Ever since I was a
child, I did not have a big interest for reading. I used to always think of
reading as one of my last priorities, instead of doing it first off when I get
home. But one day, my mom and I were talking about what book I should read next
(we have to read every night) because I was clueless when looking for books. My
mom knew that I loved books that had to do around the time period of WW2, and how
much they also inspire me. She recommended a few books, like Night by Ellie Wiesel and also Goodnight Maman by Norma Fox Mazer
(which I ended up reading later 8th grade year), but the book that
seemed most interesting to me was this book called Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. I was hesitant about reading this,
because my mom has recommended books to me before that were not always the most
interesting. I decided to give the book a shot anyways, because I had nothing
else to lose. The first night I started reading Sarah’s Key though, I knew it was a book for me.
Sarah’s Key was a story of a typical
1940’s French girl, named Sarah, who was awakened one night to something that
would change her life forever. She was sound asleep in her bed, when she
frighteningly heard shouts and bangs at the door. All she could hear was “OPEN
UP! IT’S THE POLICE!” from outside the apartment door. When her mother finally
answered the door, they were told that they must be evacuated immediately. Sarah
had a little brother who she was afraid would not be able to keep up with
everything that was going to go on (even though what she imagined was not even
half as bad as what was coming for her), so she told him to hide in a secret
closet kept inside the house with a cup of water. As she locked the door with
her special key, she reassured him that she would be back in a couple of hours
after everything was resolved. Little did she know that she would not be going
back to her house for a very long time? After this, her, her mother and father
were all evacuated into an arena called the Veledrome de’Hiver (which would be
known as one of the saddest, most depressing times for France in the war).
There were 13,152 Jews that were kept here until they were shipped off to
places like Auschwitz where many later died and others lucky to have their
lives.
The
interesting part of this book is that when something would happen in Sarah’s
story in 1942, it went to a completely different story about a woman named
Julia from present day. She was a young writer who had a good life of living in
France with a handsome husband and a wonderful daughter. She went into work one
day, when she was told that she was going to have to write an article about the
anniversary of the Vel di’Hiv Roundup. This astounded her because she had never
heard of any Vel di’Hiv before. Many Parisians saw this as so depressing that
they didn’t even want to talk about it. Once she starts doing research and
learned more about this terrible event, she sees that one of the families that
was evacuated into the Vel di’Hiv used to live in the same apartment as her
husbands family. This automatically attached her to the story of this family,
and where they may be today.
As
the story progressed, Julia finds more and more clues leading up to this girl,
like when she found out that Sarah had ended up moving back to the United
States. Julia was even more attached now to Sarah because she was originally
from the United States. While she is having this amazing research done, she
also has a lot of family troubles along the way. Julia desperately wanted
another child, while her husband was fine with the daughter they already had. After
begging her husband for ages, he forbade her from having another. Nonetheless,
she still got pregnant and was worried to see what her husband’s reaction would
be when he found out. She was not sure about what he would do, (divorce, abort
the baby, have it?) or how he would do it. She ended up telling him and he
thought it would be best if she got an abortion. She went to the hospital and
was about to get the abortion when she realized that this was not just his
baby, which she had every right to keep and have it no matter what he says.
So
you can see that these are two very different stories, but in between them you
can see similarities and resemblance to one another in their lives. When Julia
had found out that Sarah had survived the concentration camp and went back to
America, she also realized that she had met a man and gotten married! I will
not spoil it, but it does lead her to a whole other adventure from country to
country (France, America, Italy, etc.). Julia finds out some pretty amazing,
yet tragic things that will keep your eyes glued to the book for hours.
Sarah’s Key was that book that changed
my mind or point of view on reading. It taught me that books are not always
those “you have to read this” situations. I just have to keep an open mind
about what to read, and soon enough I will find some pretty amazing books,
probably in a different genre, author that I ever thought I would read. I look
at reading now as something I look forward to every night after I am done with
all my homework. Those moments when I am looking at the last paragraph of the
book and having that feeling of “yes! I got another book done!”
Writing Center Response:
After going to the writing center, I realized how much it has helped me. I used to be afraid to go to the writing center, because I thought I would pretty much be judged by my writing, and everything I did bad on. I now see that they embrace your writing and just help you with certain things that you include better within your paper. My meeting went very well. After reading my paper to the writing center worker, she helped me immediately by issues that many people have, and also what kinds of things that I could add to my paper to make it sound more sophisticated and less "5th grade writing". During the meeting, we saw that one of my key "misses" was my overuse of pronouns. After re-reading, I got myself confused with who was who, because I kept using the pronoun "it" or "she". That was one of the main things that I revised. The other thing that I revised was my word choice. I tried to change out some of my plain words for more sophisticated words. I feel like these are my main problems in all my papers, and I will slowly but surely improve until it is barely noticed!
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