Blog 1

Like most people in the class, I'm finding this book hard to understand and hard to read. The unfamilar words and names make it harder for me to remember what happens in the book and who each person is. For starters, I think that the entire world in this book is a bit strange. I'm not understanding how each year can be Year One. What does that make the rest of the years before that then? What really strikes me as odd is the fluid gender. Today in class, we discussed, well the others discussed seeing as I did not do the reading, Faxe's ability to be both male and female. I remember one of the students saying that it would be confusing to be both since males are entirely different than females. That made me ponder of what it would be like to be a boy. Seeing as I'm a female, and although I do have some traits that would be considered "boyish", I think that if I was a boy, I wouldn't know how to act. It also makes me question reproduction in the story. Can some aliens be mothers one day and a father the next? Also, "we" discussed the telepaths, and choosing another leader. So from today's discussion, it seems as if I was able to understand the book through the ideas and thoughts of the other kids. It seemed as if I learned that nights reading through the help of the group.