Reading Blog Entry

Dear Class,
            I am currently reading Over the Edge by Norah McClintock.  The genre of this book is realistic fiction and, perhaps, a little mystery.
            This book is about a girl named, Chloe.  Chloe lives in East Hasting.  She has recently moved to East Hasting from Montreal and she misses her former home a lot.  Chloe lives with her mom, her sister, Phoebe, and her step-dad, Levesque.  Levesque is the chief of police in Montreal.
            One morning, Levesque gets a call telling him that a boy from Chloe’s school is missing.  His name is Peter Flosnick.  Levesque asks Chloe if she knows where he is, but Chloe tells him that she hardly talks to him at school.
            At school that same day, everyone acts as if everything is normal, as if nothing has happened.  Chloe finds it unnerving that no one cares about Peter’s disappearance.  Peter is the kind of boy that is considered a “nerd” at Chloe’s school.  No one really pays much attention to him. Chloe, though, feels sorry for Peter.
            After two days, Peter’s body is found at the bottom of MacAdam’s Lookout, a tall hill near the school.  Peter loved to study astronomy, so it was considered reasonable for him to have been at the top of the hill.  The authorities believe that Peter committed suicide.
            When Chloe goes to Peter’s funeral, she sees his mom crying uncontrollably.  Chloe is overwhelmed with grief. 

This is where I stopped reading.

As the author described the funeral, I could visualize it clearly because I had recently been to one.  I was able to make a direct connection - it reminded me of Sara’s brother’s funeral (Sara is a student in our class), and how grief-stricken her parents were when they laid her brother to rest.  I cried a lot that day.

            I predict that Peter didn’t commit suicide.  I think that he was killed.  I think this because that’s the only way (in my opinion) that this story can go ahead.  I think that Chloe will try to find out who killed Peter.  The clues I have to support my prediction (I inferred meaning) are based on the way the other students acted.  I wonder if some of them were involved in his murder, or if they witnessed it and were too scared to tell the authorities what really happened.  Silence sometimes speaks volumes.
            If Peter wasn’t murdered, could he have actually committed suicide?  Perhaps.  When the author said that Peter was considered a “nerd” at school, it made me wonder if he was picked on, and whether this abuse lead him to commit suicide.  I can make some more connections here, to articles we have recently read in class as part of our bullying unit.  I think it is completely wrong for someone to commit suicide but having read these articles, I have come to understand (synthesize) that bullying can cause not only physical pain but emotional and psychological pain that can lead someone to commit suicide.  If my original prediction is wrong and Peter was not killed, perhaps the rest of this book will be about bullying and how Chloe confronts bullies or bullying issues.

I can’t wait to read on.

                                Sincerely

Student J