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Intensity of the Reading Experience

Virginia Beesley's letter to Robert Cormier

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Virginia Beesley's typewritten two-page letter to Robert Cormier is an emotional epistle of her reading of After the First Death. She conveys both anger at Cormier for writing the book and admiration for writing it so skillfully. It is not clear whether she read it as part of a class or on her own.

Cindy Ryal's letter to Robert Cormier

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Cindy Ryal's letter to Robert Cormier is faded and word processed, dated 12 May 1989, and it shares most of its text with a letter to Cormier by Kristy Luzar. Cindy asks about After the First Death's characters and plot twists. She ends the letter saying her mother read it with her and together they enjoyed the heart-pounding suspense of the book, a way of reading that Cormier himself advocated (parent and child sharing a book and discussing it).

Rebecca D. Pace's letter to Robert Cormier

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Rebecca D. Pace, a seventh-grade student, wrote a typed two-page letter to Robert Cormier dated 12 March 1991. She talks about what a gripping and surprising novel We All Fall Down was. She openly admired Kate and specifically noted that Miro got away free. She notes that it was different for the hero to die and the villain to get away. It appears to be a fan letter and not connected to a school project.

RELATED LINKS:

This online article by Michael Ventre, September 13, 2004, is titled "On The Wire Sometimes the Bad Guys Win". Like We All Fall Down, the award-winning and critically acclaimed series seeks to portray complexity, richness of plot and character, and sidesteps easy solutions.

Critical acclaim for The Wire is detailed as "television literature' in this online article in New York Magazine, by John Leonare, published December 30, 2007 and titled: "Twilight over Baltimore".

Related to the links above, this article, "Stealing Life: The Crusader behind The Wire" in The New Yorker is about The Wire creator, David Simon. The article was written by Margaret Talbot, October 22, 2007.