Winger: Compare and Contrast

Winger is a young adult fiction novel written by American author Andrew Smith. Set in the prestigious boarding school, Pine Mountain, Oregon, the story follows fourteen-year-old Ryan Dean West as he recounts past events that he has experienced in his journey of maturation. It's a great book about the everyday challenges of a boy in high school.

While reading Winger I noticed a lot of similarities between it and Diary of A Wimpy Kid. In both books the main characters aren't very popular among other students, they both have a crush on a popular and pretty girl, and they have an unsteady relationship with their close friends. Some main differences are, Greg from Diary of A Wimpy Kid is extremely confident and selfish where Ryan Dean is modest and very caring towards others. Another really big difference is Greg isn't athletic at all and Ryan Dean is a main player in his schools rugby team. I've found that Ryan Dean is a very likable character because I can sympathize with him and relate, also because he's so honest that you can't really find reason to hate him. Sure he does some dumb stuff but we've all been there and done that. While on the other hand you just want to roll your eyes at Greg's "macho" additude; he behaves as though he is the only normal student at his school and everyone else has a problem not himself. While Ryan feels outcast and small, you just want to reassure him and tell him everything's okay.

One Of My Favorite Poems

Winter Landscape, with Rooks

Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
Plunges headlong into that black pond
Where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
Floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
Which hungers to haul the white reflection down.

The austere sun decends above the fen,
An orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
Longer on this landscape of chagrin ;
Feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
Brooding as the winter night comes on.

Last summers' reeds are all engraved in ice
As is your image in my eye ; dry frost
Glazes the window of my hurt ; what solace
Can be struck from rock to make hearts waste
Grow green again ? Who'd walk in this bleak place ?

- Silvia Plath

Counting By Sevens

While reading the book Counting By Sevens by Holly G. Sloan I saw lots of times where the main character Williow would give advice to the other people around her that would change their lives. The novel Counting By Sevens is about a girls named Willow Chance who has lived a life sheltered from most bad things in life and has never had to fend for herself, her parents have always been there. Her parent get into a car accident and don't make it out of the hospital leaving willow with no relatives or close friends. As Willow copes with her loss she has to also accept the big shifts in her life.

When Willow first meets the taxi driver Jairo Hernandez she had never ridden in a taxi before much less a complete stranger, in the book she says "I would like to see the number of your taxi license..." Then "The drivers name was Jairo Hernandez, and he had been driving for Mexicano taxi for seven years. I was nervous, but he seemed nervous as well." This shows how little she trusted Jairo at first and that she had never done anything without her parents before. As the car ride ends she leaves the taxi and says "Never let someone tell you that you can't do it." When Willow say this she's actually talking about herself but Jairo takes it to heart and it really causes a domino effect in his life, afterwards Jairo really takes a step back and look at his life. In the text it says, "When he started driving a cab, it was only supposed to be a temporary job. And now years had passed." He realizes that he had never done anything to help himself and his life, he believed Willow to be a " ...blinking warning light. And Jairo paid attention to signs." He then drives straight to Bakersfield College and picks up a brochure to continue his education.

All throughout the book this happens to multiple people around Willow, as they look at there own lives they realize the things that they need to change around the same time that Willow does. This helps Willow gain new close friends and new family as well.