Dear Ms. Monaco,
The book I recently read was The Stranger Next Door by Peg Kehret. The genre of this book is realistic fiction. I read this book because I was looking for a good book and many of my friends had read this story once before. I would rate this book nine out of ten. The reason that I didn’t give ten out of ten is because the story had a lot of loose ends.
The main character of this book is Alex Kendrill and Pete the Cat. Alex is a main character because he was the one who was in the entire story; he was also bullied by people at school. Alex also had a lot of character development throughout this book. Pete is a main character because it seems like he wrote this book from his point of view. Just like Alex, Pete was in present throughout the entire book. He also saved Alex’s life.
The genre of this book is realistic fiction. The reason is that anyone can be bullied at school and be threatened by bullies. Also, anyone could be in Alex and Rocky’s situation as they were new kids at school and were trying to make new friends. Alex and Rocky end up at the end of the story being very good friends.
I wonder why Mr. Woosley, a local builder, would set fires to houses that he built. It never said in the story why he did it, but I think the reason is either he was upset at how builders built the house or he was just mad at something that made him do this. I also wonder why Mr. Woosley would put Alex, all tied up, in the bathtub and then set fire to the house. I think that he did that because Alex saw him set a fire to a different house and Mr. Woosley didn’t want anybody knowing about it. If I was Mr. Woosley, I would have just paid Alex to not say anything.
Here is a passage from The Stranger Next Door: Alex took off home. He was halfway to the grove of trees when a gunshot sounded behind him. Alex hit the ground. He let go of Pete, who ran to the closest tree and climbed it. “Hold it right there”, the man called as he ran toward Alex. “Don’t say anything. Don’t yell for help. I missed you on purpose the first time, but I won’t miss again.” A chill prickled down Alex’s arms. He recognized that voice. Mr. Woosley, the man who had built all the houses in Valley View Estates, was the arsonist!
The reason that I chose this paragraph is that it shows who the arsonist of Valley View Estates was. Alex thought it was Duke and Henry, two of the people that had been bullying Alex and Rocky. Alex had never suspected that it was the home builder who was the arsonist. He had even seen the arsonist get in a car after setting a fire and had tried to read the license plate.
I liked the way the author wrote this book. On the front cover, it said the book was written by Peg Kehret and Pete the Cat. In the book, the story written by Peg Kehret is in normal letters while the parts of the story told by Pete were in italicized letters. It made it easy to know who was telling that particular part of the story. I thought that was a good idea for writing a story with two authors.
All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good mystery story. I thought this was a good book maybe you would too.
Sincerely,
Travis parker
