Text title- Canterbury Quake
Author- Desna Wallace
Text type- Diary
Date read- 25th February, 2019
The story was set around the Canterbury earthquakes, from 8th August, 2010 to 30th July, 2011. The diary is written by 11 year old Maddy who lived in Christchurch during the earthquakes. The diary is about how Maddy’s family live through the earthquakes and how she finds family relationships important.
The character that I find interesting is Tessa. Tessa is the oldest child in the family, Maddy’s sister. In the start of the book, Tessa is like a bully to Maddy. She is often mean to Maddy because she’s older and has more control of things over Maddy, such as having her own cell phone. This gives the impression to the reader that she is strong and independent. However, after the earthquakes happen, Tessa became very scared and would sometimes cry alone when she’s in her room. When I’m scared and alone, I’ll find a closed room and lock the doors. Then focus on something else such as social media or on hobbies instead of the things that scare me. But I really can’t do that if I’m in an earthquake, can’t I?
The message I took from this book is strong bonds with family and friends can break easily. In the book, Maddy’s best friend, Laura had to move to Timaru after the earthquake. At Timaru, Laura has met some new friends at her new school. This weakened the friendship with between Maddy and Laura as they don’t meet as much and Laura has a lot more friends to be occupied with. I can relate to this, even though I am 9000 kilometers away from my family, I still have a very strong bond with my family, because I call them a few times a week and exchange photos.
There were a lot of challenges Maddy and her family has to deal with. This includes dealing with liquefaction, no flushing toilets, no water, no electricity, limited transportation and limited daily supplies. Their family is very tough to choose to deal with these problems instead of moving out of Christchurch. These are problems that people like me will not be able to experience in the urban areas of Hong Kong. There are almost no natural disasters that bring mass destruction. The most powerful natural disaster we have are typhoons. Whenever we have one, we will buy food enough for a couple of days and wait for the typhoon to either die out or past. Some thrill seeking teenagers will use this opportunity to go out to the shore and have fun. One of the recent typhoons left devastating damage to the city. The typhoon picked up all the bricks on the water front and threw them around. It even uprooted hundreds of trees which pulled up underground power lines and other pipes.
The title of the text was very appropriate. It clearly describes what the content of the book was about so that the reader doesn’t have to read through the book description to know if it’s the book their looking for.
I would recommend this book to people who like reading journals or people who are interested in geology and earthquakes. This is because you can learn about what’ll happen during an earthquake besides the initial shake.
Morning Welton,
You’ve made a good start here.
Now you need to:
– integrate quotes
– reflect on ‘text and self’ and ‘text and world’ – as we did on the board last Wednesday. Please refer to the classroom website, where there is evidence of this.
GB
Hi Welton,
The same feedback as the 11h of March applies.
As we spoke through just now, make sure you:
– relate to the characters/ideas/challenges and give your personal connections to them.
So the ‘family bond’ is one we discussed and how you can understand Maddy and Laura’s relationship, because you have a solid relationship with your family.
NOT ACHIEVED
You made a good attempt here, Welton.
However, with your personal response, you need to engage more thoughtfully in the connections between ‘text and self’.