Journal Three from Abigail Flores

     The House on Mango Street is a good story. It is told in a more unique way. The author uses many techniques such as indirect dialogue, direct metaphors, and similes. Personally I think that this is a book that helps you visualize the words as you read them. She is very good at making things short and to the point. She can put a whole picture in your head with one or two sentences. A weakness for this book would be that you have to be a good active reader because you have to pay attention to the details to fully understand what is going on. It can be a little hard to follow. You can insert yourself and reflect on your own experience. One and Done is a really good book so far. Maurice does a really good job of displaying his thoughts through the whole book. I really like how he walks us through his life from the beginning. One weakness that it has it that it it feels like it kind of dreads on and is a slow read because the prologue is very interesting and really grabs your attention, then for the first couple of chapters, it is just talking about his childhood with lots of detail. So far, I do prefer One and Done because it is a real life story and I like reading about other personal experiences and how people learn from them. Maurice shows a chapter of his life that he reflects and learns from and then eventually makes the best of it and turns a weakness into a super power. 

     In One and Done, I noticed that in the environment that Maurice was in, there was a lot of peer pressure and bad influences. A lot of it had to do with drugs. I was shocked, when I read that a teachers aide helped him get into drug dealing by teaching him how to get it and cook it up. He also witnessed a lot of crime like burglary and murder. I believe that people are strongly influenced by the environment that they live and grow up in. Children are easily manipulated because they do not fully understand what is right and wrong. He grew up thinking that things such as murder alcohol abuse was a normal thing because he saw it so much. With Maurice being introduced into crime like he did at such an early age, I feel like that is partially to blame for his actions as an adult. Even in the prologue, he mentions that he had a different mindset and he thought that murdering those people was the better option. He does not know why he thought that now, but he did not fully understand at the time in my opinion.