Character Letter (Character's Perspective) April 9, 2009

Maggie’s Door by Patricia Reilly Giff

Dear Book Club;
Hi. My name is Nory Ryan. I am the main character in a 154 page novel titled Maggie’s Door, written by Patricia Reilly Giff. It tells the story of how a terrible blight came through Ireland and destroyed all the potato crops that served as our only source of food. We faced starvation, so my granddad, my sister Celia, my father, my brother Patch, my friend Sean Mallon, and I set out to try and find a boat that will take us across the ocean, away from our beloved homeland, where almost everyone is dying from starvation, where people are living on the streets because they had no money to pay the rent so the English destroyed their homes. We went through many hardships, but the one thing that keeps us going is the dream that one day we will reach America and knock on my sister Maggie’s door on Smith Street in Brooklyn.
I am the protagonist in this story and the antagonist is probably hunger. The hunger we face is our enemy. The main setting in this book is old rickety boat that takes us to America called “The Samson.” The rising action begins when everyone has gone ahead to find a boat, and I begin the long road to Ballilee on my own to meet up with my family. The rising action continues when Patch and I meet my grandad at the port and find out that my dad and my sister Celia had gone ahead on a different ship, so my Grandad pulled together what money he had earned while waiting for us at the port and bought us tickets for the ship called Samson. The climax of the story is when right after a big storm rocked our boat grandad became very ill and I tried to heal him with different plants herbs that my old healing teacher gave me but nothing worked and a couple of days later he passed away, and after that I almost gave up hope that we would ever get to Brooklyn. Somehow I pulled myself together and eventually we reached Maggie’s Door on Smith Street, in Brooklyn. And that is my story, Nory Ryan's Story.
I am very satisfied with the ending of this book because it was very convincing and happy. I predict that Nory will marry Sean and they will live in the U.S for generations to come. I enjoyed this book very much and recommend it to all.

Muhammad Mehai (9th grade)