Vera Dietz Thus Far

In class, the juniors and seniors are reading A.S. King's award-winning young adult novel Please Ignore Vera Dietz. I have been away on Kairos, so the students were asked to read pages 129-211 on their own. In their own blogs today, students should summarize their reading from the past week and then answer the following questions for an honest reflection. (Student responses may be in the form of a paragraph and can be answered in any order they choose. Students should not feel limited to only use that section of reading to write their responses.)

1. Summarize last week's reading of the novel.
2. How do you feel King is doing at depicting typical teen life in today's world?
3. Is she covering important teen issues accurately? How does the world of the novel relate to today's world concerning ideas like drinking, drugs, sex, relationships with parents, jobs, responsibilities, the future, personal stress, dealing with stress, avoiding feelings, guilt, growing up, rumors, bullying, relationships with peers, etc. (Talk about as many as you want. For each topic, please write about how this issue is handled in the novel and then compare to how you see this issue existing in the world today. Each topic should be a separate paragraph.)
4. If anything, what are your thoughts on some of these issues?
5. What questions or confusions do you have?

Afterward, students will respond to other blogs by posting comments.

NOTE: Please make sure you title your blog post and look professional (use complete sentences, proper paragraph structure [one main idea per paragraph], and proper spelling and grammar). I am assuming this writing assignment will take a while in order to be good.