After making all the entries we have to

So I made all the entries we had to. But I forgot to make more than this list which was given to us. But it ment explicit don´t to limit yourself. So hier is my "more than be limited" :).

The audience Hornby is writing for:

I think especial for young people in our age (teenagers).

Problems/conflicts the characters must confront:

• To be in love with someone.


• To be pregnant.


• To have another familystructure than other teenagers (very young parents, singled parents...).


• To become in a very young age parents.


• To live in a different family.


• To grow up.

The stake for the characters in these conflicts:

The most stake you have when you become as teenagers parents, because you lose your own childhood and a lot of chances.

Discoveries the characters make:

• They aren´t the only young parents (Sam sees it in the internet). ´


• It is hard to have a family, but you can be proud to have one.

Parallel scenes/repetitions:

• The early parenthood of Sam and Alicia and the parents of Sam.


• All the "dreams" of Sam in the future become fulfilled.

What effect it has that Sam tells the story:

• We know his feelings and are affected by him.


• We only know and experience the things he knows and experiences.

How the author uses the idea of time and the chronological sequence of events:

The parents of Sam tell us the past. Sam tells the present. TH tells us the future. So we are slipping between the times.

How I feel about the ending:

In the book the story could end at a lot of passages in the text, but on this one I want to know more, more about Alex, Robert.... It´s like an open ending. (I don´t like it here! :( )

The most important idea in the novel:

You can manage all, if you want to do do it. (Sometimes when you have to do it and don´t like it to do too)

Do I feel manipulated by the autor:

No, I don´t think so.

If I enjoyed reading the novel:

I always like to read a novel, you can sit there read and do nothing, it´s like holidays. (Only holidays to do in holidays reduce your holidays!)

At least a picture of a "really great book":

After finishing the novel

Are my first impressions given a new meaning now?

No, I don´t think so.

What I learned that I never knew before:

I know now names of skateboardstricks like "Olli"(but I have to say that I don´t understand how to do them).

How Ihave changed after reading the book:

I have no bad prejudices about skaters anymore.

Who I would like to recommend the book:

Maybe the next englishclass :). Because it´s easier to read such a book than a set book.

Who should not read the book:

First certainly someone who doesn´t speak english, because he wouldn´t understand anything. Item I think it´s better to read for young people than for old, because young people understands better the minds of Sam (With old people I mean people above forty) or at least the minds of Sam´s mother and father. Then people out of countries like Afrika wouldn´t understand our europe-culture maybe. Otherwise I see no reservations.

After having read more than half the novel

Questions I would like to ask Nick Hornby:

• How did you come to the idea to write such a book?

• What do you want to show with your book?

Poems/pictures/videos I know that might go well with the atmosphere of the novel:

Rufus Wainwright "Hallelujah"

"I had to look at the CD machine to hear a man singing a slow song and playing piano." (p.267, l.1-3)

A Rose
by Elizabeth
A lovely rose with petals softA scent so sweet and light

So beautiful a flowerWith colors shining bright.

But something not so savory

About the fragrant rose -

The thorns, so sharp upon the stem,

That sharpen as it grows.

Yet still lovely is the flower

Despite the thorns that prick

Just as life and love are sweet

They too have thorns that stick.

But do not fear to live or love,

Life's not exempt from pain -

So pick a rose, you may get hurt,

But you will also again!

A rough summary of the events so far:

Sam goes with his mother on a party of a friend of his mother. On this party is the daughter of Andrea (the friend), called Alicia. The mother of Sam knew this girl please Sam, so she take him along. Alicia and Sam get together. They look the most time TV in Alicias Room or have sex together. At the end Sam is bored of such a relationship and get rid of her. But Alicia is pregnant. Sam dreams of his future: He leaves with Alicia together in the room of her with the baby and his mother is pregnant. Sam doesn´t like this imagination and escape to Hastings, there he realize that much things can be bader than having a baby and comes back. When he and Alicia tell it both parents, are the shocked. They don´t want to believe that this two did the same mistake like Sam´s parents, because they got Sam, when they were sixteen too. Sam has a second dream which happens when Roof is two years old, he doesn´t live with Alicia together anymore, but at his home. His mother has a little girl born. Because of this dream Sam knows what will happen next: Alicia doesn´t want a abortion and so she becomes the baby. Sam´s mother becomes pregnant too. The baby gets the name Rufus, because while the birth they listened to the CD of the singer Rufus Wainwright. Rufus Jones.

Which idea in the novel made me stop and think, or was new and exciting for me:
That it can happen that a thirty-two old mother becomes grandmother. Because you think exactly the sam mistake can´t happen again and also in the same family one after another.

Something I enjoyed:

The childbirth of Roof: All the misteries because of the name become solved. You never thought his name is Rufus because of a singer and the best: He is called Roof because of his dad Sam! Sam was the one who didn´t like the name and wondered who gave it to this baby.

Something I felt annyed of:

The second dream of Sam, because before all seamed that Alicia, Sam and the Baby becomes a happy little family (I, for one thought so) and now all become destroyed: Sam lives with his Family again and broke away from Alicia. Only the baby grew to a sweet little boy.

Up to the middle of the novel

How my feelings change:

I´m surprised how the book goes on and a bit shocked about Sam and Alicia getting a baby. I find the parents of Alicia react to hard to them. But maybe Sam´s mother only know this situation from her own past and understands how this two teens feel.

Which question(s) I would like to direct at a particular character in the novel:

Sam, do you want to get the baby now or not? And do you love Alicia again?

What I am confused about (events or characters):

I find it needless for Sam to go to Hastings. It´s to much for the story and a bit boring to read. It´s confusing how fast it goes with Sam´s mother and Mark.

How I as the author would have changed the book:

They find Sam in Hastings and bring him home. Alicia don´t talk with him. Anytime Sam is so wondering if he get a baby that he visit her. He found´s out that Alicia does´nt get a baby, the test was negative.

Images/pictures I liked:

• Sam compare hisself with someone who is at the bottom of a sea and the surface is a long way away and there are sharks coming at you..., when his mother goes with him to the cinema and eating pizza.

• Sam feels like a spectator in a stadium when people are running the 10,000 metres in the Olympics when he listens to a talk between his parents.

• Sam is in Hastings and can´t sleep, because he has too much blood in his face.

After the opening chapter(s) of the book

How I feel after reading these pages:

I´m anxious to find out what will happen next. Because these four chapters are like a own story with the end that the relationship between Sam and Alicia has ended. It needs no more acts.

What emotions the book invokes in me:

I´m happy don´t to have such a life like Sam. I like it to have a father and a mother and two sisters. I think it´s easier for a mother to educate a baby when she is older than sixteen. I think she must be at least as old as twenty. So she can make a graduation and learn a good job. Then she has more money for herself and the child. The man would be more decided if he wants to have a baby with his wife. It´s easier to have a true family.

Links/connections between the book and my life:

• I have never ever caused a fight between teachers.

• Last year, when I was fifteen nearly sixteen, the things were ticking along OK too. Before was always something wrong at school, but this year I had good marks and my new class was perfect.

• In our region are less chances to become someone famous than in Berlin or other very big cities.

• I find it stupid to have a boyfriend at the same school.

• I hate it to lie and I would never steal anything.

Words/phrases that caught my eye while reading:

• "I might be the sort of person who´s always being taken to one side and told to apply for college by all the teachers in every subject. You know, and the teachers actually fight over me. `No Sam! Forget art! Do physics!´ ´Forget physics! It would be a tragedy for the human race if you gave up French!´And then they all start punching each other." (p.2, l.10-17)

• "I´m glad there are things you don´t know and can´t guess, weird things, things that have only ever happened to me in the whole history of the world, as far as I know." (p.2, l.23-26)

• "But there´s only one skater, really, and his name´s Tony Hawk. Well, there´s not only one. But he´s definitely the Big One. He´s the J.K. Rowling of skaters, the Big Mac, the iPod, the Xbox." (p.4, l.18-23)

• "You can´t rewrite history, or leave bits of it out just because it suits you." (p.6, l.20-22)

• "Who doesn´t talk to someone in their heads? Who doesn´t talk to God, or a pet or someone they love who has died, or maybe just to themselves? TH ... He wasn´t me. But he was who I wanted to be, so that makes him the best version of myself, and that can´t be a bad thing, to have the best version of youself standing there on a bedroom wall and watching you." (p.9, l.10-18)

• "Sometimes it can seem as though kids always do better than their parents." (p.14, l.9-10)

• "If you say something that isn´t sexist to the right sort of girl, she likes you more. Say one of your mates is going on about how girls are stupid, and you say, ´Not all girls are stupid,´ then it can make you look good." (p.17, l.21-26)

• "The whole point of friends is that you choose them yourself." (p.21, l.27-28)

• "Loads of funny things happen, don´t they?" (p.23, l.29-30)

• "It was one of my greatest moments: all the words came out right, and I meant everything I said, and I was glad I´d said it. I was´nt doing it for effect, either." (p.27, l.27-30)

• "And I hoped that the conversation would turn into something else - a kiss, and then marriage, after we´d been out for a couple of weeks." (p.28, l.3-6)

• "Mum is always telling me that the friendship has to come first, before anything else." (p.31, l.2-3)

• "There were a couple of young mums at my school, and they acted like a baby was an iPod or a new mobile or something, some kind of gadget that they wanted to show off." (p.34, l.4-7)

• "Sometimes it doesn´t matter who you talk to, as long as you talk." (p.38, l.20-21)

• "When I was waiting for a bus, I didn´t have to do anything else but wait, but all the other waiting was hard. Eating breakfast was waiting, so I didn´t eat much. Sleep was waiting, so I couldn´t sleep much, even though I wanted to, because sleeping was a good way of getting through eight hours or whatever. School was waiting, so I didn´t know what anyone was talking about, during the lessons or at break times. Watching TV was waiting, so I couldn´t follow the programmes. Even skating was waiting, seeing as how I only went skating when Alicia was doing something else." (p.52, l.7-19)

• "You know that a bit in a film when they show couples laughing and holding hands and kissing in lots of different places while a song plays? We were like that, a bit, except we didn´t go lots of different places." (p.53, l.3-7)

• "Because if someone tells you she loves you, then you´re bound to say it back, aren´t you?" (p.53, l.20-21)

• "It was like there had been a lot of food on a plate in front of us, and we ate it all really quickly, and then there was nothing left. Maybe that´s how couples stay together." (p.70, l.10-13)

• "So you play these games in spite of the city and, really, it would be better if you lived just about anywhere else, out in the countryside, or the suburbs, or some place like Australia. But skating you do because of the city. We need as much concrete and as many stairs and ramps and benches and pavements as you´ve got. And when the world´s been completely paved over, we´ll be the only athletes left, and ther will be statues of Tony Hawk all over the world, and the Olympics will just be a million different skating competitions, and then people might actually watch." (p.77-78, l.23-3)

My predictions about possible future developments:

Alicia will have another boyfriend. Sam will see them together and become jealous. He will feel that the love between him and Alicia isn´t past. So he will try to get Alicia back. Then Alicia and Sam will come together again. First undercover then official. Alicia will get a baby of Sam. The parents will be appalled.

Sam will meet his father.

His mum will come closer and closer to mark and at the end marry him.


How long it took me to read a certain number of pages:

I didn´t look at the clock while I red, because I red when I had free time.
But I think for the four chapters I needed circa three hours.

First entry

Hello all together,

this is my first entry.

You know probably that we have special duties to do.

So this is the first dutie.


How I feel about reading this book:

I´m anxious about the book, wich we read.

It is this way with all books, which I read.

You never know, what will happen.

But of course you want to know it, so you have to read it (I will begin soon :)).



What I expect:


It´s a book about a teenager in our age, between fifteen and sixteen

(okay the most of us are a bit older).

This teenager, called Sam, is growing up.

He has his first girlfriend and experiences with her this new part of his life.

He is thinking about his future and at the present all will be different than he wishs.

The backroundstory is about his mother, which broke up with her boyfriend.

Surely Sam will understand more about her live and what she did.

He and his mother will become closer, than before.




Other Novels, I red in English:

• The in-crowd, written by Patricia Reilly (in schoolyear eight)


• Abomination, written by Robert Swindells (in schoolyear nine)


• Of mice and men, written by John Steinbeck (in schoolyear ten)

Novels, I red private:

• The wind on fire trilogy by William Nicholson

What I´m thinking about studying texts in the classroom:

You have to read your book at home. But if you speak about it in your lesson, you will understand more of it. You will know more about it, because other students see things in the book, which you skiped. But too much talking about something becomes boring!