First Post for EDUC-382

I chose to read this novel because Gary Paulsen is an amazing adolescent writer. He sparked my interest in reading when I was assigned to read “Hatchet” in the sixth grade. “Hatchet” was such a great book that I eventually went on to read “Brian’s Winter,” which ranked at the top of my charts as well. Paulsen’s writing is very appealing for male readers and interests the adventurous, outdoorsy types into sitting down and reading a novel. It seemed to do the trick for me; I still enjoy reading Gary Paulsen’s novels even though I am a junior in college.

“The Car” begins by introducing the main character, Terry, who is 14 years old. He is the type of kid that likes keeping to himself; the reasoning behind this is mostly because his parents are constantly fighting with each other. Terry has had to deal with it his entire life, he displays to the reader that he feels like he doesn’t even exist when he is around his parents.

His father is a mechanic and unwillingly received a kit car for payment for some of his work. The kit car has sat in his garage for many years and Terry was to never touch it. One day his father and mother went to work and never came back; each parent assumed that Terry was with the other one. It was in the summer and Terry didn’t have much to do so he went to the garage and worked on building the kit-car. Note: This portion of the book is very descriptive as to how he builds the car and what goes good and what comes difficultly. I have built a couple cars in my life and I can relate perfectly to the problems he ran into and the excitement he felt when he would see progress. This would be perfect to incorporate in my classroom already because of the relationship the book has to Tech. Ed. I believe if I was to read a portion of the book to the class, or introduced the book to the class displaying how much I enjoyed reading it, many of the students would become interested and possibly read the novel as well.

The following chapters up to chapter 7 describe the problems he has with getting the car running and begins an adventure encompassing Terry driving across most of the width of the United States. Remember Terry is only 14 and does not have a driver’s license; he also came up with some very creative ways to license the vehicle he had built. Now it is off, in his creation, out on the open road where there are many obstacles Terry needs to overcome.