After reading a personal choice book for a month I decided that I wanted to do a quick read. The book that I decided to read was The Beast in Ms. Rooney's Room. The story was written by Patricia Reilly Giff. The main character's name is Richard Best. As it turned out Richard Best had to repeat the same grade again. In his new class he felt uncomfortable because he had the same teacher but this time he had different classmates. His former classmates ridicule him because he has to repeat the year once again. The teacher also made him participate in a special reading group. Two other kids are part of this reading group. Richard's new classmates know that this special reading group are for kids who have difficulty on the subject upon reading. So his classmates use this as an excuse to frown on him. Now Richard has a task to redeem his reputation. In his school all the classes compete for banner of the week. A class to have this banner represents a great honor. This shows that the class has had good behavior for a whole week. Richard starts enforcing great behavior for his whole class to follow him. The ironic part is that 20 minutes before the announcement of the class getting the banner Richard was caught walking around without a hall pass. Luckily on the following week Ms. Rooney's class was given the banner. As it turned out Richard was proud to have his nickname to be known as the "Beast".
This book wasn't the best book I've read because I wanted more suspense but it was alright. This book made me see students who stay back in a different perspective. I've seen and heard many teachers making their students stay back. At first I thought that was great because you would still have the same nice teacher and the student has the strength to be the smartest kid in the class. As it turned out I was wrong. This story made me realize that just because you stay back it gives the other students a reason to ridicule you upon your intelligence. This happens to be quite cruel for Richard. I've also notice that it'll be most likely that the former and new classmates will pick on anyone because they stayed back. Richard reminds me when I was a young student. When I started kindergarten I had a major problem. My problem was that I couldn't speak English well because at home I spoke Spanish all the time. The only time that I got to speak English when I was a toddler was when I repeated words on Sesame Street. The similarity that I had with Richard was that I had to go to a special class which was ESL. In ESL I practiced my writing and reading skills. Another problem that I had on my kindergarten year was that there weren't many Hispanics at my school. So instead of going to preschool I was trying to get prepared for my kindergarten year at home. As I was reading this book I had many flashbacks. These flashbacks made me realized that I have gone a long way. Now I don't feel incapable of learning new information in school.
Here is a link to read a short preview of the book http://books.google.com/books?id=piz6qrsRocMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+beast+in+ms.+rooney's+room&source=bl&ots=JezT34Vq_k&sig=hD-5F2URNocXuh8LTyOQ-FEps7E&hl=en&ei=D9cGTZ3fHous8AaD9-2VCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false
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