We have just finished our reading of Mark Haddon's book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime.  It is an interesting piece of fiction that beckons the reader to address the logical, yet uncertain, nature of life.  On several occasions Christopher, the autistic protagonist of the story, makes this claim based on his understanding of the world around him; he says, "Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away.  I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them." (Haddon 12), and "And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward ansers in the end." (Haddon 62) These examples illustrate the nature of the book's focus, but be sure, this book is no one-trick-pony.  There are several topics raised that fuel further deliberation by the reader.  But, I am not looking to write a book review here, rather, I would instead like to point the focus to my student's writing and thinking on the book.

      During the past few weeks we, as a class, have discussed many of the finer points of this novel.  It would be easy for me to jot some notes down from our previous classes to exemplify our discussions but I would rather let my students do that through their own reaction/reviews.  Today, I asked my students to write a reaction/review to the novel.  I specifically left this as an open-ended assignment.  There are no real perameters except length, so they can write about whatever it is they feel compelled to write about.  Please read the student blogs that are located at the bottom of this page.  Enjoy them and comment if you wish. 

STUDENTS: below I have attached a few hyper-links.  The links are connected to three reviews of the book.  If you are having difficulty understanding what to write in your reaction/review, or how to write the reaction/review use these as examples.  I look forward to your reactions.


Rebecca Joines Schinsky's (The Book Lady) general review of the book: http://www.thebookladysblog.com/2008/10/29/book-review-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time-by-mark-haddon/

Chittaranjan Andrade, M.D. review of the book in the context of pediatric medicine/psychology: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2139916/

Matthew C. Fleenor's discussion of astronomy and the book: http://roanoke.edu/Documents/curious_astronomy.pdf