Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli. cycle 18 reading response 15-30

In the next pages of the story Uri and Stopthief go to the parade of Jackboots. Uri keeps his distance from the Jackboots because he knows that they aren’t the nicest people. Stopthief thinks differently. Stopthief ends up running into the parade and runs into a Jackboot. The Jackboot was nice to Stopthief, smiling at him and helping Stopthief up. The Jackboot asks if Stopthief was a Jew but Stopthief says that he is a Gypsy. The Jackboot says I hope so and then walks away. Stopthief then thinks that Jackboots are really nice and he always tries to make friends with any Jackboot he sees. Uri keeps telling Stopthief that Jackboots aren’t nice and avoid them in anyway.
The next day Uri and Stopthief walk down the streets and find a crowd of people. They go and see what is happening. They find a bunch of Jackboots laughing over a man dipping his beard into a bucket of soap-water and scrubbing the sidewalk. Uri then tells Stopthief that they are going. They leave but then see another group of Jackboots laughing as they were cutting an old mans beard. Stopthief then thought that if you had a beard then it was bad. Uri told him that it wasn’t that but it something else.

I think that the Jackboots do not like Jews because when Stopthief runs into the Jackboot he says that he hoped that Stopthief wasn’t a jew. Also it would explain why Uri is so scared of Jackboots because Uri is a Jew. Also the men with beards were probably Jews and that is why they were being humiliated.

Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli, cycle 17 reading response 1-15

Summary: The book starts off with a boy running away from a lady. He is then caught by someone and dragged down ally ways. Then he ends up in a dark hole in in the ground. He finds out that the person who dragged him into the hole tried to do the very same thing that the boy did. They both wanted to get a loaf of bread to eat. The two boys started to talk with each other and introduced themselves to each other. The boy that stole the bread was named stopthief. The other boy was named Uri. 

Uri then took stopthief to meet other boys that Uri hangs out with. There were multiple boys that stayed in a stable with horses. They had a pile of food and other objects. All which were probably stolen. Uri introduced stopthief to the other boys. The boys all called stopthief a runt and a smelly Jew. Stopthief was a small boy but he was fast. Uri told them that he could help them cause he was so fast. The boys were laughing at stopthief so much that they were chased out of the stable by a man who owned the stables. Everyone scrambled and stopthief followed Uri into a den. 

The next day stopthief awoke to Uri bringing in a small bed. Stopthief and Uri set up the bed and headed out to the market place. The market place was bombed by a recent attack and much of the buildings were a pile of rubble. Uri and stopthief walked throught the town and started down a stair case. There were pipes along the stair case and at every pipe Uri would turn a handle. Every handle either shot out air or did nothing. There was one pipe that shot out water. Uri told me to undress and stand by the water. Uri then poured water onto stopthief and scrubbed him with a brush. Uri then gave Stopthief a new set of clothes to wear. They both went into an empty barber shop. Uri gave Stopthief a hair cut and then left the barber shop. 

As they got out of the barber shop people were in transporting sand bags. There was going to be another attack so people were placing sand bags in front of machine guns and ditches. Uri and Stopthief then jumped on a car to get around the town faster but were spotted and were told to get off. They didn't and the people telling them to get off got side tracked by one of the boys stopthief met earlier in the stable was running away with a glass statue of a woman. The boy got tripped and broke the statue but ran away. Just then the people telling Uri and stopthief to get off stopped the car. There was an explosion right in front of the car. The people in the car then ran out of the car. Uri decided to drive the car. Uri was going at a very fast speed and then crashed in to a store and the car tipped over. 

Reflection: This book has a lot of dialogue. From the pages I have read so far, more than half of it was dialogue. The dialogue makes the reading much more smoother and it lets me understand the character better. I helps me to imagine what the character is feeling and it makes me feel like I'm apart of the scene.