Looking In To: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Tanzim Ahmed

            Last week I only read forty-nine pages of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. That was enough to pull me in to the book. This week I’m up to page 114 and I am loving it. The author is putting information out in the perfect order. He introduces new scenes by different characters. The author wants the reader to know why something is happening, but he doesn’t come out and say it directly. He says it later on in the story using small clues that he includes earlier in the book. He also opens up scenes in this book accidently. It looks like the main character is about to do something but then stumbles upon something else!

          In one part of this book, Christopher’s father takes the book that he was writing and pretends to throw it away. A few days later when Christopher goes to look for it in his father’s room, he finds the book along with a bunch of letters from his mom. Christopher is now confused. Wasn’t his mom dead? Didn’t his father say she died of a heart attack? After he read a lot of the letters he started to put the pieces together. Before this part, Christopher found out that Mr. Shears, Ms. Shears’ husband, had an affair with his mom. They both left their spouses but Christopher was told that his mom had died. In the letters, that had the date after her death, his mom tells him the entire story. That’s how the author tells the reader what happens.

          This message relates to both teens and adults. A father and his child need to be open to one another. They can’t keep any secrets between each other. Christopher’s dad probably thought that because Christopher was a little abnormal, he wouldn’t be intelligent enough to figure out what happened. His dad kept a big secret from his son, this isn’t good because Christopher deserves to know the truth about what really happened to his mom. This can be applied to teens too. In the letter his mother explains to Christopher why she was angry all the time. He and his mom would always fight because Christopher would never listen to her. This tells teens to appreciate their mother. Now that Christopher doesn’t have a mom, he doesn’t know what a mother’s love really feels like. This tells teens to always be polite with their parents and to not hurt them anyway. Christopher once embarrassed his mom in the mall during Christmas time. She had to drag him home because he didn’t like the nose in the mall. He also threw a plate at his mom and broke her toes. This might have led to why his mother would lose her temper really quickly. The lesson is for the child to be polite to their parents and for the parents to be honest with their kids.