January 27, 2009
In Chapters 17-22, Thomas J goes through some tough times. One of the Benson twins passes away, and he has to go visit the remaining twin in the hospital as well as attend Jefferson’s funeral. He and Mr. Mason have a talk in the car, and Mr. Mason shares a story about his mother that [...]
January 21, 2009
In Chapters 12-16, Carlie and Harvey come to the conclusion that sometimes life is unfair. They obviously have some very good reasons in their own lives to back this up. The basic idea is that there are often things that happen in life that are completely out of our control. For Carlie it might be [...]
January 13, 2009
In Chapters 7-11. Harvey has a difficult time writing letters because he doesn’t want to write to his dad, and he doesn’t have an address for his mom. Because of this, he begins to make a series of lists such as “Bad Things That Have Happened To Me” and “People I’m Scared Of.” This quickly [...]
January 12, 2009
In chapters 5-6, we learn more about our main characters and their backgrounds. We also learn why the book is named “The Pinballs”. Carlie makes the comparison between herself, Harvey, and Thomas J to the pinballs in a pinball machine. She claims that they’re always sitting there waiting for another person to put in a [...]
January 7, 2009
During our pre-reading activities, we discussed some of the themes that we would encounter in The Pinballs. One of those themes is “Living with Disappointments”. We can usually categorize these into mini, minor, and major disappointments. Share a “mini” disappointment and explain how you learned from that experience. Remember not to share anything too personal.
