I am participating in a literature seminar at Northwoods Community Secondary School. For this seminar, my classmates and I are reading The Kite Runner, a book by Khaled Hosseini. This fictional novel is set between 1970 and 2005. It chronicles the lives of its characters from childhood to adulthood, and the reader is exposed to a variety of flashbacks throughout. Hosseini’s novel is about a young boy named Amir growing up in Afghanistan with his half-brother, Hassan.Throughout Amir’s life, he faces struggles and experiences hardships. Some of these hardships include his father not noticing him as much as he would like, and witnessing Hassan get hurt in an irreversible way.

Every morning at 8:30 a.m., we talk about what we had to read for homework, and discuss our attitudes. We question each other, which in turn creates an enriching discussion to be a part of. I look forward to hearing my classmates talk about the different chapters we’ve all read because it’s interesting to hear everybody’s input. There were times when I agreed with my peers and there were times when I didn’t. I agreed with my peers when Amir’s actions were questioned in the climactic incident with Hassan getting hurt. I couldn’t stand the character of Assef because he was extremely abrasive and did not care who he hurt physically and/or mentally.

There is a part in the novel where I disagreed with my peers, and that involved Assef. I don’t want to spoil what happens in the novel because it’s such a good read, but many of my classmates were shocked speechless at one point. When I read this particular part of the novel and came to the realization of what was actually happening, I wasn’t surprised because the character of Assef would act just the way Hosseini portrayed him to act.

Ms. Karnosky always teaches us to make text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections while reading because it helps us relate our own lives to the piece in front of us. We created a writing piece centralized around one of the many universal themes depicted in the novel, and mine was a ransom note pleading to Amir about two characters in the novel. My classmates created projects involving epitaphs, poems, advertisement, an actual account of food served in Afghanistan, etc. Everyone’s products turned out really great.

For part of the final culminating project, everyone in the seminar is going to make their own kite. We will be instructed to design our kite around the novel, relaying a passage from the book on a portion of it that we really liked. Ultimately, we will then fly them at Nicolet College. Also, we will be writing to the author and his foundation, stationed in San Jose, Calif., about our experiences while reading.

I would rate this novel a five out of five stars for the excellence of Hosseini’s writing technique. His novel is interesting because the story line constantly reverts back to early events in history.