The Chain Letter

Plot: this book is about a 12 year old girl named Olivia Mcfee, otherwise known as Livvie. One day Livvie and her best friend Joyce were rummaging through the mail and found an envelope made out to Olivia Mcfee, it was a chain letter, "Dear friend, this chain letter hasn't been broken in fifteen years! Don't break the chain! This letter began one hundred thousand years ago when it was scratched into stone by caveman! You will be a very bad, bad person if you don't send it to all your friends!" This letter leads to adventures both good and bad. The only way to stop this bad luck is to find out who sent the letter in the first place. This book is a mystery inside a mystery. I recommend this book for all ages.

Character Description: the characters i am choosing to describe are Olivia Mcfee and Joyce Pullman.

• Olivia- is a 12 year old girl who lives with her mom and her ancient chestnut-colored cat named Dr. Brown in the small town of St.Paul, Minnesota. Livvie, her nickname, has brown hair and brown eyes. Something I like about her is that she doesn't believe bad luck, just like her mother. Sometimes Livvie can be very mean,especially with Peter and Phil Finch. She and her best friend Joyce are like peanut-butter and jelly, they are always together.
• Joyce- is also 12 years old and lives with her mom and several of her younger siblings. Joyce is more mature than Livvie because Joyce knows how to do laundry, change a diaper, fix a broken T.V and much more. Joyce on the other hand is VERY superstitious, she believes that black cats, the number 13, mice, open umbrellas in indoor places, and ladders are bad luck. Every time Joyce gets mad at school she has to twirl every lock in that part of the hallway before going into class or on the streets she has to tap every streetlight on the way. They are both different, but the same when it comes to thinking.

Your thoughts: I thought this book was very good because it was a mixture of mystery and fiction. The book was pretty slow towards the beginning, but then near the end it was suspenseful. This book definitely had cliffhangers which i liked because it made me want to continue reading the book instead of putting down and not liking it. I sort of feel like Livvie in part of the story because whenever i get a chain letter, i just delete it because all they do is make you feel guilty if you don't answer it, just like it did in the book.

Reading strategies: The reading strategies i used to help me with this book were mental imaging and making connections. The one i used the most was mental images because this book was so descriptive, i could imagine all the details. I could imagine what Livvie looked like in her cast, what Joyce looked like in bed, what Livvie looked like when she found that she was being partnered up with Peter Finch, and what Mrs. Mcfee looked like when she was twirling the phone cord.

The next reading strategy i used was making connections. One of the main connections i made was with Livvie. The connection i made was when she spilled the hot chocolate, i knew the pain she felt. I am sure that most people have received a chain letter at least once and by the time they finished reading it they immediately wanted to begin responding. Most chain letters are now sent by e-mail so you know who started it because you can see the previous e-mail addresses, unlike if you get it by postal mail you don't have a return address at all.

Author Information: the author of this book was Julie Schumacher. She has written numerous short stories and only 2 bok for adults which includes The Body is Water. Her first novel, Grass Angel, was published by Delacorte Press. Julie lives with her husband and 2 daughters in the very town of St. Paul. She has won the ALA Notable Book of the Year.