Callaborate Literature Circles

           During Humanities class, we did a collaborative Lit. Circle. The partner I had chosen was Zarafsha. The book we are reading is called "Julie of the Wolves". I personally think we have done quite a good job with it. 

     The benefits of working with a classmate is that first, we can all relax and focus less on it because we don't have as much work to do on it. The reason that we don't have to do much work on it is because the other person will be working on some of the lit. circle so you can have more free time. The second thing that's good about this Lit. Circle is that we can get the other partner to check your work so if they think you can improve on it then you can and it will also help by getting a better and improved grade than what you could have gotten.

    The challenges/obstacles I have overcame is first, the questions and responses. I thought that the questions and responses were quite hard because not only do you have to find a good question and a good response to answer it and worse we had to do 2 questions and responses. But ever since we started the collaborative lit. circles I have more time to think up a fantastic question and response. Those are the obstacles I have overcame this time.

     This time, the new things I have understood about this novel is that when Julie makes the decision to leave Daniel and go to San Francisco to Amy. Amy has told her so much about San Francisco , and asked her when she would come to live with her. Julie would stay in the pink bedroom. "Mom says you can have the pink bedroom that looks over the garden and down on the bay and Golden Gate Bridge." (page 70) Julie takes a few survival items from Pearl, a friend in the Barrow. She took food, a sleeping bag, needles, and other stuff. "Pearl  glanced at the shelves above the stove and pushed a box under them; she took down bread, cheese, dried fruits, meats, and a bag of oats and sugar. 'That's fine,' Julie said. 'I only need enough for a week or so. But I need to borrow a sleeping skin and ground cloth. I'll mail them back when I get where I'm going. Pearl slipped out to the shed and came back with the sleeping skin and hide." (page 103 - 104) Julie from now is Miyax. Julie has gone, as Miyax said. For Miyax this is the ride to freedom. She was going away from her terrifying husband, Daniel. He had abused her against her will, that night she ran away. "He pulled her to her feet and pressed his lips against her mouth. She pulled away." (page 102) This is important to Miyax because she will soon find the wolves, they will become a family she never had. That is the passage I wrote for my lit. circle and that is what I have understood about this novel.

          After reading a book it is always good to write out the important passages of the book. So our class are working on literature circles and I really wanted to read the book "Julie of the Wolves" because it sounded very interesting and it sounded like a book that is filled with adventure, normally I don't usually like adventure books but it was different in this case. I felt very happy when I was placed in the group that was doing "Julie of the Wolves" The group discussion of our literature circle helped me understand the novel better because I was able to hear lots of different opinions of the important passages that my other group members had thought, most of our passages were similar though, and it gave me a better understanding of the novel. It was good to know some of the connections that my group members had made, and the important passages from my other group members gave me an idea of why they chose that passage. Also listening to some of the questions that my group had added was interesting because most questions were different from each other and all of them were very good questions that I did not think of and was glad that they brought up some of them.

          There were lots of connections I made while the discussion was going on. One of the connections I made was that my grandmother has a dog called "Bing", and yes I know that is a weird name. He seems to always ignore me when I walk into my grandmothers house but the moment my father walks in he starts barking and jumping up and and down excitedly. So one day my grandmother moved house because she wanted to do renovations on her current house. "Bing" was very upset because he would be moving away from all his friends and to get to the new house you have to drive there and dogs aren't very good in cars. So my grandmother made it clear that it was my responsibility to bring "Bing" there safely. And I did manage to through much difficulty. And then finally "Bing" actually started to pay attention to me and ever since then every time I go to my grandmother's house I would give "Bing" a pat on the head and play with him for a while.

          I was wondering what would happen for the next part of, "Julie of the wolves," and I thought that maybe at the next part the wolves might be friends with and start to understand Miyax who is also known as Julie. The reason to why I thought this way was because of the title of the book and also because the wolves brought her food and maybe then realised that Miyax was a good-hearted girl and not a bad person or a hunter. I also think Miyax found a way to communicate with the wolves by watching the other wolves and their actions towards the leader of the pack, Amaroq, because she knew if Amaroq expected her the rest of the pack will. In the beginning part of the story Miyax wanted the wolves to look at her. I actually thought that talking to them was kind of a silly idea so I think that the strategy that she used which was observing their actions was very smart. The other thing that I thought that it might happen next was Miyax going to take an adventure to survive by not getting a lot of help from the wolves. She might try to be a little more brave. I think that thinking of her dad and how he managed to survive by somehow communicating with the wolves gave her hope but one day the wolves will have to go away and I think that that is yet to come . These are my predictions of what I think it's going to happen next.

This is the book "Julie of the Wolves".