A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

Significance- The reason I chose to read this book was because I thought it would have good message in it and it would be interesting to read about what the main character Gemma is going through. And how she handles it. What I think a reader would take from this book is that this is about a girl named Gemma who is very depressed in the beginning because she feels that she is the cause for her mother's suicide. And ever since her mom gave her a special necklace that she alwayswore she has been having this visions of the past, present, and future. Her family used tolive in Bombay, India, and her brother going to school in London and her father and alcholic starts drinking again. they send her to a school in London and she makes friends and she is still secretly feelin horrible. Towards the middle of the book she learns to cope with everything happenig and is not so upset with herself. And by the end of the book she is totally fine and having fun and being happy. So they would take the fact that everybody goes through hard times and eventually gets over it and still live their lives like a normal human being.


Perspective- If I had to explain this to a third grader then I would say that a girl was having an attitude with her mom and threatened to run far away. When she was having the attitude her mom gave her the necklace that she always wore. Then the girl ran away and had a vision that her mom stabbed herself with a knife because their was a very bad dark shadow thing coming after her. When the vision was over she went to the spot where her mom commit suicide. And saw her actually lying there dead. Then her family all went to London, England because, before her mom died they lived in Bombay, India. The girl was sent to a school in England. And she was always very very sad because she thought that she was the reason for her mom killing herself. But in the middle of the book she is still very sad but she is slowly getting happier and happier. And by the end of the book she is happy and can live her life normaly.



Evidance- The argument the author is trying to make is that when you go through a hard time you need people by your side to help you get through that time. And even though they may not know excactly what is going on in your life you should still open up about your feelings. And not lie about what you feel. And that everything is going to be alright. I also think the author is writing about how you react to other poeple helping you or trying to help. And people think that no one can help them and people who think this don't know anything about what is happening to them. And I think that the author wants to try and help people realize this.

Connections- This book connects to the real world because people do really face their own parents feeling depressed and attempting to commit sucide. And you watch that person that you love go through this and it makes you feel horrible and think well what am I doing wrong? And about how many times you probably don't do what this person tells you to do and how you sometimes ignore them and all of it gets to your head and you think that you are one of the main causes your parents or someone you love is doing what they are doing. And that is what the character in the book is going through. And she feels like no one understands. And that is what happens in real life. The only part that doesn't happen in real life is the visions. But that makes her feel more like an outsider. And all that kind of stuff happened in the past it happens now and will continue to happen in the future. But it is sad.

Supposition- If people going through hard times never happened then I think that life would be the same every single day. You would always be happy and never know what feeling bad was or having to struggle or anything. So I think that if no one went through difficult times then everyone would have to not feel. Because bad things will still happen but you just wouldn't feel it. So you wouldn't feel anything else either. If I could change part of it insted of taking the whole thing out then I would do that. I would just make people feel that they aren't the reason why someone did something that was bad. That it was the other person's problem and that they don't need to worry about them being the cause. It is the other person's choice that they made.