READER RESPONSE

I am responding to “The Snowman” by R.L Stine. I have read 181 out of 181. This text is fiction.

Introduction

  The main characters are: Heather, Uncle James, Ben (Heathers boyfriend), Snowman (Bill Jeffers), Aunt Belle, and Kim. The genre of this text is horror because the settings used are dark, almost gloomy feeling such as a deserted parking lot, forest, cemetery. The setting is mainly Heather’s house or the restaurant Heather works at. It also takes place in the present time maybe a couple years ago. The conflict is Snowman killed Heather’s uncle James. The theme is safety. The climax is when Heather is kidnapped at night by Snowman and is taken to be buried in a snowman to die. This is the climax of the story for me because this was a tense moment in the story, it was a do or die situation. The protagonist Heather, and the antagonist is Snowman. The author used foreshadowing when Snowman and Heather went to a secret part of a forest and they built a snowman. Right before they left Snowman punched the head off the snowman.

Retell:

  The title of this text says to me that this text has a lot to do with snowmen and winter. The font that the title is written in is slimy, almost creepy looking. That tells me that the genre of it is horror.

  To summarize this text in 1-3 sentences i would say that Heather a fourteen year old girl is in love with a guy name Snowman. Snowman’s a cold-blooded killer that tried to murder Heather’s family. In the end of this text he ends up getting caught by the police and what’s left of Heather’s family lived happily ever after.

  What I want to remember about this text is that you have to be careful of who to trust. Heather wasn’t careful and got her and her family either injured or killed.


  My favourite part of the text is when Heather and Ben tried to steal back the check for 2000 dollars that Heather gave to Snowman as a present. This was my favourite part because as the tension raised the author got more descriptive of how they slowly crept through the garage and everything pitch dark. Any little movement can wake him up. Then the author twisted it a bit so Ben hits into the shovel and Snowman wakes up and waits for them to come up.

  The character I liked best is Snowman. Even though he’s the antagonist he still kept the book interesting to read. His personality kept on changing, at the beginning of the book he’s a cool guy but than around the end he turns into a sick twisted guy.

Relate:

  The last part of the book reminds me of 4 ears ago when a little girl was buried under the snow by her friends because no one knew she was missing until class started. After no one found her, her teacher went looking for her. Then, finally, her friend remembered where she was buried and they got her back.

  As compared to other texts by this author, I think this book is a lot more different. The genre may be the same but there are major differences in the storyline. In his “Goosebump” series it’s a lot more fictional than this one. His “Goosebump” series had to do with fantasy or stupid creatures. In this text it seems like it is a real case scenario.

  If I could be any character from this text I would be the bank guy you see on a page or two because everyone else either got hurt or injured. I would want to be Snowman if it wasn’t for the ending where Heather burns him with a lighter she always kept around. He’s pretty much the only one that didn’t get injured or killed.
     
  Reflect:

  I disliked the beginning of the text because it didn’t introduce the conflict until 60 pages into the book. It took the author one-third of the book just to explain the characters, setting, problem, etc.

  I noticed that he author had to of related this to something that happened to him. Unlike his hit series “Goosebumps” it’s a book he made just for fun. It has no connection to the “Goosebump” series in any way.

 I thought this text is realistic because it contained many elements of real life. There wasn’t any fantasy things like Snowman gets eaten by a dragon or anything he kept it realistic. Also i’ve seen documentaries on T.V about this sort of thing.

 I predict that Snowman will soon be on the loose again because he went to jail and everyone who goes to jail gets a sencond chance of life. In a way I can't really say that because it's been a few years and no second one came out.