Reading Strategies Metacognitive Journal #1: "The Lovely Bones" by: Alice Sebold

Strategy Predict: Make a smart guess about whats going to happen next Quotation
"That's enough now," he said."Why don't you go home?" Time had come for my father to think of something to say. But all he could think of was this: "Susie," he whispered, the second syllable whipped like a snake. " We've just built a tent," Mr. Harvey said. "the neighbors saw us, We're friends now." "You know something," my father said. "Go home. I can't help you" (Sebold, 57)

My Response
This little conversation with Mr. Harvey and Susie's dad made me think that his dad is curious about this man. He looks very strange not to him but also to all the neighbors. So far what I know about Mr. Harvey is that he has no children's, and no wife. Susie told us that Mr. Harvey is the man that killed her. I think that in the second third of the book he will be more noticed, to people like Ruth Susie's friend or even Ray Singh, the boy who had a crush on her, and her father especially. Susie's death has mostly affected her dad, I think that after meeting with Mr. Harvey that he will try to find evidence by himself that might lead to him being involved in her daughters murder.

*Clarify: Look closer when something is confusing

Visualize: Imagine a picture or movie in your mind as you read

"The Flanagans never suspected for a moment that the girl they read about in the papers over the next few years-MISSING, FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED; ELBOW FOUND BY NEIGHBORING DOG; GIRL, 14, BELIEVED KILLED IN STOLFUZ CORNFEILD; WARNINGS TO OTHER YOUNG WOMAN; TOWNSHIP TO EZONE ADJUSTING LOTS TO HIGH SCHOOL; LINDSEY SALMON, SISTER OF DEAD GIRL, GIVES VALEDICTORIAN SPEECH-could have been in the gray metal safe that a lonely man brought over one night and paid them twenty dollars to sink." (Sebold, 53) "She had run without stopping, her white body thin and fragile and disappearing, while her son clung on to the amber necklace she had torn from her neck to hanged him. His father watched the road.

As I was reading this I could visualize a men sneaking out of his house driving to a quiet place at night. In the back of his car a metal safe carrying a missing girls dead body that everyone wants to know where it went. Him driving to a place where people are dumping their household items. Him giving twenty dollars to dump the safe in a big hole in their backyard. As I visualized this image I felt really bad, keeping in mind that the girl that died is looking down from heaven. For the girl, seeing her body just sink in a hole in the ground. After the visualized the image, I thought that do people really have no feelings for others? What they're doing is affecting others to. The author clearly shows the feeling of the girl, and the man who killed in this chapter and especially this small paragraph.

*Ask Questions: Ask questions to learn more

This quotation was said at the end of chapter Eight. It

made me wonder and think more in depth about Mr. Harvey and why he's so to himself. I wonder if the reason of this is his mother leaving when he was at a young age, or their parents getting in fights frequently. Mr. Harvey has mentioned that he had a wife but she died, to the police he said when they

"She's gone know, son," he said, "She won't be coming back". (Sebold, 97)

came to investigate. I think he's lying about his wife, there's more to why he's all alone and strange. This quotation made me have various questions in mind about Mr. Harvey. Connecting him to why he might of killed Susie. When I read this quotation, I would make a connection to it that everybody else also had. The connection was that I had at least two or three times experienced something like this. When you look at someone and you just can't recognize them. This just happened to me recently, my trip to Pakistan when I landed in Bahawalpur I saw so many people there, that I totally didn't even recognize my cousins, she was grown up and totally different from what I was expecting. She was there like I just through her. Another example is when I visited my mom sides family, I was going to meet my mom's younger sister that evening. I heard from everyone that I was just like her. When she came I recognized her but she looked at me and didn't even say anything, like she looked right through me or I wasn't even there.

Make Connections: Connect what youre reading to something else

"It's so strange," Ruth said. "I mean, it's like we were in the same class since kindergarten but that day backstage in the auditorium was the first time we ever looked at each other." (Sebold, 82)

Summarize: Retell what happened in the story so far

Chapters 1-9 were about Susie's family, friends, and her killer. Susie is dead, and the man that killed her is her neighbor Mr. Harvey. She's telling her story from heaven, looking down at how her parents, friends, and neighbor deal with this. The detective/police officer that's on this case is Len Fenerman. He has recently told Susie's parent that all evidence point to this as a murder. With only with an elbow, and the amount of blood found on the crime scene there sure. Susie wants to help her parents find the right killer, but she can't help she can only see what's happening, and hope that they will find him someday. Susie is a little worried about the murder getting away. Susie's father is curious about their neighbor Mr. Harvey, when we went to talk to him he seemed a little unusual, not having any kids or a wife, and his passion of building outside. He also when to Ray Singh's house a boy who had a crush on Susie to apologize to him, about putting him as a suspect.