Review Writing Assignment

Hey Hoods,

Just thought I would post the review writing assignment here. Remember the 3 things you need to hand in:

1. The good copy of the review
2. The chart sheet
3. The review homework assignment

In case you have lost anything, I have both the reviews and the questions below. If you don't have the chart sheet, you need to get that from me personally.

I'm going to make the due date for the reviews anytime before March break but not after. I want to keep moving after the break.

Good luck and if you need any help, just ask.

Patterson

I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks. -Steve Martin


THE REVIEWS:

REVIEW 1:

‘The curious incident of the dog in the night-time'
reviewed by Andrew Stickland

Despite what the innumerate masses may wish, our daily lives are inextricably tied up with mathematics. On the most mundane level, we use basic arithmetic to do such things as tell the time, to count our change, to programme the video. But on a less obvious level we also need a reasonably good grasp of geometry in order to park the car in the garage or to pack the shopping bags carefully at the supermarket; we collect and interpret statistical data when the football results come in and we all seem to know how easily order turns to chaos.
In their own way, popular science books have been telling us this for years. But "popular" or not, they still have a limited readership compared with books about, say, a trainee wizard or a little creature with a ring. It is a simple truth, but fact is less popular than fiction. So when a novel comes along which mentions, and clearly explains, the Monty Hall Problem and Occam's razor as well as giving the full solution to an A level maths problem, it's worth stopping to take a closer look.
My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,507.
In this way we are introduced to the main character of a rather strange and captivating novel, which is part detective story, part social drama and part encyclopaedia. Christopher is fifteen years old and suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, and as the novel is written entirely from his perspective, we are brought into an unusual world where rules, although apparently arbitrary, are of paramount importance. Red things are good, yellow and brown things are bad; different foods must not be mixed on a plate; people should never tell lies.
With these, and his many other curious intellectual tools, Christopher sets about trying to solve the mystery of who has murdered his neighbour's dog. Along the way, he introduces the reader to his family, his teacher, his neighbours, his pet rat and many of the interesting and unusual facts and figures he keeps stored away in his mind.
These aren't all mathematical, as Christopher has something of a scattergun approach to the acquisition of knowledge, but it is evident from his actions and from what he tells us that what is of paramount importance to him is logic. There is no intuition, no guesswork, no hunches, in his detection, or indeed his life as a whole, only rational reasoning.
In truth, there is nothing mathematically challenging in the book. There are a few interesting problems, clearly explained and discussed, and the A Level question which is answered in a brief appendix, but the strength of the book lies in its positive attitude towards a subject most commonly either shied away from or openly dismissed as "the subject I always hated at school".
Unfortunately, given the protagonist's affliction, the book may well end up simply reinforcing the stereotype of the mathematically gifted social inadequate, but I fear that until Harry or Hermione discover the joys of complex analysis, maths in fiction will remain, as here, a rare delicacy, not a staple.

Review 2:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

A Review by Laura Miller

Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone is not an unreliable narrator, exactly. As he tells it, and credibly so, he never lies; in fact, he doesn't seem capable of it. But he's an imperfect narrator, to say the least. An autistic savant who can list all the prime numbers up to 7,057, he's not so good with emotion, and since the story he relates in Mark Haddon's delightful first novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, concerns the dissolution of his parents' marriage and the precarious nature of the care he needs to survive, we have to read between his lines.
As far as Christopher is concerned, this is a murder mystery, the kind solved by his hero, Sherlock Holmes. (Curious Incident is meant to be Christopher's account of the case, a project suggested by his teacher.) The victim? Wellington, the dog that lives -- make that "lived" -- across the street from Christopher's home in an English suburb. Wellington turns up dead, by "garden fork" (which is, I'm guessing, British for "pitchfork"), shortly after midnight. Christopher discovers the body because he's a night owl, favoring the hours of "3 am or 4 am in the morning [when] I can walk up and down the street and pretend that I am the only person in the world." He also fantasizes about becoming an astronaut, "because I'd be surrounded by lots of the things I like, which are machines and computers and outer space. And I would be able to look out of a little window in the spacecraft and know that there was no one else near me for thousands and thousands of miles."
Christopher can tolerate people he knows well and who don't therefore overwhelm his psyche with unfamiliar and inassimilable sensations, people like his father and his teacher, Siobhan, but he doesn't like to be touched by anyone. Given this, and the fact that he considers picturesque figures of speech such as "He was the apple of my eye" to be "metaphors" and thus "lies," he makes for a daunting prospect as a narrator, emotionally detached and doggedly literal-minded. Yet Haddon manages to create in Christopher a character of great charm and appeal; once you slip into the world as he sees it, you feel surprisingly comfortable.
Christopher's situation is in many ways pitiable, and it certainly offers ripe pickings for the sentimentally inclined; viewed from the outside, this story could have been a sap-fest. But because Christopher himself can't wallow in bathos, we, his readers, are kept clear of it, too. He's being raised by a single father, under the impression -- perhaps erroneous? -- that his mother is dead. From what he remembers of her, she clearly lacked the patience to care for him. He never entirely understands what's going on around him, where everyone else is tuned to a frequency he can't receive.
Yet, like anyone else, really, Christopher believes that his way of interpreting the world is superior. For example, remembering a particularly excruciating vacation in France, he writes, "people go on holidays to see new things and relax, but it wouldn't make me relaxed and you can see new things by looking at the earth under a microscope or drawing the shape of the solid made when 3 circular rods of equal thickness intersect at right angles." He reserves particular contempt for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "because he wasn't like Sherlock Holmes and he believed in the supernatural." In fact, people's inability to grasp that their feelings "are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen," remains a source of ongoing frustration.
In tracking down the truth about Wellington's untimely death, Christopher discovers more than he bargained for. The truth sends him on a truly valiant journey to London; though any other 15-year-old would have found the train trip manageable enough, for Christopher it's a nearly incapacitating gauntlet of terrifying sensations -- Mordor itself couldn't seem more threatening. Throughout, Haddon depicts his hero with expansive sympathy and an irresistible humor. As befits Christopher's way of experiencing the world, the novel is studded with little illustrations and diagrams -- floor plans, patterns he likes, the maps he needs to get around because the visual field of new streets is too confusing. All of this makes The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time feel light, but that's deceiving. There are vast reservoirs of human suffering and courage beneath its sprightly, peculiar surface.

REVIEW QUESTIONS:

Review Analysis Sheet – The Curious Incident…

Pick one of the two reviews: _________________________________________

1.

Describe the style of the review. How is the information laid out? Does each paragraph serve a distinct purpose? Are some a blend of 2 or 3 purposes?

2.

Words. Words. Words. Look for and copy down specific opinionated language. What words does the reviewer use to get his opinion across?

3.

Summary. How much of this review is summary? Too much? Not enough? Is it just right?

4.

Of the two reviews provided, which do you prefer (this does not necessarily mean ‘agree with’) and why?