During the book “When you reach me”, a few characters changed. For example, Julia changed. 

At the beginning of the book, Julia seemed really mean, obnoxious and spoiled. Here is an example: “She complained that there was no “café au lait”-colored construction paper for her skin, or “sixty-percent-cacao-chocolate” color for her eyes.” And here is an example of Julia being a spoiled kid: “ She took trips all over the world with her parents. She would disappear from school and show up two weeks later with satin ribbons worked into her braids, or with a new green velvet scoop-neck dress, or wearing three gold rings on one finger. She learned about sixty-percent-cacao- chocolate, she said, in Switzerland, where her parents had bought her a little silver watch that she was always shoving into people’s faces”.Basically, Miranda does not like Julia at all. But, at the end of the book, Julia and Miranda surprisingly end up having a playdate to bake a cake for Annemarie's birthday and they end up being friends!  At the beginning of the book, Miranda thought that Julia was just a spoiled little girl but at the end up the book, Miranda and Julia were actually friends! I think that she changed because of Annemarie. I think that because Annemarie and Julia used to be best friends and when they split up, Julia became kind of mean and she stayed like that until she became friends with Annemarie again.


GEORGE
Question: Some characters play small but important roles. Name such a character. Why is that character necessary for the story?

Response:
In this book, there are a lot of characters who play small roles I think the only one who is really necessary is the spider in "Charlotte's Web" called Charlotte.

Charlotte is very important in this book because I think that she is the cause of George showing and proving to every body that she is really a girl. I think that because In the book George says the Kelly that the play is the only opportunity to show to her mom and brother that she was a girl. She said that because since Charlotte is a girl, she thought that playing Charlotte will make everybody know that she is a girl. Proof that Charlotte really helped George is that when George and Kelly were at the zoo at the end of the book, George said:
"Melissa stopped at the tarantula exhibit. The furry crawlers were a much larger species of spider than Charlotte had been. Still, Melissa thanked each one quietly. She searched for webs but didn't see any."

That means that she was so grateful for everybody knowing that she was a girl that to thank and honor Charlotte, she thanked the spiders in the zoo.

LISTEN, SLOWLY (2/8/2017)
Question: Do any characters change during the story? If they do how are they different by the end? What changed them? Did it seem believable? What did characters in the story think of them throughout the book?

Response:
In this story, a lot of characters changed. For example, Mai (aka Mia) and Ùt changed.

At the beginning of the story, Mai was on a plane to go to Vietnam and since she really was not happy about it she said to her dad: "What's so important? All her children and grandchildren are in California. Her life is there. My life is there."
But, after she met some friends and found out that Vietnam was not so bad, when her dad and grandma offered her a ticket to go back to California, she declined it because she wanted to let her grandma stay for a little longer in the village that her husband used to live in. She changed because in the beginning, she did not want to go to Vietnam with her grandma, all she wanted to do was stay in Laguna with her family and friends. But, after a few weeks of living in Vietnam, Mai started to like it there and even decided to stay 12 more days at the end even though she could have gone home. I think she changed because her grandma and dad were really depending on her and she did not want to let them down.

At the beginning, Ùt did not like Mai at all. She despised Mai because on her first day in Vietnam, Mai threw a rock in the air and Ùt's precious frog ate it and almost choked on it! But, during the story, Ùt and Mai get to know each other a little more and they are actually very alike! At the end of the book, Ùt changes a lot because she becomes nicer to Mai and since she became friendlier to everyone during the story, all the kids she knew that hated her became her friends. I think she changed because Mai was really nice to her so she also wanted to return the favor.

Here are three things that make me think about the world that I'm not connected to:
1) The language in Vietnam (vietnamese) is different than the languages I know.
2) In Vietnam they put on different clothes than in America.
3) Vietnam is in Asia and America is in North America.

THE WAR THAT SAVED MY LIFE
Question:
Where and when does the story take place?  How do you know?  If the story took place somewhere else or in a different time, how would it be changed?

Response:
This story mainly took place in the country/city of England, Susan's house, the mom's house. If the story had happened at a different time and a different continent, the story would change a lot. 

Here are the three ways the story would of changed:

1) Ava and her brother Jamie would continue to live with their horrible mom and they would probably die early. Most importantly, Ava would of continued to think that she was just a "crippled" as her mom told her and she would of grown up without  and confident.

2) Susan would continue to hate her life and sulk and slacken everyday because Becky had died. 

3) England would have been invaded by spies because Ava wouldn't be there to report the spy that she had seen.