The Last Cuentista: Writings

During the beginning of the school year my Language Arts class read The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. This book takes place in a dystopian future where Halley’s Comet is going to hit Earth and destroy everyone living there. A corporation called the Collective created ships and are bringing people from Earth to another planet to survive. This seems like a good cause, but the Collective is not what they seem. This book was a fun read with a main theme of stories called cuentos. I actually wrote my own cuento here:

The Tooth Fairy

Retold by Connor M ~ Told by Frank S.

It is tough to be a single dad. My wife had recently passed, being sent to a plague center, to die from Tuberculosis. I was left to raise my two children by myself during the Great Depression. On the weekdays, I drop Frank and Irving at school before work, but on the weekends, I bring them out with me. 

Although it is a tough time, my family is managing thanks to my job as a doctor. I go door to door treating patients, so I spend a lot of my time in the car. The kids love the long rides during the weekends. I try to make things fun by sparking their imagination. 

Imagination is so important to me because as a child, you have a lot of it, but as an adult, I find that imagination is in vain. I help my children grow up imaginative by letting them believe what they want to believe.

Sometimes, when I’m driving the kids down the long roads they lose a tooth. I start to drive a little wobbly and reach out the window to bang on the roof. Suddenly, I stopped. “It’s the tooth fairy!” I yell. Excitedly, Frank and Irving get out of the car. Magically, there is candy on the roof! Frank and Irving eat their candy, and I love how they look up at the sky, looking for the tooth fairy. I really hope to spark their imagination in a way they will remember forever.

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Because the people in the book went to another planet, I wrote an ideal world blog post here. This blog post was about my ideal world to live in. It is told like a tour of a city, but it is a planet. This was very fun to write about. I would recommend The Last Cuentista to anyone who loves science fiction.

Finally, I made a handmade book. The cover of it says “Spirit,” because the name of my ideal world is Spirit in Latin, and my cuento is about spirit and hope. These messages made making the handmade book super fun. Inside there is a platypotupus, one of my ideal world’s many creatures. This was a great project that was fairly enjoyable.

Window & Mirror

Image from Sora

There are two types of books, window books and mirror books. Window books are books that you don’t relate to, so you’re looking at them from a window. An example of a window book could be a fantasy book with dragons and fairies. Mirror books have a character or setting that you can relate to. For example, if you were a doctor, a book about a doctor might be a mirror book. The reason I say “might” is because some books that have characters like you are still windows because they are having a completely different experience.

I am currently reading The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt. It is about a boy in middle school in the year 1967 during the Vietnam War named Holling. He thinks his teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates him, but her family’s company is associated with his family’s company, so he has to act like he is good friends with his teacher. Meanwhile, President Lyndon B. Johnson is stepping down, and Martin Luther King Jr. was just assassinated.

This book is a window because even though there is a middle school boy as a main character, I don’t live in a time of war, so it is still a window.




My Backpack

This summer I read a historical fiction book titled Finding Someplace. The book is about a girl named Reesie from New Orleans who is about to turn thirteen when Hurricane Katrina hit her town. She is by herself because the rest of her family is worried about the hurricane and not in the house. She packs her backpack with important things she might need during a hurricane. I made a list of things I might bring if I were in New Orleans at the time.

Here are the things I would bring if I were in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina. The first thing I would bring would be money. I would find the nearest debit card and cash money to bring with me in case I would need it later. I would also bring food and water, which in this case would be Doritos, a sandwich, and a few water bottles. In case I needed to go somewhere dark, I would bring a flashlight with extra batteries. I would also like to feel comfortable sleeping, so I would bring a blanket to sleep on. Also, I would bring some bandages in case someone got hurt and they were bleeding out. I would bring some matches because if I end up stranded, we could use them to light something on fire to signal a helicopter. Finally, I would bring a pocket knife because I might need to cut something in a hurry. In conclusion, this is what I would bring in my backpack if I were in Reesie’s place during Hurricane Katrina.