Macey's Grandparents And Austin's Grandparents example essay topic

Title: Burning Up Author: Caroline B. Cooney Main Characters: Macey Clare, Austin Fent, Mr. and Mrs. Macey, Monica and Henry Fent, Venita Edna, Grace, and Lindsay. Setting: The story takes off on the first of April at Shell Beach. Where there are private beaches and swamps in the woods. Plot: Macey Clare is a 15 year old girl who's parents are never home so she stays with her grandparents on the weekdays, and on the weekends that her parents come home from work all week, she stays with them. Macey gets involved with a Saturday group, where they go and paint a church in a bad part of the neighborhood. While they paint at the black church, an arson walks by smoking, and seeing the open cans of paint and turpentine, throws a match into the church.

Setting it into blazes. The whole group, including, Macey, Austin, Venita, Lindsay, Grace, Cham ique, and Dav onn. They end up getting stuck because of a fire exit being blocked from the outside, because a few weeks before a 4 year old was stabbed by an intruder who got in this way. Macey's hair caught fire while she was running out. Austin, put it out in time to save her face from burning with his shirt. Lindsay and Grace, Macey's best friends, were very supportive when Macey's hair all burned off and got her to a stylist to get it fixed.

The fire gets Macey interested in a fire that happened years ago, where a man was thought to have been burned alive in it. For a history project, she chooses this 'barn fire' and opens a lot of things that are supposed to be left closed. She finds out that the man presumed to have been burned alive was a black man, and he ended up getting out. No one that Macey asks remembers anything about the fire, so they say. They want to keep it secret because he was black and the fire was like arson. After digging into it more Macey is turned to believe that the person who started the fire lived on Shell Road.

The only problem with this was that Macey's grandparents and Austin's grandparents are the only ones who live here. Now Macey is more determined to find out what happened. Everyone tries to get her to research something different for her history project but, because of the fire that burned her hair, she is stuck on it. Venita, who is also black, is shot during a gang fight. All this proves to Macey that no matter how hard her town tries to hide it they are very prejudice. Her family won't let her go the funeral.

Which upsets her greatly. Finally Macey gets Austin to help her find out how the fire started and who was all responsible. These two end up falling for each other but don't want to admit it. Austin ends up leaving to go back to live with his mother and father.

This breaks both of their hearts, although Austin is happy to go back home. Macey and Austin find out that it wasn't either one of their grandparents who started the fire. Yet, they also learn that their grandparents weren't the first to jump in and help the black teacher whose home had just burnt down. Instead they cracked jokes about it.

Macey could never look at her grandparents the same way again after this. To her they seemed like less of a person, for not wanting to help. Macey's parents end up spending more time with Macey and start to pay attention to her more. Austin finally is back with his parents, whether they stay together or not is still undecided. Although you never find out who the person was who started the fire, the book still has a good ending because both Macey's and Austin's lives are back where they should be. General Themes: I think the main idea of the author in this book is that you should look beyond the color of someone's skin and reach out and help them in their time of need.

I think the author was trying to show through Macey that good can come out of helping people that are of different race. Also that one person can help to make a difference by volunteering to help out in less fortunate communities. Personal Reaction: My personal reaction to this book is this. I think it is a good thing to help out people of the other race. Macey reached beyond the color barrier and helped to make a difference in someone's life. I feel that this was a good example to others.

It would be a very good book for someone to read if they were prejudice because it shows the effects prejudice's has on peoples lives. The pain it can cause, and how it can still effect someone later on in generations, from your family..