My report is on a book called Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli.

This book is basically a remade story

of what had really happened; it is the same principle as a remix to a song. The book is about the
boy who goes by the name of Jew, or gypsy, and a more common name, stop thief. These are the
names of a young boy living in the single hardest times, the dictatorship of Hitler. This young
boy has no family and is living on his own on the streets struggling to survive. And this young
boy has no choice but to steel to survive and to imagine what he wants to be. And in the
beginning of the book all he wants to be is a jackboot. Now a jackboot in this book is a modified
version of a Nazi, just worse. A jackboot is of all sizes has some sort of weapon on them at all
time, wears a red jacket, and big black boots. But these guys didn’t go by orders from Hitler, no
they were too far from him to care. So they did whatever they wanted to do, people would
constantly get hurt for looking at them in the wrong way. And this boy just wanted to be one of
them.

One of the biggest moments in the book is when he steels something for
the first time in the book. And that is the first thing in the book, he is stealing a loaf of bread
from this lady, and then all he hears is stop thief. And he is confused at what is being said. But
then he runs right in to someone. He was also a boy, but much bigger than much younger boy.
As they both got up the bigger boy starts to yell at gypsy about how that bread was for him to
steal and not him. And then he says that they need to get out of there before the jack boots come
after them and they get in really big trouble. So gypsy follows the other boy trying to keep up
with him and they finally get to a stopping point. And the young boy has no idea where he is.
There more people, there was the boy he had run into who had announced that his name was Uri,
and there was a boy smoking a cigar who had asked were Uri had found him, there was a horse
that just popes, and there were two other boys behind Uri. And one of the boys asked him what
his name was and he said stop thief. And that is when his name is first introduced in the book.

And the importances of the names are huge! Only two

names are mentioned though, Uri who is a Jew, and stop thief who has been introduced as not
only a Jew but a gypsy. The other boys are not mentioned but they are betrayed in the story as
lifelong friends to Uri, and always will be. Other people are introduced later on in the book,
which is a little girl who stop thief ends up really liking, and the little girl’s family who later on
kind of takes in stop thief for a short period of time. And all of these people play a very big part
of the whole book, as well as the jackboots.

And another part of the book, which may be the

hardest, is keeping track of all of the places they sleep at, and where they get all of their food.
Keeping in mind that none of these boys have a family anymore and no one to support them,
they all have to support each other. And that includes finding food for each other and helping one
another find food, and other things to help them survive such as water. For example, one of the
places that the boys stayed at was a barber shop that had been abandoned or had been closed for
a short period of time. They stayed in the basement of the barbershop and every once in a while
they would, you could say borrow some of the things that the barber possessed such as a haircut.
And that is when stop thief gets his first haircut, and it wasn’t a good one at that. And one
example of where they got their food was an orphanage home. It may seem pretty messed up to
steel from an orphanage today but for stop thief and Uri, it was perfect. The orphanage was ram
pact with food from other people donating food to the kids with no family. And in the minds of
stop thief and Uri they didn’t have a family either. So they just snuck in there and took anything
and everything that they could. And it benefited all the boys.

And the last thing which was the

ending of the story which was by far the most important and touching part of the whole book. Is
when stop thief and that little girl are in a dark alley? And something floats down in between
both of them, and it’s a flower. But it’s not a plane old flower, no it’s a milkweed. And the
milkweed is the cover of the book and the title. And both characters betrayed it as a sign of hope
as in everything is going to be ok. And that’s when the book ends.

The
significance of the title which is also the cover of the book really doesn’t imply to the book until
the very end of the story. But really the title of the book is giving you a heads up on the biggest
part of the book showing a sign of hope and a sign of it’s going to be ok. And that’s what the title
and the cover is betraying. That the book is a sign of faith and that everything is going to be ok.
And that is simply what I betrayed it as. And other people can betray it in there on special way.
But that is mine, and it may be right or wrong, I don’t know but I do know that that is what I
believe it is.

And I defiantly would recommend this book to anybody that would let me tell them what
it’s about. It’s a good quality book for any freshman or sophomore, or anybody who is willing to
read it at that. It tells a touching story that is somewhat easy to follow if you get into the story.
And it’s the kind of book that you really just don’t want to put down once you get into the read.
And once you do get into the read the next thing you know is you are done with the book. Like I
said it’s like a remix to a song, it’s not really like the original, it isn’t based on the facts on the
dictatorship of Hitler, and in fact Hitler really isn’t mentioned in the book at all, just the
jackboots, that didn’t even exist when the war was going on, they didn’t even exist at all. They
were just a remix of a Nazi. And everything that happens in the book leads to the next thing that
happens. So basically you can make your own assumptions throughout the whole book, and be
right the majority of the time. And not think that you know exactly what’s going to happen next,
and be completely wrong, and then go on thinking that you’re so stupid for not getting it right.

If someone went up to me that I recommended the book to and they said it

was a bad book, I would probably laugh in their face because they probably didn’t follow the
book very well because everything in that book is in there for a reason. If they weren’t I
wouldn’t be saying anything right now other than this book was a waste of my time. All of the
characters were there for a reason, and each one of them had their own symbol. Uri was a leader
throughout the whole book and was somewhat of a dad to everyone in the whole book. He was
the supplier and the thinker of the somewhat of a family. And stop thief was a symbol of hope.
He believed in only the best even in the worst case scenarios. And I the end of the book the
world seemed to stop and this one little flower makes it through all that mess, and there is the
sign of hope. And it lands right in front of the young boy who was a no body in the beginning of
the book. And that is why I would recommend this book.