Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King has been on of the hardest books to keep my attention in the adolescent literature genre I am currently reading. I feel like it flips back and fourth too much, but like everything in life, that is just my own opinion. I felt 50 pages in and I was still building up the plot, when I wanted to know what the story was about.
The story was about a girl named Vera. She spent her youth growing up in a inner city neighborhood. Her mom taught her to be "street smart", which included ways to avoid the creepy guy. She also had a childhood friend called Charlie Kahn. They had many things in common and had a great friendship, they even secretly loved each other. Then at the age of 12, Vera's mom leaves, and its just Vera and her dad. In addition, Vera and Charlie start to become distant 4 months before he dies, because of Charlie's choices in friends and activities such as drinking and smoking pot. Charlie's girlfriend also tells Charlie lies about Vera. Charlie then spreads rumors that aren't true about Vera and even throws dog poop at her (ewww!). One night everything just comes to a head. Charlie asked Vera to met her. He explains that his girlfriend is going to kill him. Vera thinks he is just blowing off steam and nothing is going to happen. Ultimately Charlie does die and Vera is the only person to know the truth. Charlie also leaves her a series of letters explaining what led up to his death.
About 9 months after his death, Vera is still trying to deal with things. She decides to work on her relationship with her dad and go to the police to clear Charlie's name. It wasn't easy for Vera, because she is sacred about what Charlie's girlfriend will do and she has her own family problems to deal with. Once she is able to tell the police her story, her and her dad take a road trip to work on their relationship.
There are several themes that can be taught using Please Ignore Vera Dietz, some of those could include trust, honestly, the dangers of drinking, peer pressure, and choices/consequences just to name a few.I found a neat Prezi that could easily be used to help aide understanding of the story. One lesson I would do is a character analysis over how Vera and Charlie had changed from the beginning of their lives to the end of the story. Adding a character chart to help remember each character and their role in the story would be great to have students work on. I also found questions that could be used to help with comprehension of the story. There is also a very good book trailer. The author of Please Ignore Vera Dietz, A.S. King also has a blog. It is located here. Visiting her blog, the class could learn more about the author and her life.
It seems like it turned out to be a good read. I loved your lesson ideas especially the link for the Prezi. I really loved how you made the links readily available on your blog. I can't wait to read the story and the authors blog.
ReplyDeleteI liked this book, I enjoyed reading it. That's awesome that you found a Prezi, that would be a great technology addition to the lesson. The characters definitely changed throughout the story, so showing how they changed is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your post I feel like I need to read this book. I liked your description of the characters. They sound very interesting especially with Charlie's death and the changes that take place. Nice job!
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