Convincing a teenager to read Sherman Alexie's book

Hey there! How have you been? I bet you're already stepping onto that grown-teenage life by now, A sing all of your tests and making everybody proud! Speaking of which, since you've always like to read stories and lots of books, escaping the real world for a while loosing up your mind in the pages of the books, I wanted to recommend you a really good one I happened to read just recently, it's called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I think you should totally read it, ease your mind some time and maybe take some notes on it, like you usually do on things that you like so you can learn a little about teenage. Since you're going through some changes in your life, and experiencing lots of  feelings now that you're going to High School and meeting new people, changing somewhat some of your likes or extending your points of view and sometimes be confused about certain thoughts and find no answer, yet keep looking for a reason for everything, it will help you to understand lots of things it won't be a list of answers to everything you're looking for but although this story is about an Indian-American 14 year-old boy you will relate yourself  to more than one feeling, and/or thought.

By now you might be trying to figure out the title, so let me break it down for you just a little, and maybe I can finish to totally convince you to read it!. So it has that title for a reason, a reason you understand by the middle of the book, but I'm going to save you the suspense and some time and talk you into it. This boy's name is Arnold he is a 14 year-old Indian-American boy who happens to be struggling life in his Indian reservation where he resides, due to a physical condition that he was born with and I guess just bad luck with his "people". But his bad luck totally changes, in my opinion, over time. He is kind of a dreamer, like us, more like me in the way he expresses things but like you in the why's, and under certain situations which, with that part I think you'll love it and you might think it's kind of goofy but I'm pretty sure you'll like it after all. This guy is poor, he has low self-esteem, bad luck with girls, and gets beat up by other kids constantly, but even all of these horrible things happen he still seems to have a better sense of life, he wants to do better, even when he thinks he does not deserve better, for some reason he embraces change, he wants to keep on going like if he had an inner will deep, but very deeply inside his conscious or maybe his heart? that keeps him somewhat motivated and willing to keep on going with life, to carry on with the choices he has made along the past years, but most importantly the choices he made in his first year of High School not to shine a side from the rest and shine so bright that he can blind others and dazzle on his own, but to be better on his own to have something to want, something to love, to be someone be normal, or simply just to want to be someone and break the cycle his family have always been through. Sounds any familiar yet? Well if you wanna find out what all of this is about I suggest you to read the story, explore other minds and gain piece of mind, or what I would called, mind experience. Let me know what you think about the ending (;

Sample Papers Evaluation

I chose sample paper #1, 'The Stupid Horse"
To start with, what is supposed to be a "hook", well is not. why? because it doesn't catch much attention due to the questions the writer have wrote. They are too much, it's immediately boring for a reader who doesn't know what you are talking about and has absolutely no interest on the topic. So instead, to hook the readers, in my opinion I think it's better to have questions that relate them more to the topic, that teases your mind and makes you want to read more so you actually read the whole story and do not think something such as: "This looks boring, next!".
It is not appealing to my eyes, so I do not consider this story much interesting. You can figure what the topic is, since pretty much is just like re-reading the textbook except it's like if it had instructions of how to interpret the events as you read, and you skip parts of the book.
It has many words, it's like ' I get the point, the horse got up over and over no matter what they did to him, so what's next?', in other words, the paper lacks excitement, it does not make you wonder so it needs a teaser, excitement in the words, the writer's own words not just something you can copy and paste from an online book or rewrite the story that is completely boring, the missing piece is mostly the writer's perspective and its very own opinion, or I rather say, their own style to expose the content of this story.

Something we talked about in class...

Guantanamo Bay. President Barack Obama mentioned how he was planing, or at least had the idea to release the prisoners, or I rather say, terrorists that are being kept in this american prison located in Cuba, during his "State of the Union" speech. As a class we discussed the different points of view that we all have, and lead us to question why our president would like to do such thing if we are talking about the most dangerous terrorists that were considered a real threat for the country.
Some of the ideas were that the reason for it could be, that Obama might want to win back some allies with the countries that United Sates has lost sympathy with. In addition, as spoken in class, it is pretty mysterious and confusing the reasons why the U.S. runs a prison like Guantanamo Bay inside this island country of Cuba which is known for most Americans to be more likely an enemy to the U.S. than a friendly neighbor, very disturbing. Personal opinion, I think that the government is now just outsourcing ideas because they don't know how to fix the big damages that have been caused over the years to our nation.