Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip Week of: 9/29/14

Prompt: What are the techniques used in your book?
Pages Read: 0-31

          This week, I finally got to start reading Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip, and I am pretty happy with how far I've gotten. I've noticed that this book uses a couple of techniques like style and tone. The book is in first person, and it shows his feelings very explicitly. He was playing in his baseball game and it was the last inning. The stakes were really high, and he had to finish the game well. It was his last pitch, and after he threw it, his arm collapsed. He has been having this problem for a while, and during this game his arm was "throbbing". He fell to the ground, and couldn't move at all. It was pretty intense, and the author's word choice helped me understand what Peter's feelings were. So now, he can not play baseball anymore and he doesn't seem very please about that. He will have to spend a lot more time doing things he doesn't really enjoy with his father, and that includes standing around taking pictures.

          Style, is one of the big techniques of this book. The author uses words like "throbbing" to explain the pain he felt, "unique" to explain the personality of his friend, and "bawling" when he was trying not to cry. All of these words helped me comprehend what the author was trying to make me feel while I was reading. The author also never used the words at the wrong time. When I say this, I mean that he uses these kind of words at the right moment, and they are usually never redundant. I liked the word choice he used because they were really descriptive and it helped me grasp the feelings of the main character. Personally, if I was told that I couldn't play softball, I would not be happy at all. I probably would feel the same exact way that Peter did.

          Tone, is also a commonly used technique in this book. The author uses this technique to convey the main points, and feelings of most of the characters. This helps because sometimes authors don't even explain or give any back round information. I also liked how I could understand how the main character felt about all of the things he was going through, like when he injured himself and when he had to figure out what to do after his surgery. The author gave thoughts from Peter's head like "It's only one more pitch. How bad could it be? You can be a hero or you can be a wuss. And Peter Friedman is no wuss." He said this inside his head, and I really liked how the author put it this way.