Week 2 Reviews

Alyssa: I really like how you took Ms. Patel’s advice and gave a little introduction into what you were going to write about before actually giving us your story. I’ll have to try to incorporate that into my own work. In your piece, “Family Memory,” I can definitely relate to the torture of having older siblings playing pranks on you.  I, myself, have a few older siblings and I can remember getting a concussion because of them.  But what I thought was so clever was that you gave the story from your perspective and then your father’s perspective. Seeing the variation was really interesting, and even though I know I can overuse parentheses, I thought you did a great job at balancing them into your blog.  In the “Kitchen” blog, the details of the kitchen and your family members gives a great visual, but one tiny thing I noticed was that instead of putting “chef,” you put “chief.” So it was only a couple spelling errors that might have needed revision.

Jesus: You are a ridiculously good writer! The fluidity of your work is amazing. The blogs are just so easy to read and there’s always a great introduction followed by an interesting middle, and a grand finale. In your piece on Prompt #5, when reading from your perspective, it was as if I could see you with your brother in the hallway after he tripped, and you freaking out like a normal child of that age would do. And the explanation of why you were hiding and how parents can misinterpret that for something else is really reasonable to address. The only question I had about that particular blog was…did you mean for the tone of the story to change at the end of Joey’s interpretation? After Joey trips, he immediately thinks that a lonely death is inevitable…which is a definite change from the impersonations and laughter. And then the last sentence brings back the comedic energy that was originally throughout the rest of the blog. So the back and forth switch just made me curious. The Kitchen blog was also very well written. I like the beginning dialogue between you and your mom before you got into more details, and the funny sarcasm that you tend to use…it always make me laugh. I really enjoyed the paragraph about why your mom couldn’t encourage you to play professional basketball.

Miranda: So first question…did the story from “The Dating Game” blog actually happen? Because if it did, I feel so sorry for the guy and his grunge girl. Your attention to detail in that blog seemed unrealistic. As I read it, I was biting at my nails hoping the young boy didn’t say something horrible to “Daddy.” And I still can’t believe a father would actually do that to his daughter’s boyfriend. If I was that kid, I would be scarred for life.  In the blog, “Terror Child,” I could really see how you incorporated a piece of information in the beginning and then at the end expanded on it. It really tied all the pieces of the story together. I also appreciated the little forewarning of the child ranting before the following paragraph began because if it wasn’t there, I would have been seriously confused. I also thought it was creative to use “that woman” when describing your dad’s soon-to-be wife because it set the tone for how you really felt about her.