Interview Questions for The Last Song
on Jun1 2011- Describe the plot of the book.
- What is the major conflict in your book? Ronnie hasn’t talked to her father in three years because her parents got a divorce and he left. Since her and her father used to play the piano together, she refuses to play it. Now she has to spend an entire summer with him, away from her friends and her New York. It also doesn’t help that she has gotten caught shoplifting twice.
- What causes the conflict to occur? What are some of the obstacles that lead to the conflict? Ronnie’s dad gets put in the hospital, and she finds out he has cancer and didn’t have much time left.
- What is the most exciting part of the plot? Is this when the conflict is resolved? As the summer progresses, Ronnie meets Will, a volleyball player who happens to be very rich and falls in love with him. She also becomes closer with her father, telling him things she would never think of telling her mom.
- How is the conflict resolved? Is this what you expected? Explain. Ronnie’s dad has been trying to write a song but just couldn’t seem to get it right. When he gets out of the hospital, he isn’t strong enough to work on it, so Ronnie starts to work on it. When she finishes it she plays it for him. By the end of the book, Ronnie matured so much. Instead of thinking that her father constantly played the piano so that she would play again, she realized that her father always played because that was what he loved to do.
- Describe the setting in the book. What visual images do you see in your head? Give examples in the book that lead you to these images.
- Use the sensory images: visual, taste, smell, movement, etc. As I read the book, I could visualize the ocean’s waves crashing into the tide, the smell of the salt water, and the cool summer breeze. The setting reminded me of the lazy, laid back feeling of summer.
- Describe an important symbol in the book. What is the symbol? Ronnie finds a turtle nest on her 3rd night at her dad’s house, and sleeps out by them when a raccoon almost destroyed it. The turtles are an important symbol in the book because it shows that Ronnie isn’t as bad as she looks. Also as the turtles get closer and closer to hatching, Ronnie gets more and more mature.
- What effect do the events in plot have on the characters?
- How do the characters change throughout the book? Ronnie went from being rebellious and hating her dad to getting along with him.
- Describe a questionable action by one of the characters. Do you think they were right or wrong? Why? When her dad hides the piano because Ronnie doesn’t want to see it. I think he shouldn’t have done that and should have explained why he likes to play the piano, but that wouldn’t have made a good book.
- Compare and contrast two characters in your book. Blaze and Ronnie’s parents are both divorced and they’re rebellious. Blaze is more of a push over and does whatever Marcus tells her to, but Ronnie sees right through him.
- Describe an important passage in the book. Why is it important? “Her mind flashed on a dozen different images: Suddenly she knew why her dad wanted her and Jonah to come to North Carolina. And she understood that her mom had known the truth all along. With so little time left together, he had no desire to argue with her. And his ceaseless work on the window now made perfect sense. She recalled his coughing fit in the church and the times he’d winced in pain. In hindsight, the pieces all fit together. Yet everything was falling apart.” (321) this is important because it was a big turning point in the book and she finally realized that it really wasn’t all about her.
- What other books or stories could you compare this book to? How are they similar? How are they different? The Last Song is like Dear John and all the other Nickolas Sparks books. They pretty much all have to do with love and loss. The only thing that’s different is the characters and the problems they face.
- Where there any words that you did not know the definition? Did you look the word up in the dictionary? If you didn’t, how did you determine what the word meant? I don’t really remember struggling on any words, but when I do come across a word I don’t know, I usually read on to see if I can just figure out the meaning.
- Was there a moment in the book when you were surprised, angered, upset, excited or happy? Describe the scene and what evoked this emotion. I was sad when Ronnie and Will found Jonah in the shed trying to finish the stained glass window because he believed that if he finished it his dad would get better.
- Are there any parts of the story that are confusing? Why? There really wasn’t any part of the story that was confusing to me.
- If you could ask the author one question, what would it be and why?
- Would you recommend this book to someone else? Why or why not? Use specific examples from the book to answer this question. Yes because it’s a typical coming of age and it’s a good to read if you are just in the crying mood. It shows how death makes people grow up faster than they usually would.
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