Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Book Report: Downham and Rosoff

In her Junior Certificate book report for last term's exam, Darcy Maule compared two novels with not-dissimilar titles, Before I Die by Jenny Downham and How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff.  

Darcy writes:

The book I preferred is most definitely Before I Die because I related to the book more than How I Live Now. I chose these books because they seemed to have good storylines that appealed to me. How I Live Now is about a girl called Elizabeth who calls herself Daisy who moves to England from New York City to live with her dead mother’s sister and cousins. A war breaks out in England while the aunt is stuck in Oslo and the children are separated by gender. Daisy then escapes with her younger cousin Piper to find the other family members including her cousin Edmund who she has fallen in love with.

Before I Die is about a girl who is 16 called Tessa who suffers with leukaemia. The doctors said to Tessa “I’d encourage you to do the things you want to do.” Tessa takes that quite literally and makes up a bucket list of things she wants to do before she dies with help from her best friend Zoey. Tessa’s parents are divorced so she lives with her loving Dad and her honest little brother Cal. Tessa’s dad is stuck in denial about her illness and just wants to spend time with her while her mother is very supportive about her list. Tessa’s main point on her list is to fall in love which happens when she encounters her neighbour Adam.


Read the complete book report here.

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