she can think about. This means she'll do anything to get the perfect body including starving herself and surgery.

 

     Teenagers all want to meet these impossible standards and in this book they find out sometimes what makes you perfect is what's on the inside. The very first page of the book states this very well it says,

     "How do you define a word without concrete meaning? To each his own, the saying goes, so why push to attain an ideal state of being no two people will agree is where you want to be? Faultless. Finished. Incomparable. People can never be these, and anyway, when did creating a flawless façade become a more vital goal then learning to love the person who lives inside your skin? The outside belongs to others. Only you should decide for you-what is perfect."

     Ellen Hopkins states that loving yourself is so much more important than what anyone else thinks. So don't strive for perfection. You should learn to love the person you are no matter what others think.

Reading Response #1: Revived

     Revived is about a girl who died at a very  young age in a car crash. Her and twenty other kids were all used as guinea pigs for a new drug called Revive. The drug is administered through an injection into the blood stream and it will bring back people who die suddenly. They didn't want the public to know about their testing so it was all "hush hush". It worked on most of the children but not all and the ones that it worked on were moved away and had their names changed. The main character is Daisy the opening is her dying from a bee sting (she is very allergic) she is taken in a fake ambulance by the people from the revive project and is given the drug. She moves to a new town likes she's already done so many times but this time she vows to try to make friends unlike with her last school. She meets a girl named Audrey and they hit it off. Things really start to look up but can it really last?


        This book is full of people putting on false faces. When your "parents" are government officials every time they're in public they have to act normal. I know how it feels to always put on a face on for those around you. Smile even if you don't feel like it inside. We all have our false faces we put up for everyone else but what would happen if you let someone in? Maybe they would be more understanding then you think.