Graduation project

GRADUATION PROJECT

Siara Johnson

Literature Comparative

Study

SARAH

DESSEN

DreamlandKeeping the

MoonSomeone Like

You

Purpose

"Deep reading is indistinguishable from deep

thinking." ~ Maryanne Wolf

Coll

egeUniversity

Success

Process

Dreamland

Someone Like You

Keeping the Moon

She is sitting on the beach, alone. Her legs are curled under her, and her hands are feeling the

pebbles at her side. They are smooth, like ducks' eggs. They fit snugly into her palm. The kind of

pebble David used to kill Goliath, she thinks. She looks out over the sea. It is pewter, it is lead. The waves are bloated and sullen. They clutch at the shore and rasp as they retreat, surly as a kicked

cur. The wet shore shines with the slug trail residue of the waves. The cliffs, honey and butter

in sunshine, are the grey of gravestones and loneliness. She turns the pebbles over and over, rhythmically, rocking. The wind has turned her long hair into whips which lash her cheeks red and raw. She does not tuck it behind her ears.

She does not look at the bag that squats beside her. She thinks back, to the time before. She can't help it. Then, the sun was shining and the beach

was innocent. She starts to dig. At first, she is careful. She lifts the pebbles out, one by one, and piles them to one side. They form a cairn. As she gets down below the first layer, the stones are smaller, spikier, wetter, with more sand in the

mixture. She scrabbles at

“Samantha could hear the telltale clinking of empty

Cruiser bottles rolling around on the car’s floor.

The girls were singing, loud and off key. while she got

her bag from the boot. When the tooting vehicle

departed .”

“Her nearest neighbor lived over a kilometer

away and she did not feel like making the trek over

rocky paddocks in this blackness.”

“She shrugged and went back inside. With the

dimming flashlight in her hand she went in search of

candles and a lighter. Silently she cursed herself

for giving up smoking.”

“It struck her as odd that her cat,

Fanny, had not yet come to greet her,

and she walked through the house calling her pet.“

“She wasn’t sure what help he could

offer anyway, he was no electrician. She looked across the

distance toward his house.”

“The cat was cold and solid. Samantha’s hand flinched away as a shudder of fear passed through her. She

cried out with a wet sob.”

“But when she reached out to touch the pony’s neck she knew that it wasn’t possible.

Nor was it possible for the goat nearby, whose body was

stiffened and beginning to bloat, to ever stand again.”

“Tears flooded as the pain of loss hit her like

a punch to the stomach. Her head reeled with

the tragedy of the situation.”

“The wheat in the paddock seemed to sing in the gusty wind. It was the only sign of life for a

very long way.”

“A small oil-burning lamp sat at the bottom of her kitchen cupboard and she lit it with the last match in the box.”

“Perhaps that was Phil out there with a torch, she

wondered. Perhaps one of my animals has taken ill.

“

“The temperature seemed to have

dropped now that she stood on open

ground.”

Resources

Resources

Websites

www.sarahdessen.com

www.helium.com

www.allreaders.com

Summaries

Light Comparisons

FIRST PERSON

High School

Analytical Comparisons

Realization / Internal

Struggle to Overcome

Dreamland “I sat on my bed and

looked at that picture for a long, long time. I hated the girl I saw there, and she didn’t even care, didn’t know, just staring out, oblivious. She spent her whole life wanting to be someone else, something else, and it had gotten her nowhere. I wanted to shake her, wake her up. But it was too late now”(227).

Keeping the Moon

“Even though I’d been teased all my life, I’d always taken a small, strange comfort in my folds of fat… The weight was like a force field, shielding me… Now, almost fifty pounds lighter, I had nothing left to hide behind… I could build muscle, but not confidence” (5).

Someone Like You

“When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. But the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren’t yet in place” (23).

Boy Problems

Dreamland

“But no matter how quickly I left class…he always managed to get there first…Sometimes, it was just a little rough: a blocking bruise. Other times, a hard foul. And if things were really bad—full contact” (168).

Keeping the Moon

“I heard the kitchen door slam shut. Norman was gone… Norman, who was now sitting in the front seat of his car, fiddling with the glove box. He slammed it shut; it dropped open. Again. And again” (173).

Someone Like You

“Are you going to Rhetta’s?”

“I don’t know, Halley…Don’t start this again okay?”

“Why don’t you ever take me there? Or any of the places you go? I mean, what do you guys do?” (213)

Male Adversaries are Eccentric and

Intelligent in Their Line of Work

Dreamland

“Rogerson’s depth of knowledge continually surprised me. It seemed like there was literally nothing he didn’t know” (113).

“Rogerson operated a brisk business selling pot and other various illegals… He was a perfectionist, whether it came to measuring a perfect quarter-ounce or knowing the complete French conditional tense” (110).

Keeping the Moon

“I’ve been working on this series of paintings for my portfolio… It got me into art school” (92).

“Hey Picasso!” (187)

Someone Like You

“He could copy any signature perfectly on the first try. It was a gift… I kept waiting for him to get caught. But it never happened” (62).

Sensitive to Others Feelings

Dreamland

“I knew I was barely going to make it to meet Rogerson on time as it was. Rina hadn’t seen me… but as I watched her punch in the cigarette lighter with a jab of her hand, then wipe her eyes, I just couldn’t go home” (134).

“I’d look out in the stands and see my mother beaming up at me… and I knew if I quit, it would break her heart” (42).

Keeping the Moon

“I felt a fury rise in me toward Bea Williamson and every nasty thing she’d said about Mira in my earshot. It built like a flush, crawling up my neck to make my scalp tingle, so different from my own shame yet feeling the same” (168).

Someone Like You

“I need to come home. Scarlett called to tell me. She needs me” (9).

“I reached over and pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her… feeling her shoulders shake under my hands” (21).

Significance of Building Close Relationships

Dreamland

Rogerson

Cass

Corinna

Keeping the Moon

Isabel

Morgan

Norman

Someone Like You

Scarlett

Macon

Importance of the Mother

Dreamland

“I’d just put my head on her shoulder, leaning against my mother, who would hold me like she did when I was a small child, rocking me back and forth. It had been so long since someone had touched me and I hadn’t wanted to flinch” (230).

“My mother and I took longer walks , talking about everything…I began to see her more as a person, a woman, not just the queen of bake sales and lemon puffs. And when I was finally ready to take a picture of a face, it was hers I chose” (243).

Keeping the Moon

“And there was that sparkle in her eye. Bright enough to reach across an ocean and still get me. My mother believed… She’d believed me all the way out of forty-five-and-a-half pounds. She’d believed us from living out of the car to having anything we wanted” (98).

“I sat with her arms around me, crying… She just rocked me back and forth… She stroked my hair and told me I was beautiful” (128).

Someone Like You

“Halley, I don’t think you understand how easy it is to make a mistake that will cost you forever. All it takes is one wrong choice…You don’t know what Macon’s involved in” (170).

“If you don’t have the sense to stay away from that boy, I will keep you away from him” (244).

Resolution

Dreamland

“I lowered the camera to my waist, tilting it upward. Then I put my finger on the shutter, swallowed, and smiled at the girl in the mirror. She smiled back, her head cocked to the side, and I knew that she understood it all” (248).

“I burst through it into the air to finally breathe on my own” (250).

Keeping the Moon

“I felt different. As if something pulled taut for so long had eased back, everything that had been strained settling into place: those forty-five-and-a-half pounds finally gone for good” (202).

“When I danced, I thought only of that girl sitting on the back stoop of the Last Chance in her sunglasses and her lip ring. She wouldn’t be afraid to dance, and neither was I” (223).

Someone Like You

“I deserved to grow, and to change, to become all the girls I could ever be over the course of my life, each one better than the last” (243).

“I didn’t want anyone to start this journey with me… I was only thinking of Grace Halley with each step I took” (280).

Conclusion

Reality

Photos sarahdessen.com/ (book covers) www.wts.edu (book with highlighter) equipacademy.blogspot.com/ (books & globe) www.texpirg.org (girl reading textbooks) www.flickr.com (college textbooks) www.freewebs.com (Sarah Dessen) www.amazon.com (Sarah Dessen) www.ehow.com (books) www.kaboodle.com (eyes) www.ccc.commnet.edu (PowerPoint logo) www.family.go.com (two teenage girls) www.wpln.org (group of teenage girls) www.owp.com (high school) www.wystarrecovery.com (two teen girls) www.dreamstine.com (teenage girl) Clipart images

www.meganbostic.blogspot.com (crying girl) www.asu.edu (domestic abuse) www.gearlog.com (jeopardy) www.heathjockey.com (marijuana) www.pixdaus.com (girls hugging) www.juniorvelo.com (happy mom) www.secure.stelizabeth.com (hug) www.rexam.com (girl in field) www.homes.bio.psu.edu , www.technabob.com

, www.clock-desktop.com , www.littleclockshop.com , www.circa50.com (clocks)

www.keephip.com (pregnant girl) www.indyposted.com (self esteem) www.saidaonline.com (crying girl) www.sfdiamondgirl.mlblogs.com (bears)