Trouble By: Gary D. Schmidt
Pages: 1 - Finished
Genre: Fiction
The book that I am reading for my Literature Circle is called Trouble by Gary D. Schmidt. It is about a boy named Henry and his family. In this book, his family says that if you live far enough away, then "trouble" will never find you, but the family (the Smith's) soon figure out that what they believed wasn't really true. Their older son, Franklin is the first one to witness trouble on first hand, when he is hit by a car that was driven by Chay Chouan, a Cambodian boy, while he was asleep at the wheel. Franklin is taken to the hospital, which he soon dies and later Henry promises himself to climb a mountain called Katahdin to prove to his brother that he is strong.
The essential question that I have chosen is, "Is it ever really possible to move/live far enough away from trouble?" My essential question ties into my novel because it is basically what this whole book is about. It is about how 'trouble' sort of finds its way to this family, the Smith's, and turns their whole family around. The outcome of this 'Trouble' getting to the family is that it was sort of like Karma because their son Franklin, who was hit by the car driven by Chay. This is karma cause Franklin beat Chay a couple of months before in a locker room for some reason. The outcome was also that Franklin died because of the amount of swelling in his brain from the accident.
The topic that is both presented in my book Trouble by Gary D. Schmidt and the article, "Donald Trump's campaign cancels rally as protesters pack the crowd," written by Newsela staff, shows the same topic of racial relations. In the book, this topic is represented by two teenage boys named Henry and Chay. It is represented by an incident that happened between both boy's families. Henry is American and Chay is Cambodian, so they are both looked at differently from others. For example, when Chay and Henry are sitting in a restaurant, two policemen walk in and immediately Chay gets stiff and nervous because the policemen start to look at him suspiciously, but not at Henry. In the article, it is represented by protestors and supporters of Donald Trump. The supporters believe that Donald Trump is doing what is best, but the protesters believe that he is wrong for trying exclude the Hispanics, African Americans, and other people from other countries from America. For example, Donald Trump has gotten his supporters (mostly Americans) to turn on the other people of various races.
The authors use almost the same information, but differently because of the way it is written. In the book, race relations, is used as fiction, but in the article, it is all reality. In the article, like I said, they represent it between two groups of people. For example, in the article it says, "...he is making his supporters turn against Hispanics, blacks and people from other countries...Our country is not going to make it being divided by the views of Donald Trump." As you can see, people are saying already how the various races in America are being separated. In the book, like I said, they represent the topic between Henry and Chay, two teenage boys. In the book, it discusses some personal stuff about Chay's family, since they are not American like Henry's, but Cambodian. For example, Chay has a sort secret relationship with Henry's sister, Louisa. So Chay's father was angry, but Henry nor his family knew why, until Chay told him that in his family, his father always says, "Remember you were Cambodian before you were American...And you don't fall in love with American girls." This shows how Chay's family feels towards Americans because they are part of a different race, but they aren't the only ones. As you can see, race relations, is a big topic within both forms or writing (an article and a book).
