Historical Fiction Story/ Letters from Rifka
Letters from Rifka by Karen Hesse is a book about a girl’s journey to America. In this book Karen Hesse does amazing poetic sentences like: ”I shiver at the cold of Poland.” Or: “I wanted to tell this skinny, pock-faced man he was wrong.’ Isn’t that so poetic? And she involves great facts like: There are many Polish Jews. Or that Rifka goes to Antwerp. If you want a great historical fiction book, I give this two thumbs up!
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January 28th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
And two thumbs up to you for doing two posts on this book!
January 30th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
KD,
I think you can add a little bit more to this. To me it doesn’t seem as though you really understood what she was going through, having to leave he family because of a disease and all. Do you think that it’s fare? Try putting yourself in Rifka’s shoes. Imagine finding out one day that you can’t go to America because you have ringworm after you travel, and you got typhus, and you’re so close to being free. Imagine how much feeling she put into those letters. Do you think she was close to her cousin Tovah? And do you think it would have been easy or hard to write out all her thoughts, good and bad?
And then when she found out that she got ringworm from that girl. Do you think she took pity on her? Nobody deserves to have to go through that. Even the most evil person in the world. Do you think she understood the girl and what was happening to her, because she had experienced this to?
I see that you worked on this but I think you can spend more than 2 sentences focessing on the way Karen Hesse made up this intriguing story and made it so real. That’s what historical fiction is all about. And that is why this was one of the reading choices.
You don’t need to write more on your post, just think about what I said.
MM
January 31st, 2008 at 5:30 am
MM your points are well taken, but this ended up a bit shorter than average because KD did an additional extra post on the book as well. So she made this one a bit shorter than she would have otherwise.
February 1st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
And I happened to understand completely what she has to go through. I just happened to be in a rush, so I could not write alot. And in my other post, I really explained what in the book. I just felt in my second post I didn’t need to put so much detail. Hope I didn’t ruin your voyage looking at blogs.