How I Live Now, Daisy
Briar Rose, Rebecca
Setting, England
It was a warm summer day in England, about 85 degrees and not a single cloud in the sky. Daisy was at her current house along with her cousins Edmund, Piper, and Isaac. Osbert, her oldest cousin was at a friend's house for the day and wouldn’t be home until late. She was helping Edmond in the garden, picking all sorts of fruits and vegetables to store for the winter. Daisy heard a faint ringing noise coming from the house phone ,so she placed her basket of tomatoes on the ground and jogged into the house to answer it.
“Hello?” her voice projected into the phone.
“Hi, it’s me, Becca, is this Daisy?
“Yah!” Daisy’s voice yelled with excitement.
Becca was Daisy’s cousin. The two girls didn’t get to see each other often, one reason being that Becca’s Gemma just passed away and Daisy had been in England.
“ I am doing an article for the newspaper that I work for, and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about what you went through with the war?” asked Becca.
“I’d love to!” Daisy replied.
They made arrangements to have Becca take a plane and fly over to England in less than two weeks. She would get a taxi cab to bring her to Daisy’s house do they could do the interview.
One week came and went and before Daisy new it Becca would be there in a few hours. Daisy cleaned up the kitchen, or tried to. Since the war the house was a mess with smashed glass, ripped furniture, and writing on the walls.
Knock. Knock. A very light sound came from the front door. Daisy went and answered it to find it to be Becca standing with her pen and notepad ready to do the interview.
Daisy led Becca to the backyard past the garden where now all three cousins were working.
“Becca, you remember Edmund, Piper, and Isaac, don’t you?”
Piper ran over and greeted Becca with a huge hug. Edmund and Isaac gave a small shy wave. Although Edmund and Isaac and even Piper had been out in the sun all day, they were still so plane and their bones looked so fragile. Becca thought the reminded her of her Gemma, so sick looking.
Daisy brought Becca over to a small round white table which looked almost 100 years old. Even though there were four chairs two of the chairs had missing legs, making there just enough room for Becca and Daisy. After they were both seated Becca put on her small reading glasses and began the interview.
“So, my first question would be what started the war?” asked Becca.
“I would have to say the bomb that was set off and exploded a few cities over form ours,” answered Daisy.
“How did you hear that war was about to begin?”
“My oldest cousin Oslo watched the news everyday morning till night. It was all over the news."
Becca continued with her questions for about and hour. Daisy had so much to say. It was really the first time she has ever spoken of the war since it happened. Sometimes Daisy would get all choked up and have to stop and grab a tissue. At the end of the interview Becca asked her one last question.
“Did you ever doubt that you would be alive today, right now?”
“Well, I always had my doubts. I sometimes thought what if we never get back to the house, what would happen to us. I was scared that we would die. I didn’t know how to survive very well in the woods. But I stayed strong for Piper, because she was so young. I guess after struggling for many long nights and days I just knew what I had to do, keep going. So that’s what I did, Piper and I. There were doubts yes but I was able to dig deep and find my way back home.”
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wow this story is amazing!!!!! :) great job!!! :)
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good idea for a story. During the part when the girls sat down for the interview I pictured the broken chairs. You came up with good questions for the interview.
ReplyDelete“ I am doing an article for the newspaper that I work for, and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about what you went through with the war?” asked Becca.
Becca sounds like the Becca from the original story. That's my favorite part.
One thing about the story that bothered me was that you didn't capitalize Daisy.
Also there were some puncuation missing.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was very good but next time I think you should try changing the very ending because I feel as though there should be more.
I thought this was a good story. I felt sad after reading your story. I don't remeber anything about these books becasue I didn't read them. I could image the house and how it looked after the war. The story made me think about the war.
ReplyDeletethe conversation between the characters did seem athentic. The way you decribed the girl made it seem real and natural.
My favorite part of the story was the beginning. “ I am doing an article for the newspaper that I work for, and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about what you went through with the war?” I liked that quote.
One thing I found distracting was the names of the characters. The names were annoying to me.
One thing that you could improve it putting a little more detail in your story. I thought your story was good.
I thought your story was really good and had a lot of great detail. The setting was really good and you pulled a lot of good ideas from "How I live Now" which I thought was really good. I could relate to the story really well because I read both of them, and the setting and the personalities of the characters went really well with how they are in the books.
ReplyDeleteThe conversation seemed very authentic, and went really well with the idea that they were having an interview, but were still cousins. The dialogue sounded very realistic, and did not sound "robotic" at all.
My favorite part of the story was, "Daisy cleaned up the kitchen, or tried to. Since the war the house was a mess with smashed glass, ripped furniture, and writing on the walls." I like that part because it has really good detail, and goes with the story really well.
One thing I found distracting was your typos. You had several of them, and there wre a couple times I had to go back and reread a sentence becasue of them. There were not any huge mistakes, but things like end quotation marks, and using the wrong word.
you may want to proofread your story next time, and even have someone else proofread it, too. Otherwise, I thought it was really good and related to the original books really well.
I liked this story!
ReplyDeleteI think I felt kind of neutral at the end of this story. There wasn't much in the ending that sparked any particular reaction. I can picture when they are outside in the garden and Daisy runs into the house to get the phone. I have done that a lot and seen others do it.
I thought that the dialogue in this was authentic. The way it was written sounded like the way people actually talk. That makes it believable and realistic.
"Daisy cleaned up the kitchen, or tried to. Since the war the house was a mess with smashed glass, ripped furniture, and writing on the walls." This was my favorite line in the story. When I read it I can tell what Daisy would be feeling. That every time she looks at the mess it takes her back to the time of the war. It's kind of like one sad line mixed in with the others.
The thing I found distracting about the story was the typos. The capitalization wasn't consistent and you used the wrong word in a lot of places. Nothing too big though.
In the future, I would suggest going back and rereading your writing. Especially when typing.
I definitely really enjoyed this story!!
I liked reading this story a lot. It was interesting and i enjoyed reading it. When you described the house after the war, I could picture how trashed and destroyed it looked. This story made me think of the war in Iraq and how it is effecting people in a way that this war effected Daisy.
ReplyDeleteThe conversation between the characters seemed very realistic. I especially liked the dialogue between Becca and Daisy during the interview. I was surprised to see how much dialogue you had. Also, the dialogue made sense between the two and it was very informative about what was happening.
MY favorite part of the story was when Daisy described the house after the war. "the house was a mess with smashed glass, ripped furniture, and writing on the walls." I liked that quote the best. It stood out to me because it was descriptive and i'm sure thats what a house would look like after it went through a war. But, i don't understand why there would be writing on the walls. I understand why there would be ripped furniture and smashed glass but i don't see why there would be writing on the walls.
In this essay, i thought you could improve on some things. I thought you used simple words that could have been substituted with more complex and less commonly used words. By doing this, it would make the story more enjoyable to read and the reader would be impressed with the vocabulary. For example, "ripped furniture," was a description of the house after the war. Instead of using ripped you could have used shredded or dismantled.
When writing future assignments, consider revising. Revising helps with grammar, spelling, etc. Also, it would be good to have a peer editor so they can catch mistakes that you may have missed. But, other than that i thought you did a good job.