So far, I think that the reading is very interesting. It's always nice to hear about specific events through the eyes of someone who was actually there to witness it take place. (For example, one of the examples had a woman named Geneva who works at a diner that was the place where blacks started to sit at the counter and started to pave the way for the civil rights movement. As I've only heard that story through history books and various other classes, I didn't have any idea what it was like until I read it from someone else's point of view. I think that the book does a great job in the fact that they tell the stories from the first person perspective of the interviewee. Personally, I think that it just makes the story all that more effective for the reader. If there's one thing that I didn't like about the book, it's that the pictures were in black and white. I mean, I'm not entirely sure what year this book came out, (I'll have to check), but I like to see color in a picture and see what they wore, what they looked like....It's hard to really see the people in the picture since the black and white kind of fade into each other and make the person hard to see. Other than that, I really like this book so far. Whenever I read, I like to imagine the story in the form of a movie. If I can actually visualize the story, then I can remember it more which helps me to understand it better. If I can't imagine it, then I'll just stick to writing down what I thought was interesting or important so that I don't forget it later.
One of the themes that's represented in this book that I can connect to myself is the theme do what you love, which I mostly connect with the experience of Steam Train who continued to ride the rails and be a hobo despite all of the dangers. Why did he do so? Because being in that open air and seeing the view of the landscape from outside the train rather than within was something he loved. The story I have that connects to it is the time that I signed up for a contest in the sixth grade. In Delaware in the intermediate middle school (which I think is in the process of being removed actually. Shame...), they have a thing called Battle of the Books. I'm not sure if they still have it; I haven't been in the sixth grade in about seven years. However, it was something that the school had in order to get kids to read. The gist of the game was this: you and a team of students would represent one of your teachers in the school and inform the contest director. Then you were given a list of books to read and every week you would come into the library to discuss the books with the team and one of the librarians. After a few months, there would be a contest in the auditorium that the whole school attended and the teams would compete to answer questions about the books that they read. Whichever team won would get a prize. (I think it was the Harry Potter series and a bag of candy). When I first heard about this contest, I was a little nervous because at that time, I was still really shy and normally didn't do things out of my normal school routine. However, I loved reading books and I thought that I was pretty good at remembering individual story details, so I decided to go with my gut and I joined the club. To this day, I haven't regretted that decision. Now granted, I and another girl were the only two people in the group who actually read the books, which got our team disqualified from the competition, but at the start of the competition, the director of Battle of the Books rewarded our efforts on the team with a Silver Knight award. The Silver Knight award was for students who kept trying to help people on the team and worked hard and our prizes were a button, a bookmark, and a book that I personally found really enjoyable. Now I'm not all for doing things outside my comfort zone, but I loved to read and I joined because of that love, and because of that, I now have a memory that I can cherish for decades.
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