The Help Review

Kathryn Stockett’s new book The Help has made a huge impact on readers everywhere. Many people are buying this funny, sugar-coated book of the past. The Help is a story of equality based in 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi.

The quirky main character, Skeeter Phelan, is an aspiring journalist recently out of college. She disagrees with the ways of her town and seeks to make some sort of difference. She gets the idea to write a book from the point of view of the help, about how they’re treated, how they feel about their white, women bosses, and their lives. A sweet, black maid, Constantine, whom she was very close to, and admired, raised her. After being called ugly, Constantine consoles her, “But with Constantine’s thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.” Constantine had a huge impact on Skeeter’s life, making her who she was today. She respected the maids and what they did, and she wanted to know what it is like on the other side, as a black maid raising white children. Unfortunately, she finds out that writing this book isn’t easy, it’s a dangerous thing to do during this time period, and not many maids are willing to take the risk of being interviewed. At first, not even Aibileen, a wise older maid who was desperate for the times to change, was willing to help her with the book, “I already told you, I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that book, Miss Skeeter.”

Luckily for Skeeter, Aibileen eventually caves and decides to help out Miss Skeeter. After a little, Minny, a sassy maid known for talking-back and getting fired for her big mouth, agrees too, Skeeter is overjoyed with her new interviewees and everything seems to be going well. She tells Mrs. Stein, an editor from New York, hoping that she’ll be willing to accept what she has and pursue farther with it being published. Little did Skeeter know that to have Mrs. Stein even consider publishing her story, Skeeter will need at least a dozen other maids to interview. The other maids in the area are even more reluctant than Aibileen and Minny were.

The main antagonist, Hilly Holbrook is one of Skeeter’s best friends; she has an intense, even to the extreme, hate for the help. It’s somewhat unbelievable how mean she is outwardly to them. She thinks they have special diseases, and tries to spread a bathroom initiative, making every household have a separate bathroom for the help. Hilly notices Skeeter carrying a Jim Crow laws pamphlet around, and takes it. She confronts Skeeter on this, and tells her to drop it. Throughout the book Hilly is a monstrous barrier to Skeeter, she is a continuous roadblock on the completion of the book. Yet, Hilly was the reason most of the maids decided to be interviewed. She had her maid, Yule Mae, arrested for petty theft. Yule Mae has two sons, who she was hoping to put through college, but was short on one of the tuitions, so she took one of Hilly’s rings that she never wore to pawn it for money. After Hilly had Yule Mae arrested, the maids decided to no longer put up with the ways of the town, and help with the book.

 Even through all of the setbacks, the determined authors managed to write an anonymous book. The book was soon published and sent a shock wave through the town. More copies were sold than they could have even dreamed. With rumors that the book was, in fact about Jackson, Mississippi, everyone in town started reading it, guessing who each chapter was about. As Hilly read, she told people who she thought was who, and demanded they fired their maids for talking about them. The frightened, maids began to worry, but were forced to wait. As Hilly read on, she was horrified when she got to the chapter about herself. She read about how she ate Minny’s, I’ll put it nicely, poop. Two slices of poop pie to be exact. This was the insurance that Hilly would be sure that it was clear the book was not written about their town, because her reputation couldn’t handle this unfortunate event in her life getting out. But is it too much? How could she eat two slices of poop? It all seems a little dramatic and too extreme, something like this isn’t realistic, but it worked.  

The book was tear-jerking, it will make you want to change the world, and how things were. Although some say this is controversial, like Janet Maslin, from the New York Times, but I disagree, this book isn’t saying it’s historically accurate, or that these black maids needed help from a white woman to better their lives. It was a fictional story about a girl wanting to start off her journalism career by writing a book from the point of view of the help. It was realistic, but at sometimes extreme. Although, this extremity could be why it was such a good book, it was interesting. Reading this will make you feel like a better person, like you helped out the black maids at the time. The book was a great-read, it read fast and kept you interested with its constant drama, it receives four out of five stars.

My Top Five

Based on a True Story

I think that in some cases, it is important to have these different genres. For example, textbooks. The things we learn need to be 100% true. Like Mr. Coates said, I want my surgeon to have read real stuff; I don’t want anyone reading fiction stories about how to be a surgeon.

Textbooks need to be nonfiction.

 Facts need to be nonfiction.

 But stories, I personally think stories are stories. If you’re just going to entertain me, who cares if it’s real or fake? Not me. I just want to be entertained.

I don’t like nonfiction. It’s a genre I like to steer clear of. I might just be reading the wrong books though; maybe there are plenty of spectacular, mind boggling stories. To think of it, I think that if some of the books I’ve read, if they were true, they would be more amazing. Amaginger.

If you’re going to lie about what your story is, that’s wrong. Because people do care, I might not, but others probably do. I don’t like to be lied to. Embellishment for entertainment is okay, but not if you embellish the whole book, or you embellish too much.

If you completely make up things that didn’t happen, it’s fiction.

Based on a true story.

Like the movies, you can say based on a true story. Because it’s not the actual thing happening right there on the screen.

If you embellish, it should be based on a true story.

If you write it exactly how it happened, its nonfiction.

If you make the whole thing up, it’s fiction.

If you make some of it up, based on a true story.

Readicide

What should schools do?

In school, most of our classes go the same way, as for reading. You read a boring book or two, and then they let you choose your own and do pretty much the same project just for a different book. It’s repetitive, and most kids don’t like it. A lot of kids our age hate reading, and those who like reading, like it less because of the books we read, and the projects we do. It’s all the same. We just want to read. I understand that we have to learn something, and without the worksheets and quizzes and projects most students wouldn’t read the books, if they do anyway, or they wouldn’t get anything out of it. But I’m sure there’s another way, something to make it more interesting. I think the solution is, change it up. Choose more books, genre fiction books that have the same lesson, just easier to read, unlike Shakespeare, something that isn’t made of art thous, and language we don’t understand. Why do we have to study these things and learn about them, when they have nothing to do with life today? Sure there is some underlying message, but students can learn that in newer books. I can’t think of a single job where it’d be necessary or even helpful to have read Macbeth. In English, I’m currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird and sure it’s not horrible, but it’s not as interesting as The Help, the book I’m reading in here. These books are dated and the least schools can do is swap them for more enjoyable books that we’ll be able to relate to or at least understand! As for the projects, they’ve been around probably as long as the books have. I have been doing pretty much the same project every year since third grade. You pick a book, you give a summary. Of course there’s more to it than that, but it’s all the same. Some teachers try to spice it up, pick songs and compare the lyrics to the main idea or theme of the book! No. It doesn’t make it less dreadful, in fact, I hate finding songs that relate to my book. I think it’s horrible, it’s not a fun activity, and the teachers think it’s creative, but they are not the only teacher who has thought of that. They give you points for creativity, but sometimes it’s hard to be creative and you can’t think of anything. I shouldn’t get points of because I couldn’t find some glitter. The grade should be based on how well I know the book, or what I’ve included in my project. It’s a simple problem, with a simple solution. Times have changed, so should the books, and so should the projects. We get graded on being creative, so the teachers should be more creative with the projects.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Trailer

Adaption of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I haven't seen the movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but I have finished the book. The book is written in teh point of view of a young boy, Oskar. His father was killed during 9/11 and he is desperately trying to stay close to him. He's searching for answers about a key that he found while snooping in his dad's closet after he died. The book is mainly written in his thoughts. It could be challenging to incorporate all of his thoughts into the movie. Also, many of the chapters are letters that different people have written. It would be even harder to take the information from the letters and put it in the movie in a way that makes sense. His grandfather doesn't speak, either. He writes what he would say in a notebook for people to see. That would be hard too, because nobody wants to see a movie that's just showing what someone's writing. A way they could incorporate the letters is like how they did in Dear John, how the person who wrote the letter is saying it out loud, while they show the person reading it.

The first scene they need to keep incorporate into the adaption is before his father died. They need to include this because it shows how much Oskar loved his dad, and how much his dad meant to him. His dad was a big part of his life. Another would be when Oskar and his mom are fighting, and he tells her that he wishes it was her who died and not his dad. This is a very dramatic important scene that should be included because it shows his anger towards what happened, and how he’s mad at his mother for trying to move on, and how in a way he blames her for what happened. The third scene that needs to be included is in the end, when he discovers what the key is to, and how disappointed he is. Oskar and his mother finally can move on after two years of obsessing over the key, and they forgive each other.

Things I wouldn’t include would be some of the letters written about his Grandma and Grandpa’s lives before, when his Grandpa was dating his Grandma’s sister. It didn’t really have much to do with anything other than his Grandma and Grandpa’s relationship, and I think that it could be left out of the movie to include more important parts. And the other part I would leave out would be the part about his Grandma and Grandpa living together, when they are drifting apart and are describing the Something and Nothing places. It’s just confusing and it doesn’t really make any sense and I don’t think it should be added in the movie.

Room - Board Game

In order to promote the novel Room by Emma Donoghue, a board game of the book could be created. The board game would be similar in nature to the game, Candy Land, in the sense that it’s a path that people have to follow to escape from Room. It would include setbacks, and things that will let you skip ahead, just like in the traditional game. For example, “Old Nick is angry because you aren’t appreciative of him, move back three spaces.” Or, “Someone hears you scream and calls the police, you’re found, proceed to the end.” Those will be written on cards, and if they land on spaces that say “draw” they would draw a card. The game would have 2-6 players, the pieces that they would move along would be things from inside Room. There will be six pieces, including, Remote, Eggsnake, Rug, Plant, Bed, and TV.                            

            The cards and other words will be typed in a font resembling child’s handwriting, like on the front cover of Room. The pieces come from objects inside Room, that Jack makes seem real, and are capitalized throughout the book, like it’s a name. The cards will be based off of events that happened throughout the book that made Old Nick mad, or happy. ““I don’t think you appreciate how good you’ve got it here,” says Old Nick.” (Donoghue 69) One of the cards could be based on the escape, when Jack gets caught by Old Nick, “He’s got me under his arm, he’s carrying me back to the truck …” (Donoghue 141) Or another card could be, “you tried to scare Old Nick into telling you the code to the door, and he refused, he doesn’t bring food for a week, move back six spaces.” Like in Room when Ma is telling Jack about when she threatened him so he would tell her the code. “When he came back the next night, he said, number one, nothing would ever make him tell me the code. And number two, if I ever tried a stunt like that again, he’d go away and I’d get hungrier and hungrier till I died.” (Donoghue 97) These cards will all come from things that happened throughout the book, based on the escape, and the setbacks Ma and Jack faced, along with the things they did right, to send them forward. 

The board game would draw in previous readers of Room, and maybe make them want to reread it, because of the connections with the book. It could also attract new people that haven’t read Room yet, and get them interested in reading the book. On the instructions inside the game, a short explanation of the book would be on it, to draw new readers in, and to give some background on the game, like the explanation on the backside of the book. This could draw attention because I don’t think it’s been done before, they have SpongeBob monopoly and things like that, but nothing based on young adult and adult books.

It will be sold in book stores, along with copies of Room and also in games stores, and other places that would normally sell board games such as, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. These stores will attract more readers by putting the game out there, a lot of people go to those stores and it will be another way to draw in customers. Deals could be made with the game and the book, for example, buy the game, get the book half price. This would get more people who want the game to buy the book because it’ll be cheaper.