Dear Classmates,
I have recently finished the book Hanging on to Max by Margaret Bechard. This book is about and eighteen year old named Sam, whos life is put on hold when he finds out that his girlfriend is having a baby, and is planning to put it up for adoption. When he finds this out he decides that he will raise it by himself, which leads to problems. Instead of spending his time playing football, going to pep rallies, and spending time with friends, he trades it all in for diper bags and strollers.
I would rate this book a six out of ten stars. I believe the author had a good idea, but when she decided to write it all down it was lacking a lot of emotions. Being a parent would be hard at a young age, and the character Sam did not show a lot of emotion through the text. The way I saw it was that he kept the emotions inside, when it would have made for a better story if he showed more of them through his character.
The genre of this book is definatly realistic fiction. In out society many people have to put of school in order to raise their families. The main character Sam is trying to juggle single parenthood, proving to his father that he can raise his son, schoolwork, and attempting a new relationship with a young mother from his school. Nowadays many college students are having the same issues as Sam is.
One thing that I really liked that the author did was the she seemed to do research before she wrote this book. In the author's note it said that she had voluntered at a highschool nursery, which motivated her to write this story. I think that this really helped her to write her story and make it more meaningful to her and her readers.
As I said earlier, I think the author could have done a much better job at emotions. I also think that this story lacked detail. The detail it included was not enough. She should have used better word choice, and more description. For example when Sam is at a friends with his son, Max, and Max becomes hurt, she should have used this as an oppertunity for her to give detail, and make the readers have a lot of emotion. Another thing was that in the end a big decision is made. I did not really like how she just sprung the decision on the readers. There was no evidence that the desicion would be made, it was just thrown at the reader with not a lot of clues or evidence that it would happen.
One really important quote of the book was,
" What's wrong Sam?" I thought of all the times she'd asked me that. All the times she'd asked and I'd said, " Nothing." Or made something up. "I think I'm going to give Max up for adoption."
This was by far the most important quote of the book. Sam finally decided the fate of his son that was life changing for many reasons. It also proved that this was hard for him to decide, but he was a good parent, since he could make a choice as big as this one after raising his son for a whole year.
I would reccomend this book to anyone who likes a good story with a large change of events. If you like storys that have the ability to make you feel very emotionful this is the book for you.
Sincerely,
Charlotte Period 4-5
