“All These Wonders” is a book published by The Moth which is pretty much a bunch of people telling real stories from their life to a live audience. The book is full of stories that the people from The Moth hand picked. In the book instead of having chapters, there are many different categories that are filled with multiple stories. Throughout the book there are 7 categories. These categories and stories can range from being very funny and lighthearted to being very dark, or being about really heavy subjects that the speaker had to experience. The entire point of The Moth is for people to be able to get stuff off of their chest to an audience that won’t ridicule or judge them. This book fit the challenge in so many different ways because of how diverse the book gets in its storytelling. Out of all the stories I read I don’t think I’ve ever felt so awed by what people have experienced and their ability to speak about it in front of an audience. The very first story I read in the book, I just opened up to a random page that had a title and read, it was titled “The Shower”. It was about a Holocaust survivor talking about the rapid change from his happy life at home to being locked in Bergen-Belsen. The chapter the story is in is called Grace Rushes In, which seems really odd considering the fact that the first story is about being a Holocaust survivor. It ended up being in that category because they went to the showers and instead of it really being a gas chamber, hot water really poured down on them, and they got to shower. I couldn’t imagine the fear leading up to that point though, they had all known what happens when you go to the shower normally, but they seemed to be lucky, and they knew it. It would be insanely hard to describe all of the things I experienced and thought while reading this book. As an example from “The Shower”, I learned that even though a situation seems dire, there is always at least a sliver of a chance that it could be completely opposite. I also learned to enjoy what time I have with the people I’m close to from a story called “It Matters A Great Deal”. The story is about a woman’s son going to visit and live with her for a while because she was nearing the end of her life and knew it. The mood between the two of them was dark for a while until the old woman, Patti, said that she doesn’t want to have a death where people are sulking, she wants people to celebrate her life, not mourn her death. Together Patti and her son put together a huge party for her so that she would not be remembered in mourning, but in happiness. This book has taught me so much, which I hate to admit because as a teen I have that mindset of always knowing what’s happening, but this book definitely helped put the world into perspective. The most hard hitting part of the whole book for me though, was a quote from “It Matters A Great Deal” because it reads, “We all fall, and it matters. But when the fall is all you have left, it matters a great deal”. Nolan J.
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AuthorSTenth grade students at Decorah High School share how they're reading outside of their own experiences and how it has changed them. Categories
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November 2022
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