A hook is the attention-getter and can start out with a short anecdote, a quote, or even a shocking or mysterious statement to pique the reader's interest. Rodman Philbrick starts his book Freak the Mighty with this mysterious statement:
"I never had a brain until Freak came along and let me borrow his for a while, and that's the truth, the whole truth. The unvanquished truth, is how Freak would say it" (1).
The first mysterious question might be, how is it that the narrator never had a brain until someone named Freak comes along? What does that mean? And, how does this person get the name Freak in the first place? Next, the reader might wonder if the narrator doesn't have a brain (or is not smart) how is s/he writing this story and what type of person would use a word like unvanquished?
All of these questions should hook the reader into reading forward in an effort to discover the answers. In addition to the questions that are piqued in the opening paragraph, there is also some foreshadowing for things that the reader will learn along the way. For example, the word "unvanquished" foreshadows similar words that Freak teaches Max. These types of words help the friends to bond as Freak helps Max with reading and writing; and without Freak, Max would not have been able to write their story.
No comments:
Post a Comment