Reading Response on Awake by Lisa McMann

   The book "Awake" by Lisa McMann

    Janie's dream catching habits cause multiple problems for her at school. As every year of school goes by for Janie, the more people fall asleep. She constantly gets caught in peoples nightmares, sexual fantasies, and past memories. This causes many problems for her, especially when all she wants to do is go to college and learn. An example of this is during her math class period, "Jane's fingers slip from the math book as she feels herself slip into another dream." This constant habit of falling into other peoples dreams impacts her grades greatly. She is currently failing math and many other subjects to.

   Even though dream catching affects her school life, it also damages her life outside of school as well. 

"Janie goes blind to the road, stomps on the brake and flips the gear shift into neutral. She reaches to find the emergency brake and pulls, before she becomes paralyzed... Janie is numb. Her foot slides off the brake pedal. Her car rolls off the road."(pg. 48-49)

These are the da

   Not only is her school and life at risk but also her health. Dream catching takes it's toll on Janie, hard. "She tries to pull herself out of it. She's too tired today, too hungry."(1) She needs to get more sleep then most for going into dreams takes energy, sometimes energy she doesn't have. But it doesn't just take energy, over the years of doing this, it takes many other tolls as well. 

"After a few years of being a dream catcher, I started to loose my sight. At the age of twenty two, I was completely blind. I also started to loose feeling in my hands and unable to write anymore."(pg. 56)

Dream catching will not only take her eyesight away and feeling in her hands, but it will kill her in the end.

Forward for Picture Book

                                                                          Forward


Between the years 1849-1950, African-Americans got excluded from many activities because of the color of their skin. They could not go to the same schools, they got waited after all the whites got served. But then a law was passed that "All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment" of any area of public use, " regardless of race, color, religion, or national origin." This law was called the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
    As still a growing teenager, I learn and witness new events constantly. Some of these experiences is segregation. I have seen people excluded in activities because of what they look like. It wasn't on a scale as massive as the one in 184901950. But no matter how large, it was still exclusion of a certain group of people based on what they looked like.
      This exclusion sparked my interest in stopping people that feel this kind of "justice" is correct. I began paying attention to what went on around me more then ever. I really began to notice that kids in some schools began to get picked on just because their heritage was from a country that was not ours. They picked on kids that had differences that could not be helped. I started to wonder that if one day we will realize that our similarities bring us closer together and our differences join us together as one community.
       This is a fictional story based on events that happened in the past, and are currently happening today.