9.15.10 Week 4 Readers Response

It is important to use our observations/knowledge of the world around us to understand and make meaning out of what we read. Thinking about your experience with the writing excursion, how much importance does your author place on how two characters in your book dress/look? How do you know this?



In my book Dragon Heir the author, Cinda Williams Chima, takes time to describe each character. If not their clothes, definitely their face and hair. It appears to be very important to her to create a good picture of each character so you can tell who is evil and who is friendly or who is powerful and who is not. This is why the novelty of reading this book has not worn off.

Madison is one of the friendly and poor non wizards, but she has the power to suck the magic out of a wizard and leave them weak. She wants to be a painter and attends college at Trinity, a Wizard school. Eventually, she has to leave school and go back to her family home in the mountains. On page 210, Madison finds Jason lying by the road injured. Jason looks up at her and the author writes, “…her worried face appeared…It was bronzed a bit –she’d been out in the sun-and her voluminous hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt-different from her bohemian mode of dress in Trinity”. I believe the author put so much effort into drawing a clear picture of what Madison looks like to stress how different she looks living at home on a mountain. She has been in the sun painting daily, at school she is inside most of the time, and because she is looking after her siblings she isn’t dressed to impress anyone, rather to work.
On page 69 we meet Claude D’Orsay, an evil and powerful wizard. The author creates the image of power and money by stating, “Claude D’Orsay stood framed in the doorway, dressed in wool trousers, cashmere sweater, and tweed jacket. The wizard’s hair was dark and else-cropped, his face fine-boned and aristocratic. I know from past books I’ve read and movies I’ve see that only the rich and snooty wear cashmere sweaters and tweed jackets. I also know that the word “aristocratic” means someone of “blue blood” who is related to or from a royal family.

Novelty is our word for this week