"Rules"

 Realistic Fiction Reflection

 

Lord, C. (2006). Rules. New York: Scholastic Press.

               The book Rules is a wonderful realistic fiction written by Cynthia Lord.    The story is about a twelve year old girl named Catherine who longs for a normal life.  Catherine’s life is not like the normal life of a twelve year old.  She has a brother with autism and a family that revolves around his disability.  Catherine loves her brother very much, but at the same time is embarrassed by his behavior.  Catherine spends most of her time trying to teach David rules in hopes to make things less hectic.  For example, one of the rules is - take your shoes off at the doctor, but at the dentist leave them on.  Catherine has hopes of making a new friend when Kristi moves in next door, but is also afraid of what she will think of David.  She also has a special bond with a special friend named Jason.  Events take place throughout the story that makes her realize that a normal life might not be possible, but it’s not a bad life after all.

               The story line has many different aspects of realism.  First, the story is situational realism since the plot of the story is something that is possible and the characters and setting are of identifiable age and social class.  It also relates to emotional realism because there are believable feelings and relationships among the characters in the story.  Social realism is portrayed as well with the way society looks at people with disabilities in real-life and in the way people looked at David and Jason.  It was heart-warming to read about the author and to know that the story was based on questions that she had as a mother of two children, one of whom has autism. 

               The book level is 3.9 and I would recommend this story to individuals or for a read-aloud.  Since the author doesn’t always explain everything that is going on in the story, this story would be good to use when teaching students how to make inferences (RL 4.1 Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text).

Questions:  How does David stand in the way of what Catherine wants for herself?