Eleanor and Park

My overall feeling of the story is that I loved it. I feel in love with the characters, who they are as individuals and what they stood for. I only have two negative comments about the book. The first comment being that from a writers point of view I personally did not care for the jump in the story line of how Eleanor and Park went from not speaking and just exchanging items to being in love at first physical touch. For as the reader I found myself having to flip back and forth between the two pages because the transition was so sudden I felt myself become lost and confused. My other critique is on the ending. I wanted more from the ending, I felt that the author did such an amazing job through out the whole story of answering all of the readers questions by having the two view points, but that the transition from not talking to each other one moment to being in love the next, one moment she was there and the next she was gone was very sudden. And that Rowell did not answer my question as to why Eleanor was not responding to Park's letters or what happened to her family. Besides those two comments I did feel that the book gave (although maybe slightly exaggerated) an accurate depiction on high school bullying. A quote that kept appearing into my thoughts when reading this book was "be nice to everyone. you never know what someone's story is". Just a random quote that I read on the internet but I felt that this book really encompassed that feeling really well. Because all the students that Eleanor went to school with who bullied her had no idea about her home life and what she was going through. But once they did know however, they ended up lending her a helping hand. For example Tina hiding Eleanor in her garage once she knew who her step father was. The author really showed that quote. That you should think before you speak because you have no idea what someone goes through outside of school. Putting young adults in a position to be more thoughtful before they speak. This text appeals to adolescents because it does talk about the stereotypical bullying but then gives a background of the characters. By telling the story of each character, allowing the reader to walk in their footsteps a connection is formed between the story and the reader. My own personal rating/grade for this text would be an A-. Not fully an A because the transitions between some of the major developments was too fast but the moral of the story and the message that it is sending to teens is very well done and easy to pull out of the text.