Reading Response 3/4

                                                                          Short Stories
I really enjoyed reading the short story packet. When it Rains It Rains a River, gave great detail in how the boys felt when it rained and how much they loved to play in the mud. The detail helped me as the reader visualize the feelings as well as the scene of the story. The story was descriptive and the reader was able to get a sense of what the brothers were feeling. The descriptions has the reader engaged in the thoughts and imagination of the author as they read. The way that the author describes the way the brothers play in the mud is interesting and also though provoking as the reader has to imagine what the brothers are doing.

In the story What Our Mother Always Told Us, I picture a scene of my childhood where my mother would tell my brother and I not to do something and then we would do it anyways. Don't walk in the grass and then you would just see us running in the grass. As all young children do disobey their parents was something to relate to. Having been in the situation many times as a child I relate to this short story well.

The Falling Girl, was a very interesting as well as very confusing story. Having a teenage girl falling from a skyscraper was shocking in itself, but then for people to be able to talk to her as she fell was something I thought was very interesting. I began to think that she wasn't really falling, but was speaking of things that have happened to her throughout her life thus far. She seemed lost wanting to fit in in a crowd very different then her own. "She wore a modest, inexpensive spring dress bought off the rack" (Buzzati, 30). Compared to the people that lived in the skyscraper she seemed to not fit in, the people were of high class the higher in the skyscraper they lived the more expensive their clothing and life style. The details give the reader a sense of what is happening in the story, but also give the reader a lot to think about. What was the girl doing at the skyscraper was she planning on killing herself or was it an accident? Not really having a clear ending the reader is left with their own conclusion of what really happened as well as what the real story was about.