The book I chose to share is The Smell of Other People’s Houses by Bonnie-sue Hitchcock. It shows the perspectives of four teens living in Fairbanks, Alaska right before and after the switch of Alaska being apart of the U.S. in the 1970s. Ruth is a lonely teenager that lives with her younger and louder sister, Lily, and her mean grandmother. Her mom is mentally sick because Ruth’s dad died while in a plane crash. She becomes pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby. Ray, Ruth’s unfaithful boyfriend breaks up with her, not knowing about the pregnancy. She continues to worry about the future of her and her baby. Dora is hurt on the inside and ignorant on the outside. She chooses to live with her friend, Dumpling, and her family because she feels
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She lives on her dad’s boat, The Squid, in the summer, with her dad and Uncle Gorky. Her job on The Squid is to get groceries. Alyce wants to dance, but is in a situation where her dad needs her for the whole summer and doesn’t want to disappoint him. That is until she saves a mysterious someone that fell over a different ferry, with the help of a whale, and finds the answer she never knew she was going to find. Hank is the oldest and the most “level-headed” out of his two brothers. Their mom’s boyfriend, Nathan Hodges, is someone that is the complete opposite of their dad, whom they believe died. Hank, Jack, and Sam ran away from their mom and Nathan on a ferry to start their life again somewhere else. And that is what caused Sam to fall overboard while looking for orcas in the ocean. Only one person saw something but never said anything when being interrogated by Hank. An interesting part of the book was when Ruth was explaining how when she was a little girl, she would always kiss the deer her dad would kill, hoping that the heart was still beating. That’s interesting because in day-to-life here, kissing a deer’s heart would be considered animal abuse and disgusting. The author’s message is an inference of the coming-of-age moments these fictional teens have in her homeland, because the author lives in
She lives on her dad’s boat, The Squid, in the summer, with her dad and Uncle Gorky. Her job on The Squid is to get groceries. Alyce wants to dance, but is in a situation where her dad needs her for the whole summer and doesn’t want to disappoint him. That is until she saves a mysterious someone that fell over a different ferry, with the help of a whale, and finds the answer she never knew she was going to find. Hank is the oldest and the most “level-headed” out of his two brothers. Their mom’s boyfriend, Nathan Hodges, is someone that is the complete opposite of their dad, whom they believe died. Hank, Jack, and Sam ran away from their mom and Nathan on a ferry to start their life again somewhere else. And that is what caused Sam to fall overboard while looking for orcas in the ocean. Only one person saw something but never said anything when being interrogated by Hank. An interesting part of the book was when Ruth was explaining how when she was a little girl, she would always kiss the deer her dad would kill, hoping that the heart was still beating. That’s interesting because in day-to-life here, kissing a deer’s heart would be considered animal abuse and disgusting. The author’s message is an inference of the coming-of-age moments these fictional teens have in her homeland, because the author lives in