Customer Reviews

This is What I Did:

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"That's when I got up and walked out. I just walked out.
"I didn't stop in the waiting room either. I didn't stop in the hall. I didn't stop down in the lobby. I didn't even stop at the car. I just kept going. But soon I was running. I sort of ran up the hill.
"A hill.
"I didn't know where I was exactly except that we were by the university, but it didn't matter. I ran up a hill and there was a construction site there and a bunch of guys jackhammering.
"I ran past them.
"I felt stupid for all of them to see me running but I didn't stop.
"I kept running and panting and almost dying until I passed them and got to the base of the mountain. I can't really describe where I was or what it was like because I didn't know and I was about to pass out.
"All I know was that all of a sudden I was at the base of the mountains where the trails start and I sat down by a tree where no one was around and no one could see me from the road.
"I sat down and then
I yelled."

"I think I might be sort of messed up," is one of the few things that the frank and awkward eighth grader Logan Paloney will admit to, and he only admits that to the reader, not to the people in his life who care about him but are, for the most part, too busy with their own stuff to really help him. We don't know what happened, exactly, but we do know that Logan witnessed something horrible that involved his best friend Zyler and a girl in the neighborhood that both boys had a middle school crush on, and we know that Logan didn't do anything about whatever it was that happened.

"Last week Bruce kicked me in the balls at Scouts and all his buddies were there laughing and I started crying."

In the aftermath of the unknown incident involving Zyler, Logan's parents have moved the family across the city. It clearly would have been better to have moved across the country, for news and the rumors of Logan's involvement in something terrible have followed him across the city and, as a result, he is continually being beset upon by the eighth grade bullies at his school, at Scouts, and around the neighborhood.

"I closed my eyes and wasn't with Jack and any of those guys.
"Just me and Zyler.
"Hanging out.
"Like that one night when it was so snowy and we rode our bikes in the blizzard.
"Down the middle of the road because there were no cars anywhere.
"We didn't even have coats on but it didn't feel cold.
"And Zyler was yelling things like: Santa Claus is dead! We own you all!
"I was laughing. And riding around. And wasn't even scared about what Mom would say.
"The snow landing on my tongue.
"On my cheeks.
"On my bare arms.
"In circles and circles and circles.
"And I was not here. Not here. Not HERE. Not here."

Will the girl at school with the big nose and a penchant for palindromes be the real friend that Logan needs? Will he ever tell someone what really happened?

THIS IS WHAT I DID: has a lot of line breaks like a verse novel and a lot of dialogue, making it an extremely quick read. Even the more reluctant readers will be gulping down this compelling nightmare of a contemporary YA mystery tale, in one sitting.

As a middle school teacher, I make an effort to read new authors as their books come out. I'm certainly glad I read this one! "This Is What I Did" is a fantastic book with an engaging story and characters. The author has a unique voice and writing style and I finished reading the book the day it arrived in the mail!

I may be biased because I had the author as a writing instructor, but she is fabulous. It's a real challenge to write about difficult topics for kids. That's what makes this so great.

Have you ever been abused or seen anyone being abused and didn't do anything about it? This is what happened to Logan. His best friend Zyler was being abused by his Dad and he was the only one who knew about it, one day he saw something horrible happen, but Logan got too scared and ran away with out letting anyone know what he saw.
The setting is on a street called Judge and his old street that he and Zyler both lived on Mullholand. The main character is Logan, he is kind of depressed and misses his best friend Zyler. He doesn't do much but he always thinks about how things were when Zyler was there.

The problem Logan faces is getting his best friend Zyler taken away when he is abused by his father. He feels that there is no hope and he is depressed a lot. His parents had tried everything, they even took him to a counselor but still he ran away. When he goes to his new school he meets a girl named Laurel, they don't talk much in the beginning but they sent notes to each other called palindrome. This is an example "racecar". The theme of the book is that you should never give up hope because you never know if it will work out or not. The meaning of the title is "This Is What I Did" because he feels that what happened to Zyler is his fault.

I would recommend this book to people in middle school because it is kind of depressing and it has something's that elementary students might not understand. The pacing of the book is a little slow. The authors craft is depressing and it is in dialog. This book is not in a Christian perspective because it has to deal with child abuse and it also ahs some bad language. The genre of the book is realistic fiction because it could happen. The author is Ann Dee Ellis and I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars.

Zyler is gone. Logan is drowning in guilt. Will an attempt to make a new start really work?

Logan is a different kid. He has twin younger brothers whose lives revolve around sports. His dad cares, but he's busy. His mother is pregnant, something he'd rather not think too much about. They care, but they don't know what to do to help him.

Not a kid with lots of friends, Logan seems to manage to participate in life at a normal level. Boy Scouts offers him a chance to mingle with other boys his age, but most of them are bullies who use him for target practice. He does fairly well in school and is gutsy enough to try out for the school play and nail the greatest on-stage fight scene they've ever seen. He has friends (or at least acquaintances) that surround him and fill his life, but none like Zyler.

Zyler and Logan had a special friendship. They rode bikes together, did projects together, heck, even liked the same girl together. They knew each others' strengths and weaknesses. Logan even knew how Zyler's father treated his son, but respected Zyler's need for privacy.

Once again, Zyler is now gone, and Logan's family has chosen to move a short distance away to give Logan a fresh start. Hopefully a new school, new friends, and new activities will allow him to forget that night. Unfortunately, the guilt moved right along with Logan.

Ann Dee Ellis uses a unique style of prose to take readers into the mind of Logan Paloney. There is a bit of a wait for readers to discover the exact cause of Logan's oppressive guilt, but the journey is worth the effort. This disturbing story makes one wonder about the personal and private worlds of those around us. Logan's actions could have changed the outcome of events in one person's world, but is that a risk just anyone is willing to take?

Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"

When I first started reading, I was pretty much annoyed; annoyed with the broken and scatterbrained way she wrote, annoyed with the fact that I had no idea what was going on, and annoyed with the subject matter in general- i couldn't see how anyone could write a tactful story about physical and sexual abuse.

As I read though, I started to understand what Ellis was trying to do, and I definitely started appreciating it more. I ended up liking how the story got told; though it was scatterbrained and kind of confusing sometimes, I felt like Ellis really did capture the thought process of a young boy who had been through a traumatizing experience. Jumping back and forth from thought to thought not only kept me excited, but it also made it all feel so much more real. In fact, at times I felt like I was intruding into Logan's mind, and I think that it takes a truly talented author to pull one person out of their own head and put them into someone else's. Though it was annoying to me at first, I also grew to like how the story was set up. It's true I started out slightly confused, but then as the story unfolded, I got glimpses of what had happened here and there. It made the whole thing a lot more exciting, because I really did want to know what had happened to Logan to make him the way he was. That style of storytelling really did keep me reading, when I otherwise may have stopped out of boredom. I was also very impressed with how Ellis addressed such a stressful topic. She wasn't too graphic in her descriptions, yet we still got the intensity and desperation of the situation. I also like that the ending of the book wasn't some *spread the fairy magic, and everything is ok now* type. It was realistic in the fact that everything can't really go back to being normal after something like that happens to you; there isn't some easy fix. However, in the very fact that Logan kind of told us what happened, and that he was able to make a friend, showed us, however slightly that he could make some progress and eventually would be able to move on with his life.

All-in-all I thought that this was a great book. It had an interesting and almost educational story, it kept me on the edge of my seat, and it addressed some really tough issues that are going on in today's world.

I read Ann Dee Ellis's book entitled "This is What I did." I find her writing style very interesting and unique. The way she writes kind of takes you back to the age of the narrator. The adolescence is almost palpable in the way that Logan speaks and describes situations and events. Even in his actions and reactions to different things you can feel his personality. As I read I was even reminded of experiences from my time in junior high school and some of the social characteristics of that time period of life.
To give an example of Ellis's unique style, her use of silence in conversation. Often times in the book, she wrote in almost a dialogue script type of way. Conversations weren't necessarily described, but they were reported. For example, often times when Logan would speak Ellis wrote Me: and then what Logan spoke, then Zyler: and then his dialogue back and forth. Then when there was silence in a conversation she just put blanks Me: Zyler: and I found that when I read these, I could really imagine those silences, and not just how it felt to be in that situation, but by the number of repetitions, or the placements, I could tell how long the pause was she was refereeing to. It was very interesting to me.
Over all I thought It was a good book, but I found myself kind of feeling depressed throughout the novel. The end rectified things, but didn't bring me as high as the low left me.

I recently read Ann Dee Ellis's This Is What I Did. I had read that the book was good and I enjoyed her reading from a recent lecture series.

This is What I Did, well it's an interesting book. That's probably the best way to describe the book. The book jumps from place to place and uses other unconventional methods of storytelling such as post-it notes and emails.

I enjoyed Elli's method of storytelling, I can't say I'm sure that a novel is the best approach though. As I read it, I saw it more of as a script. There's an overwhelming amount of dialogue in the book, which some may or may not enjoy. For those who look fast-paced dialogue, this may not be the book for you. While the book is 150 pages, it feels a bit longer because of the slow pace of the dialogue. I don't think there's anything wrong with the pacing though. The main character has depression, and this sluggish dialogue helps effectively capture that.

Ellis's method of storytelling helps the reader get into the mindset of the main character, Logan. Ellis's main character suffers from a light depression and I think this method of storytelling helped effectively convey the story/mindset of the character.

Topics like abuse are a very touchy subject and I praise Ellis for her ability to incorporate this into a book for younger audiences. I had a real fun time reading Ann Dee Ellis's book and recommend others give it a shot.

I'm a teacher for struggling 8th grade readers. I, sadly, cannot recommend this book to many of my students. The book isn't organized in a chronological order, even "present day" is a bit jumbled. This jumping around in time would confuse many of my students.

This book is a quick and easy read, it's interesting (if you can follow the organization), and it's not in typical chapter format. For those reason I would recommend it to some of my students. However, it does take good mental organization skills to fit together the pieces. It's like putting together a puzzle where sometimes you get edge pieces and sometimes you get middle pieces and you have to figure out how it all fits together.

As an adult, I didn't like how there was no closure. But that's me, and I know that many of my students read and love books with no closure.

Read enough books for teens and you start to think kids are the witnesses to a lot of bad things. And, sadly, that's kind of the truth.

I read Ann Dee Ellis' heartfelt "This is What I Did" this summer and it reminded me of one of my favorite books, Courtney Summers' "Cracked up to Be." Both books center on main characters with dark secrets, who saw bad things unfold and might have been able to stop those bad things from happening.

The success of this type of novel lies in the storytelling.

Ann Dee Ellis relies on a clever episodic style to dole out little bits of eighth grader Logan's story - the crime he witnessed, the bullying he's endured as a result. The story is told artfully, like a screenplay with sections of dialogue and stylized illustrations at the start of each chapter suggesting the theme. There are also pictures of notes in the book with palindromes on them (palindromes play an important role in the character's growth).

I read this book in one day and found the story at times terribly sad, at times incredibly funny, and ultimately hopeful.