Axcel Verango

Mr Frieden

English II H

23 October 2019

Outside Reading Assignment Questions

1) Make 1 Connection to something else you have read.

As I was reading this book, I realized it sounded similar to another book that I’ve read before,

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. What Shumeul had experienced in the concentration camp

during the time of the Holocaust is very much similar to what Arn has experienced during the

Cambodian Genocide.

2) Make 2 REAL-WORLD connections to your book.

Well for starters, one of the most obvious connections I can make to the real-world is the

Cambodian Genocide. It even gives a mini history lesson at the end of the book about the

Cabodian Gendocide. Another real-life connection I can make to this book is the dialogue . The

way the author wrote the dialogue in the book is as if you were the protagonist of the book and

had somewhat of an accent.

3) Who do you think is the intended audience?

I feel like the author made the book for more of those “last-hope” type of book fans. What I

mean by that is that I feel like it’s made for those who are fans of stories where the main

character(s) would experience the worse they could possibly ask for, then some type of miracle

hits and the story either ends or carries on into a happy hour ending.

4) What is the author’s purpose?

There’s multiple author’s purposes you can take away from the book after reading it, but the one

that stands out the most is one of the most famous and common one. There are plenty of books

that have the concept of never giving up even if you’ve hit rock-bottom and this book is one of

them.

5) Evaluate the ending of this book. Considering how the book unfolded, is it an effective

ending? Why? Why not?

Personally for me, it fit my preferences of a perfect ending. I like the type of endings where

throughout the story they basically go through hell and then at the end, they finally get the type

of treatment they’ve been wanting for. But, there is one thing that I don’t like about the ending. It

would’ve been a good place to put in a present-day chapter of how Arn has been doing and how

the Genocide affected him in the long run, but the author just kept it plain and simple.