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iBoy

Let­ter to the aut­hor of iBoy

Dear Mr. Brooks,

first of all, we would like to thank you for wri­ting the book “iBoy”. We are six stu­dents going to school in Backnang and we read your book du­ring our Eng­lish les­sons.

From the very first words that were writ­ten on the pages, the re­a­der is con­fron­ted with the crime scene in Crow Lane Es­ta­te. While rea­ding fur­ther on, we got bet­ter in­for­med about hor­ri­b­le events ta­king place in Tom’s district and we felt very con­cer­ned. This see­med sur­re­al and we star­ted to ask our­sel­ves how it is pos­si­ble that kids at our age be­co­me vio­lent, start smo­king and take drugs. But a ques­ti­on that is even more per­plex­ing, is how can they ever exit this vicious cir­cle they en­t­e­red.

It is sim­ply nor­mal for us to have a safe life ful­fil­led with love, hope, dreams and chan­ces. In con­trast, Crow Lane kids have none of those, which is why we star­ted to esti­ma­te our be­au­ti­ful life.

One mem­ber of our group told us a fa­sci­na­ting story about a white woman in Ame­ri­ca who hel­ped black kids to get out of crime and gave them a per­spec­tive. This is ex­act­ly what kids, who are vio­lent and mem­bers of a gang, need. Howe­ver, it takes a lot of cou­ra­ge and strength to act like this woman be­cau­se it is re­la­ted to risks and dan­ger. Ne­ver­the­l­ess, it is im­portant to take this ste­pand help those lo­nely, vio­lent and poor child­ren.

Ano­ther les­son that your book taught us, was the les­son of mo­ra­li­ty. In our so­cie­ty, there are many va­lues we often don’t re­co­gni­ze on first glan­ce. One of this, is the ques­ti­on of what is right and wrong. While we sank fur­ther into rea­ding, we star­ted to un­der­stand that it is often not easy to de­ci­de and that the con­cept of right and wrong isn’t as clear cut through as Tom and we had thought.

The alert re­a­der can also de­pict this per­so­nal de­ve­lop­ment of Tom Har­vey. In your book, the prot­ago­nist is two peop­le at the same time. On the one hand, he is Tom Har­vey, a nor­mal 16- year old teen­ager and on the other hand, he is iBoy with spe­cial powers. As a re­sult, Tom is torn in hal­ves bet­ween iBoy and him­s­elf. There are many si­tua­ti­ons where he doesn’t know how to deal with this and what to do. At this point, we began to iden­ti­fy with Tom be­cau­se in our daily life we don’t often know how to deal with si­tua­ti­ons and are torn in hal­ves what to do. His aim is to help Lucy Wal­ker and to take re­ven­ge on her ra­pists, but he rea­li­zes that there are many ways to do so. In the first half of the book, the prot­ago­nist is con­vin­ced that it is his ob­li­ga­ti­on to use his spe­cial powers to hurt and take re­ven­ge on the ra­pists. Later, you can per­cei­ve a chan­ge. He de­ve­lops and un­der­stands that Lucy will only love him, when Tom re­mains him­s­elf. With this thought he re­sists his re­ven­ge plans and his vio­lence as iBoy.

This pro­cess cla­ri­fies the im­port­an­ce of being yours­elf and our group also rea­li­zed that there is no uni­ver­sal right and wrong. By Tom Har­vey we have lear­ned that you should al­ways be yours­elf, other­wi­se you make the wrong de­ci­si­ons. Through your book, we com­pre­hend that this de­ci­si­on is a per­son’s in­di­vi­du­al choice and that it often takes lon­ger to find this sin­gle right or wrong.

Be­si­des, these were not the only les­sons your book taught us. It also de­mons­tra­tes how to deal with bad ex­pe­ri­ence and cruel strokes of fate.​Tom as well as Lucy have a very hard life and es­pe­cial­ly in the time as iBoy and the rape Tom and Lucy suf­fer a lot.

Rapes are al­ways hor­ri­b­le and your book il­lus­tra­tes well how it de­s­troys your per­so­na­li­ty and con­fi­dence. But it is im­portant to pull yours­elf up again and get your self- con­fi­dence back. As your book has shown, you can never achie­ve this wi­thout fri­ends or other help. Wi­thout Tom, Lucy would have al­ways sat in her dark room and would have never come out again, just with his en­cou­ra­ge­ment and help she star­ted a new life. Un­for­t­u­n­a­te­ly, in our mo­dern world, peop­le often are no “real” fri­ends or are ego­is­tic. This is a pity be­cau­se wi­thout fri­endship or fa­mi­ly mem­bers you can never get through such a si­tua­ti­on. This also brings us to Tom who has grown up wi­thout a mo­ther and a fa­ther but he got through it and could live with it be­cau­se he had his lovely and ca­re­ful “Gran” and Lucy. Your book made us think about fri­endship and the im­port­an­ce of it. It rai­sed awa­ren­ess and we thought about our fri­ends. It told us to care for our fri­ends, help them in dif­fi­cult si­tua­ti­ons and al­ways be there for each other be­cau­se you will get the love back which you have given to them. Above all, we lear­ned that you should al­ways watch your sur­roun­ding ca­re­ful­ly ins­tead of drif­ting through it.

When we fi­nal­ly fi­nis­hed your book, we felt like we have just got off a rol­ler co­as­ter ride with so many im­pres­si­ons, fee­lings and thoughts. As we clo­sed your book, ever­yo­ne of us re­co­gni­zed that iBoy had taught us so many im­portant life les­sons, opened our eyes to new things and made us aware of things that should be chan­ged in our world. Fur­ther­mo­re, it sti­mu­la­ted us to think about as­pects we have never thought of and while rea­ding we un­ders­tood im­portant pheno­me­na for life.

Our per­so­na­li­ty didn’t re­al­ly chan­ge be­cau­se of your book but you ex­ten­ded our ho­ri­zon and now we have more dif­fe­rent points of views on to­pics such as fri­endship, dea­ling with hard strokes of fate and de­ci­si­on-ma­king.

 

 

SuS Pro­duk­te iBoy: Her­un­ter­la­den [docx][15 KB]

SuS Pro­duk­te iBoy: Her­un­ter­la­den [pdf][101 KB]

 

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