Reading Response #3 - Burned

Burned

By Ellen Hopkins

If you have been reading my last book response posts, you will notice that I have changed books. I recently abandoned the book Breaking Beautiful due to the school only letting you have the book for 2 weeks. I could have kept it, but the more I read, the more I didn't want to anymore. Burned by Ellen Hopkins is my current read, and let me just say that I couldn't have chosen a better book at random than this one.



 

 

Burned is about a young Mormon girl named Pattyn Von Stratten. Pattyn grows up in a house with 

6 sisters and her parents, who hardly ever communicate. Her father is an alcoholic who is a walking nightmare once evening hits.  Church is an awkward priority to this family every week, due to everyone knowing their family issues without stating them. Her mother is a careless one, not working a job or changing her girls' diapers - that was Pattyn's job. Pattyn has been tied down to such a time consuming lifestyle playing "mom" to her 6 younger sisters, going to church, cooking and hardly ever having time for friends who have faded away as she grows up. One night she is faced with a sex dream that makes her question her religion and lifestyle as a whole. Is she pure? Does God control her dreams? The following poem is one she included in her book as the thoughts of Pattyn. It stands for her struggles and what she goes through.

 

 

 

"Brother Prior is an idiot. And I'm

supposed to swallow his garbage

like it doesn't even taste bad.

Well, it stinks! Ask him about

Joseph Smith, he can recite

an entire oral history.

Ask him about dreams,

he pretends like he doesn't have them.

Ask him about God. . .

 

I'm not sure he even believes

God exists.

 

Do I?

Does Mom?

 

Does Dad? I mean, really?

I know his past haunts him.

But if he truly believes

he and God are brothers,

meant to live together

in the Great Beyond,

can't he ask for a hand,

a way to silence his ghosts,

without Johnnie WB?

Or is his drinking sin

enough to make his Heavenly

Sibling turn His back?"

(page 40-41)

 

Ellen Hopkins has a magical way of putting this story together. She writes in poems, page by page, that literally keeps you turning until you fall asleep with your face in the book. Yes, this happened to me the day after I checked it out from the library. Her poems are always written in a different style than the last page's poem. Sometimes they are even shaped like what she is talking about. For example, she mentioned spaghetti on page 59. She wrote the lines of the poems as if they were stringy, flexible spaghetti noodles. I appreciate her writing style. It stands out from the standard chapter book just because it causes the book to flow a whole lot easier. Hopkins makes events flow into feelings in the most perfect way. The flow is just unlike any other author I have ever read.