Customer Reviews

The Monument

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Gary Paulsen's The Monument is a very eccentric story of a young African American girl with a leg brace in an orphanage. Rocky (the young girl) feels as if no one will ever adopt her and one day a couple walked in and said that they wanted to adopt her and she fills with a magical feeling inside herself. Rocky lives the life she never thought she would have.In this magnificent book you go on with her through everything that is as new to her as it is to you. By Mackenzie

Although it is a simple story, it is probably my favorite Gary Paulsen book so far. It talks a lot about art, but the real point of the book is a minority, handicapped girl who learns how to see life in a new way and discovers that she has a talent of her own. Along with that is a town that comes together to make one decision that will help it heal and then grow together. This book is short and easy to read, but makes a lasting impression.

Gary Paulsen's book "The Monument", is about a small town in Kansas that wants to build a monument to honor the soliders who died in all of the wars. The artist they hire for the job, Mick, makes a special effort to get to know the towns people and he draws everything he sees about the town. Rocky, a young teen takes an interest in art and Mick. As she gets to know Mick, as well as art, she also discovers herself. This book presents an interesting view of art from the artist's point of view and gives the reader insight into human nature.

After you read the back cover of "The Monument," you might expect the book to be mainly about a monument. In a way it is, in other ways it's not. Rachael was adopted and she now works where her new father does and doesn't really know what she wants to do with her life. That is, until she meets an artist named Mick, who is supposed to make a monument for Bolton, Kansas, where 18 war veterans were killed during battle. Rachael finds out that she wants to be an artist just like Mick. She will learn from Mick and the monument what art is all about.

I thought "The Monument" was a pretty good book for what it was. I like Gary Paulsen's books about survival and adventure a lot better, but this was a pretty good book. If you like art, you'll probably like "The Monument" a lot more than if you don't like art that much.

The Monument, a young adult book by Gary Paulsen, is the story of a recently adopted 13 year old girl who encounters an artist, Mick. This friendship changes her life. She looks at her small Kansas town through Mick's eyes and sees everything in a new light. Her leg brace and coffee-colored skin set her apart from the other kids her age so that a tag-along dog she adopted, Python, is her only companion. Mick gives her a book about Degas to study.

The only way to read The Monument is to have Degas' prints beside the book.

Paulsen writes:

But even with that, even with the beauty, I was still trying to work, trying to see the colors and the way Degas had drawn things until I turned the page and just stopped, stopped dead.

It was a painting of a group of young women practicing ballet, called The Dance Master. The wall in the room was green and there was a big mirror on one side for the dancers to see themselves. In the background there is a raised platform or bleachers for people to sit and watch and dancers are everywhere, practicing, stretching, fixing their costumes. On one side there is an older man leaning on a cane--an instructor--and he is watching them, studying them, and still I would have been all right except for the girl.

She was standing to the side of the dancers but almost in the middle of the painting and she is watching them, worried about something, with her hand to her mouth, and I looked at her and started to cry.

She looked like me, or sort of like me, but that wasn't it--at first I didn't know why I was crying. Then I thought of what they were, all of them, dancers, and that all of what they were was gone.

The painting was done in the late eighteen-hundreds. They were all gone. All dead. I wanted to know the girl, wanted to watch them practice. I wanted to see the dresses move and hear the music, wanted to know which ones the dance master picked for performance and if the girl who looked a little like me was one of them. I wanted to talk to them and ask them how it was to wear the costumes and dance and dance and dance without one stiff leg. I wanted to know their dreams and hopes...

This book is about a girl named Rachel Ellen Turner who was adopted by two alcoholic parents. They are loving though. They adopted her despite of her leg being stiff and her skin color being darker than their's. Rachel had no freinds at first, but then she met Python, a dog. They were inseparable.

One day the town that she is living in, Bolton, Kansas, desides to have amonument put in the town in honor of the people who died in war from Bolton. The town hires a man named Mick to build the monument. Rachel and Python met Mick and they all became best friends. They would walk around and Mick would draw everything he saw. He ended up teaching Rachel some artistic pointers.

I did not really care for this realistic fiction book. I thought it was boring. I think it could have been more interesting. I think elderly people would enjoy this book. I didn't like it because it wasn't action packed. It also didn't have anything to do with athletics. It just wasn't my type of book.

I am a junior in college, working for a degree in elementary and middle school education. I read this book for my "Teaching Young Adult Literature" class. The Monument is a great book for teachers to utilize in their classroom--especially if they would like to do a unit on books where the protagonist has a disability. Gary Paulsen does an excellent job of developing his charactrs, thus, creating empathy in his readers. I appreciate the advanced ideas he is able to portray to younger readers.

I really liked the book.it made me look in deeper to the way other people live like people who drink.They might look stupid but they do stuff like mike he drinks but he does something he loves art!

The book The Monument by Gary Paulsen . This book is about this about this girl who is an orphan who gets adopted by Fred and Emma. Her name is Racheal. Her parents drink but there still great people. While she goes out and walks around she saves this dog and the dog becomes her best friend . she names him Python. She also meets Mike they become friends also. Mike is an artist he drinks but he finshes every thing he starts. MY opinion is that these book is great .If your a person who likes a good and intresting book you should read this book .This book is for people who like art . If your aperson who drinks or is addicted to something but finish everything you do this is a book for you.

The Monument takes place in Bolton, Kansas,where a young girl named Rocky struggles to fit in her new town. She was adopted by Emma and Fred in a great house where her life begins to come together.
One afternoon, Rocky was walking around with her new dog, Python, where she meets Mick. Mick is a very artistic kid who was chosen to construct the town monument. Rocky and Mick become great friends, and they learn to respect each other.
I thought this book could've been better written. It had a couple pages where it got my attention, but sometimes became dull. I would reccomend this book to ages 10 and up.