Reader Response 2

                                                                       Reader Response 2
                                                   April 3/ 2011                     Melanie Smilynov


       I am responding to Charlie St. Cloud by Ben Sherwood. I have read 265/296. This text is non-fiction.
The main characters are Charlie, Sam and Tess. The genre of this text is Fantasy because it has to do with Charlie seeing his dead brother Samm, and that most likely would not happen in real life. It has Charlie's point of view, but i think the author could have put a little more of Sam's point of view too.

RETELL

          The title of this text says to me that the story might be about Charlie's life and mostly his point of view, which it was. To summarize this story in 2-3 sentence's i would say, It is about a guy named Charlie who works in a grave yard where his little brother is buried. When his brother died, he was given the gift of, seeing and talking to his brothers spirit. Then he met a girl named Tess who was going away sailing for 6 months but then when she went for a test run her boat got stuck in a storm. Charlie saw Tess's spirit and believed Tess was still alive and he went to go look for her. When he found her, They feel in love.  This text is really about Charlie and how different he is without his brother.  My favorite part of this text was when Charlie saved Tess. The big ideas of this text were that he promised his brother to play baseball with his brother everyday at sunset, and that he can see and talk to the spirit's of Tess and Sam, Also that he was given another chance at life and he used it to save Tess.

RELATE

         This text makes me think about how hard Charlie's life might be because I couldn't imagine how tough it must be losing 2 very important people in your life. I am not like Tess because she took a risk and went into the storm, I would not be able to do this because i cant take big risks like that. If i could talk to Charlie i would tell him that he has to let go of the past (Sam). If I were Sam i would tell Charlie that he could let go of me if he wanted because i would want him to feel pressured about keeping his promise for so many years.

REFLECT

       I did not like this text because it was a little boring at parts so it was hard to keep reading on. When i read this text i felt sad because i felt very sorry for Charlie because he had to lose his brother, and then he almost lost his love Tess so that much be a hard to life through. This text makes be want to wish that Sam was alive because you never got to see how Sam grew up. I learned that if we open our hearts to the world we can do many things. I admire Charlie because eventually he grew up and let go of the past and moved on.